#AtoZChallenge2022: W is for Witch Cult Hypothesis

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: W is for Witch Cult Hypothesis

This is a conspiracy theory / modern myth that is more or less implicit in all of my games.  And something a little different than what I have been doing this month.

The hypothesis (and I could argue it is a testable one) is that there has been a more or less unbroken line of pagan magic practitioners and nature worshipers that has existed in Europe and elsewhere since pre-history dating back to at least a time of Goddess worship.  The witch-trails of Europe were an attempt to irradicate these "Witches" in favor of...well, let's look into that.

Ok, that is a lot of variables for a proper hypothesis.  Let's see what we are talking about here.

This idea was put forth by a number of different scholars over the years. The biggest "name" in this was  Margaret Murray, who gave us The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921).  It built off of the popularity of James George Frazer's The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1917) which was also a study in European and before Pagan practices and Charles Godfrey Leland's Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899).

Murray's central thesis was that these witches have existed for centuries and were a vital part of the pagan community.   With the rise of monotheism and proliferation of just one god (and a Male God at that) these witches were hunted down by members of the Church and State or at the very least with their implicit, if not tacit, approval.   That would be Conspiracy #1.

The trouble it Murray's work is not very good.  She makes a lot of fundamental errors in her book including pointing out that the lack of evidence is evidence that they had been wiped out.

I will admit I was even taken it by the idea when I first read it so many years ago. I have since re-read it after several years of grad school and designing research that I can only see the errors, missteps and sadly outright fabrications.  It is a fun read, but has about as much to do with witches as the Wizard of Oz.  

The second wave of the Witch Cult Hypothesis came in the 20th Century.  Typically post-WWII/1950s thinking.  Building on Murray's work there were those that wanted to see what a witch cult, ala Murray, would have been like if it had survived into the 20th Century.   

Taking this in with other works you folks like Gerald Gardner who invented Wicca and claimed to have these roots. Other writers, like Raymond Buckland, were a bit more honest about what they were doing, but you still had a number of others taking Murray not only at face value but also the "gospel truth."

This brings us to Conspiracy #2.  Not only were these witch cults wiped out, but it continues to this day with the discrediting of anything that might show it to be true.  A stretch maybe, but really no more strange than what any other religion believes about their origins. 

I have also read theories that the witch trials (often called the Burning Times) were the result of the growing professional medical professions (ie. Doctors) trying to get rid of their competition, the local herb woman, healer, and midwife.  A variant on Conspiracy #1. 

The truth is that Murray, not just through her own works but the works of others, has been so deeply embedded in this notion of a pre-Christian witch cult that is difficult to tease out her effects.   Her ideas, wrong or not (no, they were wrong, sorry) are with us now forever.

Maybe that is ok.  Just don't base an intellectual career on it.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Well. Basically. In NIGHT SHIFT everything Murray ever said was true. Yup. The whole lot of it. Whether she meant it to be true or not doesn't really matter here. In the world(s) of NIGHT SHIFT it is.

Again, this largely follows most of the work I do with witches in all my games. Gygax even did the same with his Druids imagining the Celtic priestly caste surviving to the Middle Ages (500 to 1,000 years later).   I do the same with witches.  Here I have a collection of pre-Christian, largely European (but there are other influences), pagan witch cults that have existed in secret for thousands of years.

Intellectually I have let Murray go, but in my games, not so much.

Witches are a big part of NIGHT SHIFT, regardless of where they come from.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: V is for Vril

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: V is for Vril

Vril is an energy or the species that uses this energy depending on who you ask.  They would be as about as relevant as the Mahars of Pellucidar (the species, not the book) if it were not for the later involvement of Nazis and UFOs.

