On Behalf of the Sovereign Order of Cosmic Tricksters, I Would Like to Wish John A. Keel a Most Sincere...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!

For a previous Keel-centric CryptoPost, click HERE. 

And always remember, boys and girls...

"Belief is the enemy." 

--John A. Keel, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, 1975 

Fireball Season

1) From Jack Shea's 3-19-26 Fox8.com report entitled "Meteorite Chaser Says He Found 2 Pieces in Medina County: ‘No Rock on Earth Looks Like This’":

A park in the quiet Medina County community of Sharon Center is considered prime hunting ground in the search for fragments of the meteor that blazed across the sky on St. Patrick’s Day.

Roberto Vargas, 40, of Bristol, Connecticut is part of a small army of meteorite chasers who converged on Northeast Ohio after scientific evidence from doppler radar revealed pieces of the seven-ton fireball were scattered across an area of Medina County [...].

So far, Vargas said he has found two pieces of the meteorite in Medina County.

“No rock on Earth looks like this. The fusion crust is unique to meteorites, the surface features are unique to meteorites,” he said [...].

As he held a small fragment that he found in Sharon Center on Thursday, Vargas said, “this was on the other side of the moon three days ago and now it’s here. I am the first human being to touch this stone. This stone is 4.56 billion years old. It tells us about the creation of the planet, it tells us about the origins of the species, so it’s really fascinating stuff.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

2) From Jenni Adamms' Cleveland13News.com 3-22-26 report entitled "The Truth About the Meteors That Fell over Cleveland and Houston Last Week is Crazier Than You Think":

Residents across Northeast Ohio are still looking to the skies following a week that saw two massive fireballs streak across the American landscape, including a 7-ton behemoth that ended its 4.5 billion-year journey in the soil of Medina County. While the back-to-back events might feel like a coordinated cosmic arrival, astronomers suggest it is more of a statistical fluke coinciding with the arrival of what is known as Fireball Season.

The first and largest object, dubbed the Ohio Giant, screamed into the atmosphere on March 17. Weighing roughly 14,000 pounds, the stony achondrite hit the air at 45,000 mph. The resulting energy release was equivalent to 250 tons of TNT, a blast that rattled windows and nerves from Valley City to parts of Pennsylvania, New York and Kentucky. According to data from NASA's Geostationary Lightning Mappers, the heat signature from the friction-heated rock was unmistakable. This was not a man-made object or a missile. Most hypersonic missiles top out around Mach 5, while this rock was traveling at roughly Mach 58.

Just four days later, a second fireball appeared over the Houston suburbs. This one was smaller, weighing about 1 ton and traveling at a slower pace of 35,000 mph. While the timing has led to social media theories about government testing or atmospheric anomalies, the physics tells a different story. Scientists from NASA note that we are currently near the spring equinox. During this window, Earth's tilt aligns in a way that allows us to intercept more sporadic space debris at steeper, more visible angles. While Earth is hit by 44 tons of space material every single day, the rocks that arrive during Fireball Season are often brighter and more likely to survive the descent.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

3) From a 3-24-26 WOLDCNews.com report entitled "Meteors, Fireballs and Sonic Booms Across The Country In 2026":

At least half a dozen bright meteors have stolen the night sky show this month. For many people, they look dramatic and scary. For scientists, March 2026 shows how often Earth plows through leftover solar system debris.

Meteorologist Sydney Welch highlighted “March Meteor Sightings” in a Facebook post. She noted at least six fireballs so far. They include events over Texas, the Northeast, the Mid‑Atlantic and the West Coast. The headliner streaked over Houston on March 21. A meteor about three feet wide and a ton in mass hit the atmosphere near 35,000 miles per hour. It released energy like 26 tons of TNT. NASA and local media reported a bright daytime fireball, a loud boom and shaking homes. Radar later showed a field of meteorites north of the city. One baseball‑sized fragment likely punched through a home’s roof. Even small space rocks can deliver serious force.

