All these exciting stories and MORE in this week's issue of
CONSPIRACY JOURNAL!

~ And Now, On With The Show! ~

Cryptid Creatures From Dark Domains

Dogmen, Devil Hounds, Phantom Canines And Real Werewolves

DISCOVER AMERICA'S MOST BIZARRE CRYPTID CREATURES!

Here Is Proof That These Strange Canines Exist And Could Be Hiding In Plain Sight In Your Neighborhood!

Read Case Histories Of Face-To-Face Confrontations With Anomalous "Monsters" And Incredible Beasts Who Spring Forth From The Backwoods, Other Realms And Far Flung Dimensions!

CRYPTID CREATURES FROM DARK DOMAINS: CONFRONT DIRECTLY SUCH DENIZENS AS THE DOGMEN, DEVIL HOUNDS, PHANTOM CANINES AND THE HORRIFIC WEREWOLVES OF FACT AND FOLKLORE.

Legends of black dogs and phantom hounds are widespread throughout the United States as well as in the United Kingdom. Though presented as a work of fiction, Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his most popular detective thriller, "The Hound of the Baskervilles," on true accounts of a mysterious black beast with blazing red eyes who is said to have attacked those crossing the moors. Some victims were lucky to have gotten away with their lives. Perhaps there are others who disappeared and whose bodies were not accounted for. Today's top paranormal researchers delve into stories of the bloody beast, who comes in various sizes and apparently even has the ability to shape-shift into an even more hideous creature when cornered, as described by England's leading cryptozoologist Nick Redfern in this stunning new work.

There also is the latest research from Pennsylvania's foremost Dogmen researcher Butch Witkowski, who finds himself in the middle of an unprecedented wave of "bipedal canine" appearances to hunters and campers. These Dogmen are upright creatures, standing over seven-feet-tall and said to have a muscular physique similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The strange hairy frame is topped by the face of a hideous, snarling dog who breathes out dread and fear to all those who cross its path.

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Exploring the Bizarre - Thursday Nights at 10:00PM EST

Heard Live on the KCOR Digital Radio Network

This week Arcane Radio welcomes ufology/anomalies/fortean researchers & investigators Timothy Beckley & Claudia Cunningham. Beckley and the "MIB Lady" will join forces this Wednesday to knock some sense into the cryptid known as Dogman.

October 5 at 10:00PM EST www.arcaneradio.com

- UFOs OVER POLAND DEPARTMENT -

The Tale of the Melting Tiles in a Wroclaw Apartment
By Piotr Cielebias

This strange story involved a local man from Wroclaw who returned home one evening to discover that someone or something had apparently flew by his kitchen window and left strange marks on the floor tiles. They looked white in colour (as if stained by lime) and had been melted but ‘something’. It wasn’t long before the laboratory analysis showed that they didn’t appear to be melted in any conventional way?

In this next part of “extras”, i.e. addendums connected with my book “UFOs OVER POLAND” published in late November 2015 by respected British ufologist Philip Mantle at FLYING DISK PRESS. The book contains a history of Polish UFO encounters that often turned out to be very original and connected with what we call the “high strangeness factor” in ufology. That means that they went beyond typical UFO encounters showing either paranormal features or being very eccentric to say the least.

There were several controversial cases that I didn’t publish in the book for a variety reasons. Some I found were rather dubious in origin and are not worth a mention. Others though spectacular lacked any kind of corrobative evidence or were based on scant information.

What is described below is a case that I also found very problematic.

Although in fact no one caught the UFO or ufonaut in flagranti, “something flying” left very some very unusual marks on a floor in one of Wroclaw apartments. The case is amongst others in Bronislaw Rzepecki’s and controversial Jan Pajak’s writings and recently has been resurrected by Mr. Marcin Stachurski - author of the first Polish professional “Humcat” or “Humanoid Encounters Catalogue”.

The incident in question took place on September 4th 1979 in Jerzy Wasilewski’s flat on Kruszwicka Street in Wroclaw (dolnoslaskie). His flat was located on the last storey of 4-storey block. The man had been out and had left the window in the kitchen open. He returned home finding his floor tiles had been melted by some unknown force. After close inspection it turned out that the melted points formed a trail similar to those left by tiny feet.

In other words, it seemed that some unknown person with very small burning-hot shoes flew into Mr. Wasilewski’s flat and took a walk around melting his floor tiles as it did. This scenario seemed to be backed by the fact that the intruder (whoever it was) flew inside via the window burning a hanging thread of dried mushrooms (it’s a common practice of drying mushrooms that are very popular in Polish cuisine).

Whatever it was, the “thing” entered the witnesses flat and left around 17 strange marks on the kitchen and the corridor floor. The distance between the marks was about 40 cm. It looked as if someone had marched through the kitchen and hall and then returned leaving in the same direction from where they entered.

The case was weird to say the least and it is not widely known but what makes it worth of attention is the PVC tiles analysis made by the Institute of Non-Organic Chemistry of Wroclaw University. It showed that Mr. Wasilewski’s tiles were not apparently melted by a high temperature but… some kind of “highly-concentrated magnetic field”.

The marks were very small - only 13 mm in diameter. In the first part they looked like chalk-colored stains with wavy surfaces. At first glance Wasilewskis took them for drops of lime or whitewash thinking that workers from nearby construction site broke into his flat. But they had not. Moreover, the whiteness was only gone for a short time and Pajak said that in 1982 when he examined the tiles one more time, the marks were almost the same color as the rest. They could be distinguished only by wavy top (see photo above).

Analysis showed that the internal structure of the tiles remained unchanged and no burn PVC traces were detected. It was ruled out that they had been burnt by a fire, chemical substance, pressurized gas/fluid, hot gas or plasma. It also wasn’t a mechanical or electrical failure that had caused the marks. The verdict of the analysis stated that the PVC tiles were hit with a highly concentrated magnetic field and the thin uppermost layer of the tile was additionally treated with ozone.

So what happened on that day? Was Wasilewski’s flat visited by some miniature UFO probe or flying ufonaut with a jetpack of which the exhausts burned the dark-blue PVC tiles? Or maybe ball lightning was responsible. Unfortunately, nothing is known for sure in this case due to lack of direct witnesses. And as Pajak wrote, there were a number of “collectors” who hearing about this strange incident, came to Wroclaw to buy the tiles which had been marked by some kind of “cosmic” force…

About the Author:

Piotr Cielebias

Born in 1986 in Czestochowa, Poland he holds an MA in history and a BA in political sciences. He is a well known Polish writer and journalist specializing in fringe science and paranormal phenomena, co-founder of infra.org.pl website collecting UFO reports, long-term ufological publisher and contributor to ufological magazines and websites in English. He writes regularly for Onet.pl - the most popular Polish web portal and for “Nieznany Swiat” - the oldest Polish monthly publication devoted to fringe science and paranormal phenomena. He is the author of “The True UFOs” - a book in Polish summarizing the UFO phenomenon as a whole. He is the author of the new book UFOS OVER POLAND on sale now via Amazon.

SOURCE: Philip Mantle
http://flyingdiskpress.blogspot.co.uk/

- HAUNTED LAKES DEPARTMENT -

Not “Nessiesarily” A Plesiosaur
By Nick Redfern

Well, after significant time away from Mysterious Universe, it’s time to get back to it. I figured that for my first article in a while I would focus on something that provokes endless arguments and even rage. I’m talking about belief systems. In this case, one belief system in particular. Namely, the idea that the strange creatures of Loch Ness, Scotland are surviving examples of long-extinct plesiosaurs; marine reptiles that became extinct millions of years ago. Give me a break: Loch Ness is not teeming with plesiosaurs. Not even one. The plesiosaur theory is filled with holes that are simply too big to ever be successfully plugged. They were, after all, reptiles – meaning they surfaced to take in oxygen.

If the Nessies are plesiosaurs, then let’s say that at any given time there are around twenty of them in the loch, ranging from (a) young and small to (b) large and old. That would be a reasonable figure to ensure the continuation of a healthy herd. Let’s also say they, like crocodiles, can stay submerged, and without taking in oxygen, for a considerable amount of time. This means that in any one-day, each plesiosaur would have to surface around – let us say – twelve times. Twenty plesiosaurs, surfacing twelve times a day (at a minimum, I should stress), would equate to 240 surfacing events every single twenty-four-hour-long period. Multiply that by a week and the figure is elevated to 1,680. Then, multiply that by fifty-two weeks in a year and the figure becomes a massive 87,360 surfacing events annually.

That the number of sightings per year is actually extremely low suggests strongly that they are not plesiosaurs. If they are, we should be seeing them much more than we do. It really is that simple. There is a specific reason why I mention all of this: I have a new book out right now titled Nessie: Exploring the Supernatural Origins of the Loch Ness Monster. As the title of the book demonstrates, the theories presented in its pages to explain the Nessies are far removed from the likes of plesiosaurs and giant eels. We’re talking about the Aleister Crowley connection, shape-shifters, odd synchronicities, UFOs, Men in Black, portals, and much more that either intrigues or infuriates people. There is very little middle ground. In fact, as I see it, there is none at all.

But, what really interests me is not just the nature of the Nessies: it’s the way in which certain characters allow their stress levels to reach “danger zone” levels when dealing with the subject. Something which has certainly happened since the book was published earlier this month. As interested as I am in the Nessie controversy, and although I engage in more than a few very argumentative and heated debates online, it’s not like we’re talking about finding the cure for cancer, or trying my best to help ensure that the Democratic Party stays in power. Those are very important issues. Nessie? Very interesting, yes, but hardly world-changing. Maybe it’s just me, but practically hyperventilating, merely because someone suggests Nessie may not be what you think it is, is very, very stupid. And pointless, because it achieves absolutely nothing. But I have seen it time and again. I actually saw it (or, rather, heard it) earlier today!

I have also seen the same thing with Bigfoot and Roswell. As anyone who has read my articles and books will know, I am far from convinced that the Bigfoot phenomenon revolves around nothing but unknown, unclassified apes. There is, as I see it, something much weirder to Bigfoot than meets the eye. But, again, when I start talking about Tulpas, portals, and multi-dimensions – all in relation to Bigfoot – it’s not just eyebrows that raise significantly. It’s blood-pressures, too. The same thing happens when I admit I am far from convinced that ET crashed at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.

If the Bigfoot creatures and the Nessies are, one day, proven to exist, then it will be an amazing day. Just the same as if Roswell is conclusively shown to have been an extraterrestrial event. Anf if certain people spent more time and energy investigating, rather than upholding personal belief systems, then maybe we would get somewhere. But, as I see it, upholding a belief system at all costs – probably because the person in question has invested so much time, money and effort in promoting that specific belief – is a case of crossing the line.

If the Nessies are shown to be giant eels, if Bigfoot is found to be a primitive type of human, and if it is proved that the Roswell aliens were actually crash-test dummies, after all, we should be pleased. Not because certain, personal beliefs were vindicated (or were not), but because the mystery was solved. Indeed, when it come to each and every aspect of what I scientifically refer to as “weird shit,” solving is far more important than believing ever could be.

Source: Mysterious Universe
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/09/not-nessiesarily-a-plesiosaur/

- WORLDS WITHIN WORLDS DEPARTMENT -

Lerina Garcia: Did She Wake Up In Another Universe?
By Rob Schwarz

(NOTE: We ran this article last week and forgot to finish formatting it, thus the source of this piece and the author were not included. So we are running this again so that the proper credit is given to this fascinating story. Thanks Rob!)

Lerina Garcia’s peculiar tale surfaced many years ago in the comments section of a Spanish website called Tendencias21. It was there she claimed, with some reservations, that she had somehow “jumped” into another universe.

A universe similar, but not quite, to her own.

Sound strange? It is. It’s also impossible to verify. But that’s never stopped me before.
“I think I jumped into a parallel universe…”

Lerina Garcia posted her comment on July 16, 2008, in response to an article about the possibility of multiple universes.

She said she was 41 years old, and had experienced something so bizarre, so inexplicable, that she worried others would think she was suffering from a psychotic break. And yet her story was so compelling, it became something of an urban legend.

Her claim was this: She had gone to sleep one night, and woke up the next day to find that the world around her had changed in the strangest, and subtlest, ways.

The first change was a very simple one. The sheets on her bed were different. This confused her, of course, but she didn’t give it much thought. Not in the beginning. It was another change, when she arrived at work later that day, that caused her to truly question her reality.

“Everything was different…”

The following quotes come from a roughly translated version of her original comment, which you can find (in Spanish) at Tendencias21. There’s also an archive available here for posterity (because these things sometimes disappear).

“…when I got to my office, it was not my office. It had names on the door, and mine was not. I thought I had the wrong floor, but no, it was mine. I got off at the wireless area of my office and I looked, still working here but it was in another department reporting to a director I didn’t know.”

Garcia told them she was sick and headed out, determined to understand why this was happening. She did what anyone would likely do in her situation: She visited a doctor, and later a psychiatrist. They did tests, but found nothing. She was clean, apparently, and everything was fine.

The psychiatrist suggested that, perhaps, she was suffering from stress and had hallucinated these inconsistencies. But no, she thought. The changes were too bizarre. Too real. It was the world – the world was the problem.

And it was only getting worse.

While the small things, like her ID and her house and even yesterday’s top news headlines, were the same, other personal details were not. For example, she remembered her sister having had surgery on her arm, but the rest of her family, including her sister, remembered no such thing.

Most shocking of all to Garcia was that she found herself still with her ex-boyfriend, who she remembered leaving many months before. Her new boyfriend was gone altogether.

“I left and started a relationship with a guy in my neighborhood. I know it perfectly. I’ve been with him four months and know his name, address, where he works…where he studied. Well that guy does not exist now. It seems that [he] existed before my ‘jump’ but now, no trace.”

She even went so far as to hire a detective, but he turned up nothing. Her new boyfriend never existed, not in this universe. And her ex, well, it was “as if nothing had happened.”

“I’ve done things I’m not aware of…”

Lerina Garcia ended her post with a simple plea for help. Had anyone else experienced anything similar? she wondered. She said it was as though she had simply dreamed the previous five months, “with the proviso that everyone remembers me at that time, and I’ve done things I’m not aware of having done.”

She searched the Internet for similar stories, and noticed other important events from the “missing” months that she didn’t remember. But mostly, she wrote, “the rest of the world seems to be the same.”

I’m not sure whatever happened to her. Perhaps she got on with her life. Perhaps dimension-hopping is just something you have to get used to.

* * *

Over the past year or so, many people have shared their experiences with “changed” memories in my post about the Berenst#in Bears Problem, and later the Mandela Effect. But there are other stories, like Lerina Garcia’s, that take things further in a remarkable way.

Is it possible to suddenly find yourself in a universe that is not your own? With things that are mostly the same, but not quite right? Could this, instead, be a case of alter-vu, in which Lerina Garcia experienced memories from another version of herself in another universe? Or have people like her become strange travelers who have somehow journeyed between parallel universes, with seemingly no way back?

The world – the universe – is a strange place. What do you believe?

Source: Stranger Dimensions
http://www.strangerdimensions.com/2016/09/20/lerina-garcia-wake-another-universe/

- THE CIRCUITS OF THE GALAXY DEPARTMENT -

What if the Aliens We Are Looking For Are AI?
By Richard Hollingham

For more than a century we have been broadcasting our presence to the cosmos. This year, the faintest signals from the world’s first major televised event – the Nazi-hosted 1936 Olympics – will have passed several potentially habitable planets. The first season of Game of Thrones has already reached the nearest star beyond our Solar System.

So why hasn’t ET called us back?

There are plenty of obvious answers. Maybe there are no intelligent space aliens in our immediate cosmic vicinity. Perhaps they have never evolved beyond unthinking microbial slime or – based on our transmissions – aliens have concluded it is safer to stay away. There is, however, another explanation: ET is nothing like us.

“If we do find a signal, we shouldn’t expect it’s going to be some sort of soft squishy protoplasmic alien behind the microphone at the other end,” says Seth Shostak, senior astronomer for alien-hunting organisation Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti).

Seti has been actively searching for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life for more than half a century. Despite tantalising signals (such as this recent one), it has so far drawn a blank. But Shostak believes we should consider looking to our own future to imagine what aliens will be like.

“Perhaps the most significant thing we’re doing is to develop our own successors,” says Shostak. “If we can develop artificial intelligence within a couple of hundred years of inventing radio, any aliens we are likely to hear from have very likely gone past that point.”

“In other words,” he says, “most of the intelligence in the cosmos, I would venture, is synthetic intelligence and that may disappoint movie goers who expect little grey guys with big eyeballs, no clothes, no hair or sense of humour.”

The argument assumes that the creatures who built the first AIs – grey guys, hyper- intelligent pan-dimensional beings, sentient trees or whatever – are no longer around.

“Well they might be,” Shostak concedes, “but once you develop artificial intelligence you can use that to develop the next generation of thinking thing and so on – within 50 years you not only have a machine that’s far smarter than all the previous machines but certainly smarter than all humans put together.”

“The big question,” says astronomer and author of the Search for Earth’s Twin, Stuart Clark, “is whether the AI goes on to become conscious and define its own goals and decide it doesn’t need the biological creatures that developed it.”

From the self-aware death machines of the Berserker books to the cyborgs of Battlestar Galactica or The Terminator, science fiction certainly has a rich seam of AIs taking over and wiping out their inferior biological creators. It is not, however, necessarily the inevitable path of any technological civilisation. Artificial Intelligence – truly thinking machines with synthetic super-brains – may not even be possible.

“It’s very unclear to me that this is inevitably going to happen,” says Clark. “But the key point is we are looking for something we imagine to be a bit like us and we’re limiting the search as a result.”

Seti uses an array of radio telescope dishes in California to search for signals. The receivers are aimed at star systems where planets have been discovered by Earth or space telescopes such as Nasa’s Kepler observatory. These are planets which might have liquid oceans and life-supporting atmospheres – habitats that have made human evolution possible. But machine intelligences could live anywhere.

“That’s the whole problem,” says Shostak. “Not only could they be anywhere, it would make sense for them to go to places in the Universe where there were big sources of energy – if you’re going to do a lot of thinking, a lot of energy helps so maybe that’s the place to look.”

If this is the case, then Seti could be looking for ET in the wrong place. “Instead of having their own fields of radio telescopes,” says Clark, “maybe that money would be better spent equipping every observatory with piggyback equipment that looks at every signal that’s been received and look for repeating patterns.”

Whether every observatory would agree to host a Seti sensor is a matter for debate. The technology might, however, reveal some other surprising astronomical discovery. We now know that pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars. When Jocelyn Bell discovered the first of these oscillating signals in 1967, only half-jokingly did the University of Cambridge team label it LGM1 for Little Green Men.

In the short term, Seti is likely to continue its search for life on Earth-like planets. “But,” says Shostak, “over the course of time if we can come up with some ideas of where you might find synthetic intelligence, I think they’ll be more and more experiments aimed at doing that.”

Another approach would be to broadcast messages from Earth to target regions of the cosmos. It is a controversial strategy that Stephen Hawking has warned could leave the Earth vulnerable to attack and exploitation. "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet,” he warned in 2010.

“I don’t agree,” Shostak says. “But Seti has no broadcasting capability and the other thing about broadcasting is that even if you do it, it might be a very long time before you get a response – depending how close the aliens are.”

So are we any closer to discovering whether we are the lone intelligence – AI or not – in the Universe? “I don’t think you can ever say there’s nothing there, you can’t prove that negative,” Shostak says. “What you can say is that there’s something wrong with our approach so, for me, it’s very, very early days to think about giving up.”

Clark agrees. “I think Seti should generalise its search as much as possible,” he says. “An answer to ‘yes there’s intelligent life in the Universe’ has profound implications for us and that alone qualifies Seti to carry on.”

Source: BBC
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160922-what-if-the-aliens-
we-are-looking-for-are-ai

- SOMETHING IS UP THERE DEPARTMENT -

"Invisible" UFO Spotted By Police Infrared Camera
By Norman Byrd

An orb-shaped Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that was invisible to the naked eye was filmed by a police helicopter this week. The helicopter, flying over the Bristol Channel in Wales, took the footage of the UFO, filming the “hot” object via infrared camera — all while Welsh air traffic control reported nothing in the area.

The Bristol Post reported last week that a South Wales police (the National Police Air Service at St. Athan) helicopter flying at roughly 1,000 feet over the Bristol Channel at about 9:30 p.m. on Saturday (September 24) picked up a UFO on its thermal imaging cameras, providing the police with a rather strange mystery. Because, simply put, without the aid of the infrared cameras, the UFO would have gone undetected. The helicopter’s regular cameras recorded nothing but a clear sky.

But the infrared camera, designed to “see” thermal, or “heat,” displays apparently made the invisible visible. It captured a dark, circular object to video.

“It’s difficult to judge the size but we filmed it for just over seven minutes,” the police posted to its Twitter account, according to the Post. During those seven minutes, police said, the object moved against prevailing winds.

Police were stunned to see the dark image on the helicopter film. Unable to come up with an explanation for the UFO in the video, they asked for suggestions from the public on Twitter.

Any suggestion?? Nothing seen by local ATC… ?????? pic.twitter.com/Hu07DLmn3z

— NPAS St Athan (@NPAS_StAthan) September 23, 2016

Among the suggestions as to what the unknown object might be, some felt that it could be a balloon or a Chinese lantern. However, South Wales police ruled out both explanations due to the “amount of heat” of the object and its distinctive movement.

Avid UFO enthusiast and blogger Scott C. Waring, who operates UFO Sightings Daily, reiterated the police’s confusion over the heat signature, that the object was moving against the wind and that the UFO was invisible except when viewed via the video from thermal cameras. Waring added, “As I have said many times before, many UFOs have a cloak that can only be seen with an IR [infrared] converted camera…”

Waring went on to speculate that the UFO “probably came from below the water” of the Bristol Channel. He noted that he was “confident” that, had the South Wales police followed the object, “they would see it disappear under the water to return to the alien base it came from.”

But that is all speculation. And the UFO in the video filmed by the South Wales police just might have an Earthly origin — although one that has so far eluded investigators.

MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), the world’s foremost UFO investigatory organization, called in FLIR (Forward-Looking Infrared Radiometer) expert David (his last name was withheld to ensure his anonymity) to study the footage. David, who has worked with MUFON in the past, wrote to MUFON that he did not think the object in the video was actually moving, that it only seemed to be doing so because of the momentum of the helicopter itself. He noted that the object also appeared to be a mile or two from the police helicopter.

But as to what the UFO might be, David was unsure. “Things I can immediate dismiss: types of balloons, bird, aircraft,” he said. “I wouldn’t totally dismiss a drone out yet, but it would be very large, hot, and circular in appearance.”

And so, South Wales police still have a mystery on their hands. At the same time, with at least one expert holding the opinion that the object in the video is stationary, there might not even be a UFO sighting to investigate. (More like an Unidentified Stationary Object, a USO, sighting.)

Regardless, something was emitting heat and was detected above Bristol Channel Saturday, and police have the UFO — or USO — video to prove it.

Source: Inquisitr
http://www.inquisitr.com/3549596/invisible-ufo-caught-on-police-helicopter-
video-thermal-imaging-captures-dark-orb-stuns-cops/

- BUILDING A BETTER GOD DEPARTMENT -

The Ghoulish Quest for God

LYNN - Lynn has long been known as the City of Firsts, but somehow a 19th century clergyman's attempt to wed spiritualism with science to create "The New Messiah" has not made the list of accomplishments.