Vril comes from the book "Vril, the Power of the Coming Race" by Edward Bulwer-Lytton and was published anonymously in 1871. It deals, as was common to many "Science Romances" of the time with an unnamed but wealthy first-person narrator.  This narrator finds himself in an underground world occupied by these majestic angel-like begins, the Vril-ya who have advanced psychic abilities, but of course, need a proper Englishman to teach them how to speak English.  He also finds his lost wife, two sons, and daughter.   He learns that these beings also known as the Ana, used to live on the surface but came here sometime before the Great Flood.  He learns of their energy, the Vril, which is like an "all-permeating fluid."  

It was pretty much pre-Pulp, Victorian Science Romance (the precursor to Science Fiction). While not great, it has some interesting ideas that men and women were 100% equal in society and the notion of wireless communication and the potential of electricity.  It was, I do note, popular in its time.

It would have been a semi-forgotten bit of science fiction had it not been for various theosophists,  most notably Helena Blavatsky, who took it for Occult Truth (yes. with capital letters).  It seems that in addition to his work on Vril, Edward Bulwer-Lytton also wrote books about Rosicrucians and other occult matters.   Blavatsky took this bit of fiction and ran with it.  Ran so hard in fact that when I first encountered it years ago I was a little surprised to learn it had not been her idea.  As learned more and saw she was a con artist who stole ideas and claimed them as her own I became less and less surprised. 

As I said the book had some popularity with Vril becoming synonymous for a bit with "life given exlirs." There was even what amounted to a Sci-Fi convention at Royal Albert Hall in 1891 called the Vril-Ya Bazaar.  It all has the feel of a Star Trek Convention.  I like other sci-fi properties, there were those who really wished it was real.

But what makes this part of a Conspiracy Theory?

The book and the notions of Vril were taken up by various occultists, in particular theosophists, as truth.  They began to ascribe all sorts of properties to it and to Edward Bulwer-Lytton (who they felt was telling a first hand account in some cases).  Blavatsky used Vril and the idea of "The Common Race" (and "Race" in general, but I am getting to that) in her books Isis Unveiled (1877) and The Secret Doctrine (1888).  Likewise, theosophist William Scott-Elliot used "Vril-energy" in his The Story of Atlantis & The Lost Lemuria (first ed., 1896).  

Likely because of Blavatsky, Vril and the Comming Race became wrapped up in the fertile land of German paganism and pseudoscience that lead to the rise of Nazism.   As noted by Willy Ley, a German rocket engineer who came to the US in 1937, pre-Nazi Germany saw the popularity and widespread proliferation of many irrational ideas including Vril. He published "Pseudoscience in Naziland" in the magazine Astounding Science.  There is far more in that article than I can discuss in one post. But suffice to say that it is a gold mine of ideas.  One of the results of this was the belief in the "Vril Society" existing in Berlin prior to the rise of the Nazis.

After WWII the Vril Society supposedly went on to continue the works of Nazi Occultism which gave us ideas like the Black Sun and various UFOs.  That is another rabbit hole I don't feel like going down today.

For NIGHT SHIFT

I have spoken about various underground races already, the Derro and the Ophidians. The Derro share some commonalities with the Vril.  The Vril was published as science-fiction and others took them to be real.  The Derro was also published as science-fiction but their author claimed they were in fact real. Both featured anonymous first-person narrators. Both featured an underground lost civilization with advanced technology and energies.  But the Derro are invariably described as insane and stunted humans.  The Vril are "angel-like."  So it is not likely they are the same sort of folk.

There is some similarity between the Vril and the Nordics of UFOolgy.  Throw in some of the ideas of Ultima Thule and the "benevolent" Nordics start looking less benevolent. Sure they want the best for humanity, but only the humanity that looks like them. 

Vril of course is the common thread. It is the energy that both the Derro and the Nordics use.  Hmm...is there an association there that the characters need to tease out?  What are the Derro to the Nordics? Is there more here?  I think there is!

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: U is for Unmarked Helicopters

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: U is for Unmarked Helicopters

Few things say "New World Order" or "Military Industrial Complex" quite as nicely as an unmarked military helicopter.

Sightings of unmarked helicopters began in 1970s, often in conjunction with or near cattle mutilations (which I have not even touched yet).  They were even spoken about in  Hal Lindsey's book "The Late, Great Planet Earth" (which I have talked about before).

 More recently Unmarked Helicopters have been the center of growing concerns about the military arming of local police and the extensive powers used by the US government to keep tabs on the American citizens.  Like what Homeland Security does.

There is also some evidence (though nothing I could easily verify) that the CIA was using a black Vietnam-era helicopter to put in phone taps.  

My first experience with Unmarked or Black Helicopters was from the movie Capricorn One. A movie about a conspiracy to fake the first manned mission to Mars.

The UFO Connection

Many sightings of black or unmarked helicopters will occur after a purported UFO sighting.  The most commonly held belief is that these helicopters are from the government and looking to either investigate or cover up the sighting details.  I even read one where the helicopters are in fact the same people/aliens/group that were responsible for the UFO.

Cattle Mutilations

We never hear much about this anymore, but in the 1970s this was newsworthy stuff.  Typically a rancher or someone would find dead cattle that had organs or body parts removed such as an eye, ear or sexual organs. The wounds would clean and sometimes even cauterized.  There would be a complete lack of blood found in the area leading some to believe that the cattle had lifted up and out where the mutilations would occur and then deposited back.  No mean feat when you consider your average cow weighs around 1,600 lbs and a bull over 1 ton.   Since the helicopters were usually spotted in the area it lead many to believe that they were the cause of it.  Obviously, these people never took my stats courses where I make sure my students know that "correlation is not causation."

The rumors that the military was testing some sort of new "death ray" (these conspiracy types really want a death ray) mounted on silent unmarked helicopters were the most popular. 

For NIGHT SHIFT

I have learned that if I want a crazy conspiracy theory in my games there is nothing I can create that will outdo the theories created by my players.  When I am putting ones together I try to keep a certain level of game logic in place. That way when things come up I have a reason for it.  My players are not burdened by such.  So sometimes I throw something out there just to get them spinning.

Unmarked helicopters are great for this.

Have a scene where the characters are investigating something?  Doesn't really matter what. A murder, a UFO sighing, a kitten stuck in a tree?  All of these things are now suddenly more sinister and involve the "Deep State" by putting an unmarked helicopter in the sky above it.

I got to see this demonstrated in real life at work a few years ago.  We were all sitting in our office on the 5th floor just having a normal day when someone spotted a helicopter hovering over the building across I80 from us.  Now seeing a helicopter over the interstate or expressway in Chicago is not a big deal, there are traffic and new helicopters in the sky all the time.  But this one was just hoovering there in the middle of the afternoon.  Well after the morning rush and well before the evening rush.  We all had to stop and watch it.  To see what it was doing.   Turns out it was changing the light fixtures over the interstate. It was hoovering because we could not see the ground crew affixing the new light fixture to it.  Normally this would have been done by crane, but the light was situated in such a way that a crane was not easily maneuverable in that area. 

So next time I need to shamelessly turn up the tension I'll put an unmarked helicopter in the sky and have it fly off before any of the characters can capture any details about it. 

And I have play this song as well.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: T is for Tunguska (and Tesla)

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: T is for Tunguska (and some Tesla)

On the morning of June 30, 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia an explosion of roughly 12 megatons occurred.  This is not in doubt and was well documented at the time.

What is in doubt is why it happened and what caused it.

Since then there have been over 1,000 scholarly papers and countless more less reputable inquiries as to what happened.  The best guess so far is it was some sort of meteor that hit the Earth with a glancing blow. 

Others have speculated that it was a comet, a small asteroid, or even more fanciful ideas like a bit of "dark matter" or even anti-matter.  Though in those last two cases we would need to figure out what dark matter actually is first and for it to be anti-matter where did it come from because it would not last long in space and not at all in any part of the Earth's atmosphere.   Going on the even more fringe it was a black hole, alien spacecraft, or Tesla's Death Ray.  More on those in a bit.

Tunguska has fascinated me for years.  I wish I could recall when I first heard about it.  It have to have been Carl Sagan's Cosmos ('Heaven and Hell') since I can't recall anything talking about it before that.  I found it so strange and yet so cool.  It would later be a throwaway line from Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stanz in Ghostbusters.  It would come again as a major plot point in the X-Files.

Let's look into the two big fringe theories, one of which is a conspiracy theory.

Nikola Tesla and the Death Rays

This is one that has received the most ink in my library.  It is also a proper Conspiracy Theory.  In the late 1890s, early 1900s, Nikola Tesla was working on the means to transfer large amounts of electricity through the air.  His experiments were failures for the most part.  But there is the claim that while working on this he sent a blast from Colorado to the North, over the North Pole, and hitting Sibera causing the Tunguska blast.  The government then came in to hush it all up to keep the Russians and Czar from knowing.  The US Government then kept pressuring Tesla to repeat the experiment for a long range "death ray."

We do know that when Tesla died FBI officals rushed into his New York hotel and confescated all his belongings.  Among these were supposedly plans for his death ray.

UFOs Over Russia

Another popular idea (it's not a theory) is that the blast happened due to a crashing or exploding UFO.  This might help with the question of where did the anti-matter come from if it were an anti-matter explosion.   Of course there is no evidence for this.  It was 1908 in the remotest part of Russia.  Even if good records had been keept in a little more than 10 years the Communists would have control and anything like records or evidence could have been lost.

These notions all come from more recent scientific forays into Siberia. One as recently as 2004. So not quite a 100 years after the fact.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Look. You can't mention Tesla and not get my ideas generating!  He is the epitome of the mad scientist.  If you have a game that has an inventor or weird science then at some point you are going to need to talk about Tesla.

So what was Tunguska in the worlds of NIGHT SHIFT?  Easy. It was e.) All the above.

There were UFOs over Siberia.  The US government had found about them and Tesla blew them up with his death ray.  Something he felt terrible about ever after.  The aliens would then later investigate again only to crash in Roswell, NM.  That's USA 2, Aliens 0!

A possible adventure idea is that someone has found Tesla's notes and now has their own death ray! 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF). 

#AtoZChallenge2022: S is for Satanic Panic

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: S is for Satanic Panic

This one might get a little meta.  But the Satanic Panic is something that all gamers of a certain age know all about. But if you think this particular corn-filled nugget was left behind in the 1980s then I have some news for you all.

A satanic panic is a form of moral panic that also has an element of a conspiracy theory behind in.

The notion is that there is a worldwide conspiracy of Satanists out there stealing babies and trafficking in children.  

Which of course is insane.

80s Satanic Panic

In the 1980s we went through a period of Satanic Panic that kept bubbling up. There were allegations of ritualistic abuse and that some daycare centers were fronts for sex trafficking and cannibalism.  Some children even came forward to talk about it.  The people that bought into this panic claimed there was a conspiracy of Satanists and it went on even persecute and jail innocent people.

The agreed start of the Satanic Panic scare, was Michelle Remembers, a book about recovered memory of ritualistic abuse. Though I claim it is a backlash of the 70s Occult Revival that has it's ceremonial start with the 1972 Time magazine cover of "The Occult Revival. Satan Returns."  Once both of these publications had hit the public consciousness the Wee Care Nursery School and McMartin preschool incidents and trials began.  Millions of dollars were spent, thousands of hours, and several lives of those accused destroyed.  The very few convictions were voided, but not before some people spent time behind bars.  The testimony of the children interviewed was later looked back on and many errors and outright miscarriages of justice were found.

All in the fear of Satan.

We even felt it in my small town in Central Illinois. Someone "found" a "satanic altar" in a cornfield south of our high school.  People were losing their damn minds.  I thought it was so fascinating that everyone at the school was so freaked out over what I considered nothing. I had been a pretty strong atheist at this point so I did not even remotely think there were any Satanists here, at least not the type that could do the things some of my peers thought.   This was an isolated situation, but not really a conspiracy. 

Here are some links to help you with the right feel of the 80s Satanic Panic.  This is nowhere near as long as it could be. But to put up everything would be pages of links. 

• My older A to Z of Witches featuring Turmoil in the Toybox
• Gizmodo: A Brief History Of "Satanic Panic" In The 1980s
• YouTube: The Thinking Atheist podcast153 - Satanic Panic
• Good Ol' Wikipedia (great to get you started)
• Satanic panic
• Moral panic
• Day-care sex-abuse hysteria

Pizzagate

Speaking of people losing their damn minds. You would think that the Satanic Panic would have stopped by the mid-90s.  After all, this is the 21st Century, the 3rd Millenium, we are obviously too smart for this sort of fairy tale nonsense.

Yeah, you know where I am going next.

So back during the 2016 Presidential election when new bars were being set for stupidity every day the latest rumor from QAnon connected a pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong Pizza, to a supposed ring of Satanic pedophiles. Things only got worse, or stupider, from there. 

I don't want to go into the whole Pizzagate saga or even into QAnon. They don't deserve my mental energy and especially no place on my blog.  You can read all about Pizzagate online if you wish. I mean seriously, these idiots claimed there were underground areas in a building with no basement.  Suffice to say this: There are still plenty of people that believe, like Hal Lindsay once proclaimed, Satan is alive and well.  

Are there Satanists? Yes. There is the legally recognized Church of Satan and other Satanic and Luciferian religionists.  There is no worldwide Satanic conspiracy. There is no worldwide anything for Satanists in fact. They rather famously don't see eye to eye on many things after Anton LeVey's death. 

Does child trafficking happen?  Sadly yes it does.  But there is no evidence that there is any connection to Satanists. 

We are not done with Satanic Panics.  Who knows what shape the next one will take.

For NIGHT SHIFT

So in the real world, there is no Satan and most Satanists are fairly harmless.  But NIGHT SHIFT is a different story. There are really demons and devils and evil spirits.  But there is no conspiracy here.  Demons, historically in games, are "Chaotic Evil" and they rarely work with each other. Their followers never do. 

I have used demons and trafficking in a game before. It was my "Vacation in Vancouver" campaign. Everyone in the game agreed it was going to be NC17 and very dark. But it is not something I would recommend for most groups but for the most serious and trusting players.  

All of this being said here is what I would do.  The characters catch wind of a possible Satanic Conspiracy.  Being big bad monster hunters they seek to investigate and possibly kick some demonic ass.  Instead, they find not demons and devils, but just garden variety humans being evil little fucks.

Why this? Two reasons. First I like to show that most often the evilest things we encounter are other humans.  Humans have a capacity for evil unmatched.  Secondly, it is a nod to the personal history I and many gamers have with Satanic Panics.  Many of us were on the receiving end of this just for being gamers.   So instead of it being Satanists, it is members of the local community doing this to get rid of the "undesirables" in their community.  If they look like the local PTA or HOA that is a mere coincidence. 

Yes, I know this is also essentially the same plot of the comic and TV series "Runaways" and the rather terrible Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks "Dragnet" movie. Though not as bad as Tom Hanks' other starring role in "Mazes & Monsters."

Given the nature of these work in real life, I would these sparingly, maybe only once per RPG title ever. 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF). 

#AtoZChallenge2022: R is for Radio Conspiracies

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: R is for Radio Conspiracies

There is something about many modern conspiracy theories and their connection with radios.  I think it is because, like the Internet, conspiracy theories were often shared in less than reputable papers and tabloids but also via ham radios and various pirate radio stations.

So today I thought I'd look into a couple of these.

The War of the Worlds

The first is the 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds. It seems that people missed the repeated remarks on this being the fictional broadcast.  But as Orson Welles was broadcasting wide-spread panic sat in by people believing that the US was really being attacked by Martians.  Why am I including this here?  It shows that people were taken in rather convincingly by what they heard on the state-of-the-art technology of the time.  So really, can we be surprised that people are taken in by stuff they see on the Internet?

Numbers Stations

These are weird.  I mentioned them back in October and I have looked into them a little more since then.  These are short-wave radio broadcasts believed to be coded messages to intelligence officers in the field.  If you can find them they are actually a little creepy to listen to.  While some, a minority, have been found out this leaves a majority who have not been discovered. Where uncertainty leaves a gap it is usually filled with a conspiracy theory. 

Some of the best I have heard/read is that these codes are for programming people that hear them.  Someone hears these numbers and they are pre-programmed to do some activities that they will not remember later.  Others claim they are alien broadcasts, either to or from aliens.

I can't recall if "The X-Files" ever covered Numbers Stations, but the recent History series "Project Blue Book" (not to be confused with the older, similar series on NBC "Project U.F.O.") featured them.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Taking a page from Banshee Chapter, the characters can discover a new Numbers Station; or be given a story by their editor in a Weirdly World News.  The station is not communicating with anyone human but the extra-dimensional aliens.  What are they doing? What do they want?  Maybe these numbers are not a coded message, but rather the frequencies are for opening up a portal to let in even more aliens.

Story or not, these aliens should probably be stopped. 

Oh. Looking for what I have said about another R word, Roswell? I have a whole entry in the latest NIGHT SHIFT book Night Companion: A Sourcebook for Night Shift: VSW.

Given all this talk about Radio, I thought this was a good choice. 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: Q is for Queen is a Lizard

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: Q is for Queen is a Lizard

One of the strangest conspiracy theories I have ever encountered was that the Queen of England, and presumably the entire Royal Family, are in fact shape-shifting lizard people.

I first heard about this during the 1986 Illinois gubernatorial election.  There is a lot to it, but briefly A couple of candidates, called "LaRouchies" by my dad, had run on the National Democratic ticket and won some major primary wins.  Because the people were confusing them with the Illinois Democratic Party (the one that would later back future President Barrack Obama). Anyway, it caused a lot of confusion, not that it mattered, Thompson won for like the 300th time.   But it did introduce me to National Democratic founder Lydon LaRouche.    

LaRouche was, as we used to say, bat-shit crazy.  Among his other ideas (including fascism, antisemitism, and racism) he believed that the Queen of England was not just a lizard person, she was in charge of an international drug ring along with the USSR. She also had put a hit out on him.  LaRouche was a constant bogeyman in Illinois politics until his death.  I remember one time they were on the campus at UIC (the University of Illinois at Chicago) and I asked them as I walked by on my way home from work if they still thought the Queen was after them.  They got mad but I didn't stick around to talk to them. 

I later found out that this whole Queen is a shape-shift lizard person comes from professional crazy person David Icke.  Icke really is the architect of this whole Lizard person/Reptiloid/Reptilians idea so maybe I do owe him some slack. After all, I have gotten a few hits this month from his ideas. Just a quick glance I have grabbed ideas related to this for A (Ancient Aliens), E (Extraterrestrials on Earth), I (Illuminati), N (New World Order), and  O (Outer Space).

Icke might not be picking on the Queen in particular, he seems to think that anyone in power is actually a lizard person. It should be noted he is also a Holocaust denier. 

There are others that share these ideas, but they seem to stem from Icke.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Again going with the obvious choice here, but finding out local government officials are shapeshifting aliens.  The trick for Game Masters is how deep does this conspiracy go?  Is it all of them or just a fringe group of weirdoes?  Given the history I have, I am likely to go with the whack-a-doodle fringe group is really the lizard people.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Want to learn more about  NIGHT SHIFT and our plans for the game?  Check out this post from my co-creator Jason Vey on Powered by O.G.R.E.S.: A Multiverse of Systems.