The Houston event was not alone. Days earlier, another meteoroid nearly six feet wide broke apart above Ohio. It weighed about seven tons, according to NASA estimates. The breakup produced a sonic boom heard across several states. Scientists think meteorites fell and hope to recover them. Smaller fireballs also appeared this month over Louisiana and southern Illinois. Security cameras and doorbell videos captured many of those flashes. Clips then spread quickly online.

Astronomers say these fireballs match a familiar pattern. They are not warning signs of a hidden doomsday asteroid. Researchers estimate that thousands of meteoroids hit Earth’s atmosphere each year. Most burn up completely as harmless streaks of light. Only a few hundred meteorites probably reach the ground in any year. Fewer than ten usually get found and studied. Groups like NASA’s fireball networks and the American Meteor Society collect videos, radar and eyewitness reports. They turn viral sky shows into data about small objects that share our cosmic neighborhood.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

"LETHE PRESS IS 25" SALE!

To commemorate their twenty-fifth year in publishing, Lethe Press is now offering a sale price of $10 for my mind-bending collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES. To take advantage of this deep discount, order the book through the Lethe Press website by clicking HERE!

If you want to know more about CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, here's the back cover ballyhoo... 

Last week, did you tell your best friend why the King of Cryptopolis has gone insane and why he ordered his guards to behead him? Do you know the secret of the black magician Aleister Crowley—how he wrote of the moonchild, an ethereal spirit to be placed in a barren womb? Have you ever heard of Arson Hoover and the Worldwide Church of Appliantology? If you answered no to any of these, you're clearly misinformed about the newest collection of dark and fantastical stories by Robert Guffey. How would you even survive Casual Day at work? When the tattoos begin to pile up on your flesh like unlucky cars drawn to an accident on the freeway, don't come crying to me—I am just the back cover of a book, after all--but look for the answers inside me, inside Guffey's head, which I have chopped off and bound in paper.

FYI: One of the tales in CRYPTOPOLIS, "Initiation," was recently adapted by StarShipSofa! If you want to hear Doni Nicoll-Duir's evocative reading of "Initiation," click HERE!

And you can hear me talking about the secret origins of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES on several different podcasts and radio shows including Tarek Al-Ubaidi's CROPfm, Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Solaris Blueraven's HYPERSPACE, Matthew Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Chris Mathieu's FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE NEWS.

PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES: 

"The stories in Cryptopolis feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany, with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and totally worth the trip."

--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley

 

"If you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis. I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection. Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."  

 

--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars

 

"Once upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification; they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!" 

--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter

 

 "In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."

 

--John Oakes, author of The Fast

 

"Guffey brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs, war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart, this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of weird fiction."

--Publishers Weekly   

"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes, Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern writers [...].

"Affect, the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass, Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."

--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings

 "If you want a walk on the wild side, and I mean WILD, Robert Guffey’s fiction delivers that and more. It’s as if you’re lying in the grass in a park on a calm summer afternoon, you look up, and a creature you can’t even describe is looking at you. He starts talking in an even voice. But his words are chopping reality to pieces, and when he puts the pieces back together again, and you see the new picture, you feel a need to call the police. But then you realize you’re in a new place where the last people you want to talk to are the cops. What do you do now? You’re on your own. You better have strong resources. Very strong." 

 --Jon Rappoport, author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies

Teleporting Is No Fun

From Dharna Noor's 3-20-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "Top US Fema Official Claims to Have Teleported to a Waffle House Before":

Gregg Phillips, who in December was appointed to lead Fema’s office of response and recovery, has spoken on “multiple podcasts” about being teleported against his will, CNN reported on Friday.

On a January 2025 podcast appearance, Phillips claimed that his car was “lifted up” while he was driving and transported 40 miles (65km) away into a ditch near a church. And in another instance on the same episode, Phillips said he was teleported 50 miles away to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, CNN detailed in a deep dive into Phillips’ past public statements.