It was more than two years ago when New York author Robert Damon Schneck read two lines about John Murray Spear's God Machine in Nandor Fodor's Encyclopedia of Psychic Science and found he couldn't let it go.

"I was utterly obsessed," he said by phone from his home.

What so thoroughly piqued his interest was that in 1853 a Unitarian Minister attempted to piece together a pile of magnets, various steel shafts and spheres, zinc and copper plates and a dining room table into what he called the New Messiah. And he chose High Rock Tower as his laboratory.

Schneck, who details the story in his book "The President's Vampire," from Anomalist Books, said the idea was that the New Messiah would bring "new life and vitality into all things animate and inanimate."

Spear, whom the story centers around, became a Universalist Minister at the age 24, married and had his own church. He also was held a number of reformist views on slavery, women's rights and temperance, which he freely shared with everyone. Later he would preach free love more than a century before it became fashionable but not before his rendezvous with the God Machine.

When the age of spiritualism set in a few years later, Spear was not only drawn to it, he left his church and became a full-fledged spiritualist. It is written that Spears developed powers as a medium such that he began to receive messages from spirits such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and his namesake the founder the Universalist Church, John Murray.

It was through these spirits that Spear divined his mission to build the God Machine.

The God Machine was essentially a rudimentary robot but as Schneck pointed out that word had yet to exist. Its metamorphosis and aim lends itself to a comparison with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without the human parts.

Spear chose High Rock Tower, which was then home to the Hutchinson family, who were also into spiritualism and more than happy to allow Spear to use their woodshed for his creation.

When it was finished the creation sported "lower limbs," a flywheel for a profession look and various suspended magnets, steel balls, shafts and "a motor for inhalation and respiration."

Schneck said Spear then dressed himself in an elaborate construction of metal plates; strips and gemstones brought himself in gradual contact with the machine and went into an hour-long trance. Over the next few days he and a woman known only as "New Mary" performed a series of rituals that allegedly brought their creation to life.

In the end Schneck said, "precisely what happened is not clear."

Spear claimed the machine moved but critics were not convinced. Schneck said the spirits then told Spear that the machine needed a "change of air" and he was to pack The New Messiah up and take it to Randolph, N.Y.

Unfortunately, Schneck said reports say that in Randolph a mob of angry farmers broke into the storage shed where the God Machine was housed and trampled it to pieces. Again, the imagined scene is not unlike the mob of angry villagers pursuing Frankenstein with their torches and pitchforks.

Schneck, however, is not convinced the Frankenstein scenario true.

"I spoke to a local historian in Randolph who dug through all the newspapers and couldn't find any reference to the God Machine or a large riot," he said. "I suspect he dumped it or buried it at High Rock Tower."

Schneck said he suspects if an archeologist did some digging, they might find pieces of the odd machine hidden under what is now the Observatory. One reason Schneck said he believes the machine never left town because, by the time Spears was done building it, he was destitute.

"So, I assume he didn't even have the money to ship it to Randolph," he said.

As bizarre as Spears' attempt at creation seemed, Schneck said they were not unusual for the time.

"John Murray Spears, I think in his heart was a good man," Schneck said, "but I think there was some ego operating there too. I think he saw himself as a tool for raising all of humanity."

Lynn Museum and Historical Society Director Connie Colom said Lynn has a rich history of spiritualism, which Schneck said was putting it mildly.

Schneck said he came across so many reports of spiritual occurrences while doing his research he couldn't imagine why Lynn hasn't opened its own museum.

With stories of witchcraft, sea serpents, spontaneous human combustion and rioting Quakers, Schneck said it appears spiritualism received an enthusiastic welcome in Lynn.

"You've got the stone cottage, the observatory, why not build a museum to spiritualism," he said. "It could be huge. You wouldn't have to hold séances but you could have a statue of the God Machine."

Source: The Daily Item of Lynn
http://www.thedailyitemoflynn.com/news/view.bg?articleid=13352