“I was with my boys one time, and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House – this was in Georgia, and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said on the podcast Onward, co-hosted by rightwing activist Catherine Engelbrecht.

Phillips added: “And they said, ‘where are you?’ and I said, ‘a Waffle House.’ And: ‘a Waffle House where?’ And I said: ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said: “‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”

But Phillips did warn about the dangers of teleportation.

“Teleporting is no fun,” he said “You know it’s happening, but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what just an incredible adventure it all was.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD Has Been Nominated For a Rondo Award!

The nominations for the 24th Annual Rondo Awards have now been announced! I'm honored to be included among the nominees in the BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION) category for my 2025 book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, alongside the likes of such fine writers as Chris Kelso, Tim Lucas, Gary D. Rhodes, David J. Schow, and Tom Weaver! Please consider voting for HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD...

 

YOU CAN VOTE FOR HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD IN 3 EASY STEPS:

1. Copy-and-paste the ballot below into an e-mail.
 
2. Choose HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD in the BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION) category.
 
3. Then email to David Colton (taraco@aol.com) by midnight on May 1, 2026.

Don’t forget to include your name in the e-mail!

--START COPYING--

11) BOOK OF THE YEAR (non-fiction):
— HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: An Investigation into the Cinema of Occulted Taboos, by Robert Guffey (Headpress, softcover, 368 pages, $29.95). From UFOs to JFK, how filmmakers have handled conspiracies and the supernatural.

--END COPYING--

PRAISE FOR HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: 

"In HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD, Robert Guffey takes his readers for a trip behind the magic curtain to reveal the true Wizards at work - those behind the lenses, making magic and moving the secret levers. To this end, Guffey plays the role of Toto, tearing the curtain aside to reveal these flesh and bone Wizards of the military-industrial-entertainment complex, and the occult role they play in influencing our inner dreams and everyday realities."

--Adam Gorightly,  

author of SAUCERS, SPOOKS, AND KOOKS
and THE SHADOW OVER SANTA SUSANA: BLACK MAGIC, MIND CONTROL, AND THE MANSON FAMILY MYTHOS

"Hollywood has truly haunted the world. So too should this book, one of the best ever written on American cinema."

--Gary D. Rhodes,

author of THE PERILS OF MOVIEGOING IN AMERICA and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA, 

from his Foreword

 

"A heady, occult-driven exploration of cinema!"

 

--Larry Wade Carrell,

director of GIRL NEXT, THE QUANTUM DEVIL, and THE DARKSIDE OF SOCIETY

 

 "This is a fascinating, mind-expanding trip into some seriously dark corners."

 

--CINEMA RETRO 

 

 "[An] enjoyable trip from a tour guide likely (and proudly) on at least one agency watchlist."

 

--FLICK ATTACK 

CONSPIRINORMAL 504: Adam Gorightly & Christopher Graybill

Recommended Listening: In the latest episode of the CONSPIRINORMAL podcast, Adam Sayne and Serfiel Stevenson interview Adam Gorightly and Christopher Graybill about their incredible new documentary, SAUCERS, SPOOKS AND KOOKS...

Conspirinormal 504: Adam Gorightly and Christopher Graybill:

As I stated in a previous CryptoPost, I highly recommend purchasing Gorightly and Graybill's documentary--and not just because I'm in it! Gorightly and Graybill do a tremendous job of making a complex, disjointed, nonlinear, decades-spanning tale of dubious aliens and international intrigue surprisingly lucid. You can order the film by clicking right HERE!

 

HAPPY 125th BIRTHDAY, MANLY P. HALL!

Since today marks what would have been Manly P. Hall's 125th birthday, I suggest celebrating the occasion by listening to Hall's 9-22-85 lecture entitled "Confucius and the Computer"...

 Manly P. Hall: Confucius and the Computer: