BEHOLD!!! THE GUFFEY LIBRARY (2024)

Depicted below is the ever-expanding GUFFEY LIBRARY (with more volumes to come in 2025)!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! 

 

 

The Year QAnon Went Mainstream

From Amanda Marcotte's 12-26-24 SALON article entitled "Conspiracy Theory Is the New Normal: 2024 Was the Year QAnon Went Mainstream":

After the insurrection of Jan. 6, a lot of attention was paid to the rise of QAnon, because so many rioters were adherents to this online cult that preached that Trump is a savior prophesized to stop a worldwide Satanic conspiracy. Alarming reports showed millions of Americans believed QAnon myths, such as the divinity of Trump or that Democrats drink children's blood. QAnon is still around, but it gets much less media coverage these days. One likely reason is what we see in these focus groups: bonkerballs levels of conspiracy belief is no longer a fringe phenomenon. QAnon-style beliefs are simply the norm in American society.

To Marcotte's entire article, click HERE.

Barry Malzberg, R.I.P. (1939-2024)

The legendary short story writer, novelist, and essayist, Barry Malzberg, passed away on December 19. To read his 12-20-24 LOCUS obituary, click HERE.

I was very pleased to share the same Table of Contents page with Malzberg on three separate occasions. The first time was in 2013 when Malzberg's story "The Rapture" (co-written with Jack Dann) and my story "Selections from The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook" both appeared in the same issue of the British magazine POSTSCRIPTS (issue #30/31). In the fall of 2020, my short story "62 Cents" appeared in THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 13 alongside Malzberg's essay entitled "Sixty-seven Words a Minute." In the spring of 2021, THE MAILER REVIEW VOL. 14 published Malzberg's story "Barbarians? Sure" side-by-side with my story "Old Man on a Bus." On each of these occasions I was extremely proud to discover that I would be appearing between the same book covers as Malzberg. As a teenager, when I was reading his essay collection, THE ENGINES OF THE NIGHT, I never thought we'd share a Table of Contents page together even once, much less three times. 

In his 12-23-24 NATION obituary for Malzberg, Jeet Heer touches on Malzberg's refreshingly bleak interpretation of the phrase "the Engines of the Night" and how it represented his perennial outsider status in the science fiction genre:

Malzberg’s efforts to marry modernist literary values to the pulp tradition made him a polarizing figure in the SF world. While he was extravagantly praised by fellow writers such as Philip K. Dick, Brian Aldiss, and Theodore Sturgeon, Malzberg also provoked a backlash from those who objected to the bleakness of his vision. A powerful strain of American science fiction, written under the aegis of the influential editor John W. Campbell of Analog magazine, was ideologically committed to technological optimism. The space program, in Campbellian science fiction, was proof that humanity could be triumphant and conquer the universe.

A life-long depressive, Malzberg had little use for can-do technological boosterism. In Malzberg’s gothic vision, technology was “the engines of the night”: the machines that can and probably will kill us. Ironically, in 1973 Malzberg’s Beyond Apollo won the first John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, created after the editor’s death. This provoked howls of outrage among science fiction traditionalists, who henceforth made Malzberg’s name a shorthand for the corrupting of the genre.

In 1983, Carter Scholz wrote in The Comics Journal the single best appreciation of Malzberg. Scholz argued that the gothic vision of “the engines of the night” was aligned with the deepest currents of American fiction. According to Scholz:

These are the engines of the night. These are the ageless horrific dreams of Washington Irving, the morbid fantasies of Poe, the dark fauns of Hawthorne, the crazed thunder of Melville, the wicked grin of Twain, the blood rituals of Lawrence, the mad fallen saints of Faulkner, the uprooted myths of O’Connor or Welty, the enervated hysteria of Oates, the lush obsessions of Hawks, the fragmentary scatology of Burroughs—this is the literary tradition of American SF [science fiction], and Malzberg has seen that, but he has seen also that it is not just a matter of art, no longer, it is a matter now of our blood; for the first time, the engines are not just in the mind’s night, for the first time in history they are being built. Technology is the expression of the Gothic dreams of the technicians. And the machines, by this reckoning, cannot fail to kill us.

Malzberg knew the machines were changing us because he himself had been part of the process. To make a living as a pulp writer, he turned himself into a human machine—a kind of ChatGPT avant la lettre. This process of becoming a human text generator drove Malzberg, as himself admitted, half mad. It informs all his best work, giving them an authenticity of lived experience...

To read Jeet Heer's entire NATION piece, click HERE. 

Winner of the coveted Locus Award in 1983, THE ENGINES OF THE NIGHT should be included on every science fiction maven's bookshelf. Though this collection has been out of print for years, reasonably priced used copies can still be found online. I urge you to track down a copy as soon as you can. 

And a few hours from now, as the clock strikes midnight, be sure to raise a glass to the memory of Barry N. Malzberg...

The Longest Birth of All Time!!!

My latest project, THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK, experienced a far longer gestation period than most of the books I've written. To give you a sense of how much time this book remained baking in the womb, consider the fact that the young woman in the photo below (i.e., my daughter) was the size of a walnut when I started writing it. Strangely, it was the publication of my most recent nonfiction book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP, that led to the eventual birth of what might very well be the weirdest satirical treatise about mass delusion, religious disinformation, and general dickery ever published in the English language. Christine Morgan, Splatterpunk Award-winning author of SPERMJACKERS FROM HELL, recommends this book. Pinocchio recommends this book. My daughter recommends this book. I recommend this book. And so does James Morrow, a Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning novelist I consider to be among the greatest satirists of the past four decades. I was extremely proud to receive Morrow's enthusiastic endorsement for TEMDH. So what the hell're you waiting for? Order your copy TODAY!!!

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—JAMES MORROW, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

—CHRISTINE MORGAN, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

"Oh, I dearly loved your new book simply because it has the word 'mother' in the title. I-I dream about mothers all the time. I never had a real mother, you see... unless you count the Blue Fairy."

—PINOCCHIO, author of nothing at all (though he did tell me he has a great idea for a potentially bestselling book and said we could split the royalties if I write the entire manuscript for him)

NOSFERATU (2024)

I planned to jot down a few words here about Robert Eggers' NOSFERATU, which I saw at the Paseo Nuevo Theater in Santa Barbara on opening day; however, before I had time to begin writing, I read the latest FILM INTERNATIONAL review by cinema scholar Gary D. Rhodes (with whom I wrote the nonfiction book BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE). I soon discovered that Rhodes' article, "'Night Wandering' with Nosferatu (2024)," expresses my thoughts about Eggers' approach to reimagining F.W. Murnau's vision far better than I could have done myself. What follows is a brief except from Rhodes' thoughtful piece:

My experience of Eggers’ Nosferatu was one of rebirth. He expands the mythos far beyond where Murnau left it, as if taking up the captainry of a death ship crashing against the waves before docking at new shores. The rather tenuous long-distant relationship between Orlok and Knock (Alexander Granach) in Murnau, founded solely on a grimoire contract, gains far more narrative and emotional depth with Count Orlok and Knock (Simon McBurney) in Eggers.

More striking is Eggers’ depiction of Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp). Depp is a deep well of emotions conjured, a soul in turmoil, such a striking contrast to Greta Schröder in Murnau’s film, who was distinctly less compelling than Weimar actresses like Brigitte Helm and Lil Dagover. Particularly fascinating is the backstory Eggers develops for his Orlok and Ellen, which solves something of a mystery in the narratives of Murnau’s film and Stoker’s novel: why would the vampire risk choosing his real estate agent’s wife/fiancée, rather than any other woman in his new city? In so doing, he greatly amplifies becoming exposed and hunted.

Hence the sexual triangle between Orlok, Ellen, and Hutter is heightened in Eggers, particularly when Orlok bites Hutter in Transylvania. Rarely have I seen parallel editing stir such power, such illicit and passionate power. Bells tolled cannot be unrung. (I cannot forget that editing suites in early Hollywood were sometimes understandably called “joining rooms.”)

Much of what distinguishes Eggers’ Nosferatu is his use of sound, including dialogue. Like Murnau, Eggers situates most of his film in the non-existent German city of Wisborg, a shadowy elseplace, but it assumes an even more mythical status because all of its inhabitants speak in pronounced British accents. Here is a paradox, one well suited to the paradox that is the “Un-dead,” the nearly incomprehensible state of conscious and ambulatory while being neither alive nor dead...

To read Rhodes' entire article, click HERE.

A YULETIDE OF DISINFORMATION

AH, YES, 'TIS THE SEASON INDEED.

 

'TIS THE SEASON... TO BE A DISINFORMED EXPECTANT MOTHER! 

ARE YOU UNDER THE MISTAKEN IMPRESSION THAT YOUR BRAIN IS ALREADY OVERLOADED WITH AS MUCH DISINFORMATION AS A HUMAN BEING COULD POSSIBLY BEAR? BUY A COPY OF THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK AND FIND OUT HOW WRONG YOU ARE! 

ARE YOU NOW BRACING YOURSELF FOR AN UNPRECEDENTED WAVE OF NEWLY-ENGINEERED DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS TO BE TRANSMITTED DIRECTLY INTO YOUR CEREBELLUM IN 2025? YOU ARE, YOU SAY? GOOD FOR YOU! ARMED WITH THIS CRUCIAL FOREKNOWLEDGE, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD BE WONDERING IF THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT YOUR MIND AND BODY FROM THE ADVERSE EFFECTS OF NONSENSICAL DISINFORMATION IS TO IMMERSE YOURSELF IN IT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE RATHER THAN ATTEMPTING TO AVOID IT. IN FACT, LEADING EXPERTS SAY THAT THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK IS THE PERFECT WAY TO TEST OUT THIS THEORY. 

DON'T RUN AWAY FROM DISINFORMATION... EMBRACE IT! DANCE WITH IT! MAKE SWEET LOVE TO IT! AND THE BEST WAY TO BEGIN THIS LIBERATORY PROCESS IS, OF COURSE, TO DIVE INTO THE PAGES OF THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK!

HO HO HO... AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!!

PRAISE FOR THE EXPECTANT MOTHER DISINFORMATION HANDBOOK...

"Robert Guffey’s The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is weirder than parthenogenesis, weirder than the Republican Party, weirder than the fetishizing of pregnancy that suffuses our culture, weirder than all the back issues of Weird Tales combined. You will laugh, gasp, and scratch your head in pleasurable bemusement. I can’t recommend this tongue-in-cheek tour de force too highly."

—JAMES MORROW, award-winning author of Only Begotten Daughter and Behold the Ape


"Here it is. THE perfect baby-shower/gender reveal party gift. Forget all the binkies, blankies, cute little onesies, and diaper-service subscriptions. Those are so overdone and boring. Want to make a REAL impact? This book. This book right here [...].

"Well-written, lively, engaging, easy to read, and tons of fun. If I were a truly evil imp with plenty of money, I’d sneak copies into every OB/GYN office and ‘Parenting and Family’ bookstore section in the country."

--CHRISTINE MORGAN, award-winning author of Spermjackers from Hell and Lakehouse Infernal 

 

________________________________________________________

The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is part novel, part fabulist encyclopedia. It’s academic research that’s shockingly close to the truth. The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook is a cabinet of wonders disguised as an informational guide for expectant mothers. Backed up with scientific-sounding footnotes from imaginary obstetricians, this book threatens to raise the paranoia of postmodern motherhood to a new level of absurdity.

In the pages of this handbook you will learn about such chimerical illnesses as the Quantum Singularity Syndrome, Symmetrical Child Syndrome, Involuntary Dimensional Transits, Spontaneous Infant Combustion Syndrome, Black Hole Syndrome, Polyinfantalia, Shrinking Brain Syndrome, Muppetitis, Midwich Disease, and Oneirokyesis (known to some pediatricians as “Dream Baby Disease”). But fatal diseases are not the only purview of The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook. You’ll find out about the dangers of allowing your fetus in utero internet connection, how to use your child as an assassin, the growing problem of terrorism in the womb, in utero phone sex, the high weirdness of Origami Babies, the little known fact that Shakespeare created pregnancy, the mystery of the fetus-abducting Comprachicos, and a rare in-depth interview with Dracula about his attitudes regarding child raising, among many other illuminating tidbits of obscure but vital historical data.

Ultimately, this book is a scathing satire on the unthinking commercialization of motherhood, fatherhood, and procreation in general.

Dr. Future and I Return to... CONSPIRINORMAL!!!

In the latest episode of Adam Sayne and Serfiel Stevenson's CONSPIRINORMAL podcast, Dr. Future and I perform a two-and-a-half-hour autopsy on the entirety of 2024. This searing and mind-boggling conversation is chock-filled with absurd non sequiturs, near-mystical illuminations, and more or less useless factoids specifically designed to confuse and frustrate the casual listener. What the hell else do you have to do with your time during the final week of the year? Click HERE to subject yourself to more parapolitical insights and Zen-like koans than the human mind was ever designed to process or contain!!!

And if you'd like to hear my previous CONSPIRINORMAL appearance alongside Dr. Future, just click HERE.

THE JUNKY'S CHRISTMAS (Reprise)

HO HO HO, Cryptoscatology fans! Spend this cheery Yuletide season watching William S. Burroughs in Nick Donkin and Melodie McDaniel's 1993 short film THE JUNKY'S CHRISTMAS, adapted from Burroughs' story of the same name. Burroughs' "The Junky's Christmas" can be found in two separate story collections: INTERZONE (1989) and THE FINGER (2018)....

The Junky's Christmas (Full Version):

Manly P. Hall and the Winter Solstice (Reprise)

Here's a rare opportunity to sit in the front row of the lecture hall at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles while Manly P. Hall, the twentieth century's foremost expert in the occult (and author of such comprehensive masterpieces as THE SECRET TEACHINGS OF ALL AGES and THE SECRET DESTINY OF AMERICA), delivers an illuminating lecture about the esoteric symbolism of the Winter Solstice. 

Click HERE to listen to Part One.

Click HERE to listen to Part Two. 

GUFFEY IN THE WILD!

Guffey books have been seen in the wild! Yes, indeed, signed first editions of my books are currently available at Sunken City Books, a charming used bookstore located in downtown San Pedro. Visit Sunken City Books at 403 W. 6th St., San Pedro, CA 90731! Click HERE to visit their Instagram page.

Jack the Ripper: The Not Quite Final Solution

Yet another new Jack the Ripper theory has recently cropped up. This theory is a slight variation on Stephen Knight's 1976 book, JACK THE RIPPER: THE FINAL SOLUTION, which inspired Bob Clark's 1979 film MURDER BY DECREE, Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell's graphic novel FROM HELL, Martin Short's 1989 follow-up book INSIDE THE BROTHERHOOD, and the Hughes Brothers' 2001 FROM HELL film adaptation. Only the suspect has been changed, from Sir William Gull to Aaron Kosminski. 

Here's an excerpt from Fred Kelly's 10-6-24 DAILY MAIL article entitled "Jack The Ripper: The Astonishing Freemason Connection that Explains His Motive and a 136-year Cover-up - As His Real Face Is Unmasked for the First Time":

[P]erhaps the most terrifying aspect of this quintuple homicide, committed over less than four months, is that for over a century, the killer's identity was a mystery. Instead, he simply became known as Jack the Ripper.

And then, ten years ago in 2014, the Mail exclusively revealed how amateur sleuth ­Russell Edwards had identified one Aaron Kosminski, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, as the fabled killer.

The evidence was as overwhelming as it was stomach-churning.

A decade on and the Mail can now reveal further astonishing evidence as to how ­Kosminski's hitherto-unknown ties to the highly secretive Freemasons motivated his sadistic killings – and how his Masonic ­connections shielded him from law enforcement, despite widespread conviction within the police that Kosminski was indeed the ­murderous Ripper [...].

In 2007, ­Russell Edwards – a ­businessman from North London and Ripper enthusiast – stumbled across a shawl at an auction in Bury St Edmunds alleging to have been found on Catherine ­Eddowes's corpse [...].

Edwards set to work examining the shawl for DNA alongside a crack team of forensic scientists. It wasn't long before Edwards had a positive match between the DNA in the blood stains and a direct descendant of the murdered ­Catherine Eddowes. In other words, the shawl was genuine.

Incredibly, Edwards's team was also able to identify the DNA found in the semen as Aaron ­Kosminski's. They did so by ingeniously ­matching it to the DNA of one of Aaron's sister's descendants, known only as 'M,' after requests to exhume Kosminski's body were rebuffed [...].

In February 2023 a series of photographs landed in Edwards' inbox. One in particular caught his eye. It looked like a class photo, 15 men – all dressed ­identically in suits with a flowing overgarment and remarkable handlebar ­moustaches – staring straight at the camera. These were all ­members of the Lodge of Israel, an order of Freemasonry set up for Jewish immigrants in Britain.

And among the group of men was none other than Kosminski's eldest brother, Isaac, a wealthy tailor who moved to London in April 1870 before changing his name to Abrahams [...].

But the role of the Freemasons doesn't stop there. Edwards acknowledges in his new book that there 'has always been a nod, or reference to a cover-up by the masons' to protect Kosminski.

However, his discovery of the photographs confirms it.

I laughed out loud when I read the above lines: "But the role of the Freemasons doesn't stop there. Edwards acknowledges in his new book that there 'has always been a nod, or reference to a cover-up by the masons' to protect Kosminski. However, his discovery of the photographs confirms it." How does said photograph "confirm" Edwards' theories regarding the identity of Jack the Ripper? It doesn't "confirm" anything. Furthermore, the DNA evidence to which the article refers is hardly definitive. Assuming the scarf was indeed owned by Catherine Eddowes, how could one know for sure that the DNA was left behind by Jack the Ripper? After all, the DNA could have come from one of Catherine's customers earlier in the evening (i.e., Kosminski). The fact that Kosminski had a sexual encounter with Eddowes doesn't prove he's the man who murdered her. 

Having said that, I've been fascinated by the Jack the Ripper case since I was a teenager, so a new theory at this late date--accompanied by some modicum of scientific evidence--is certainly intriguing. But if this current theory doesn't quite satiate your Ripper fix, you might want to spend your time listening to the late Colin Wilson delivering an hour-plus lecture at the first Jack the Ripper Conference, which occurred in April of 1996. This lecture was aired on an episode of the RIPPERCAST: THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERS PODCAST back in 2018:

"We are very pleased to bring to you author Colin Wilson's talk at the first ever Jack the Ripper Conference, held in Ipswich 12-14 April, 1996. This 22 year old audience recording was rescued from a second hand bookshop by Mark Ripper and we are grateful to Mark for saving this piece of Ripperology history so that we may share it with you.

"Originally recorded on a 120 minute long cassette tape and sometime later transferred to CD, this recording is beginning to show its age, but its historical value outweighs the deteriorating quality of the audio."

By the way, one of my favorite pieces of fiction inspired by Jack the Ripper has always been Harlan Ellison's "The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World," which you can find in Ellison's breakthrough DANGEROUS VISIONS anthology (republished by Blackstone earlier this year). Another highly recommended Ripper book is Robert Bloch's excellent 1980s suspense novel, THE NIGHT OF THE RIPPER (republished this very month courtesy of Valancourt Books).

WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?: Drones, Drones Everywhere!

Recommended Listening: In the latest episode of WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Seriah Azkath, Saxon (AKA Super Inframan), and Red Pill Junkie discuss the ongoing drone mystery...

WHERE DID THE ROAD GO? RADIO:

Drones, Drones Everywhere! (Dec 14, 2024):

Drones Across Your Face!

Regarding the mysterious wave of large, car-sized drones invading the skies of the United States, a friend, collaborator, and CHAMELEO reader from Canada sent me a message last night that read (in part), "Hope all is good for you and you're not being droned out. Could they be what you describe in CHAMELEO?"

I was pleased to see that someone other than myself had noticed the eerie parallels between current events and the surveillance-run-amok technology I describe in the pages of my 2015 nonfiction book, CHAMELEO. I had been thinking about those parallels myself quite a bit during the past few days. Back in 2004, my friend Damien (named Dion Fuller in the book) insisted that flying-saucer-like drones had followed him out of San Diego, into Texas, and all around the country. Almost everyone I knew at the time concluded Damien was suffering from delusions. Now, at the tail end of 2024, everybody in America (including the population of San Diego, where Damien was living when the chaos described in CHAMELEO began to unfold) is seeing the same so-called "delusions" that were dogging Damien's heels twenty years ago. 

Back in 2004, it was just Damien getting mindfucked (as far as I knew at the time). Now, in 2024, everybody's getting mindfucked! I can't wait to see what 2025 will bring. Be prepared for a vertiginous plunge into what my late friend Walter Bowart (author of the 1978 book, OPERATION MIND CONTROL) once referred to as "The Disassociated States of America." 

What follow are two excerpts from CHAMELEO, the first from Chapter 11 and the second from the epilogue...

EXCERPT #1:

He left the city limits of San Diego with five cars on his trail. I wondered if they would even let him leave. But they did. And as he sped farther and farther away from San Diego, those particular five cars turned around and drove away.

From that point on he would call me from his cell phone every other day to give me updates on his progress. He said he was pretty sure that no vehicles had followed him since those initial five. However, he insisted he kept seeing some kind of circular device in the sky that appeared to be trailing him.

“What do you mean?” I said. “Like a flying saucer?”

He said it was kind of like a disc—but relatively small. If not for the sunlight glinting off its metal surface, he never would have noticed it. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t.

In the early 1980s the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego developed vertical-take-off-and-landing air vehicles known as Airborne Remotely Operated Devices (AROD). In the 1990s these vehicles evolved into robots called Multipurpose Security and Surveillance Mission Platforms. According to the corporation’s own website, such robots were “designed to provide a rapidly deployable, extended-range surveillancecapability for a variety of operations and missions” including “tactical security” as well as “support to counterdrug and border patrol operations” (http:www.spawar.navy.mil/robots/air/amgss/mssmp.html). Since residents of California are well aware of the fact that the border patrol can’t seem to keep people from slipping over the border into San Diego, perhaps the real purpose of the MSSMPs is to keep certain people in.

Note: The San Diego headquarters of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command is located only six miles from Dion’s Pacific Beach apartment, a mere ten minute drive.

EXCERPT #2:

In 2011, due to various reasons (mainly economic), Dion moved to a house located in the Redwoods in Northern California. His mother lives in the middle of the forest next to a remote area appropriately named “the Lost Coast.” Within weeks of moving into the Redwoods the harassment began again—with renewed intensity.      

The High Strangeness kicked off when Dion began seeing classic, 1950s-style UFOs hovering over his mother’s property, usually very late at night. He’d never before seen anything like these lights. They disobeyed all known laws of physics. After several weeks of documenting these sightings with his camera, he spotted a military-style drone flying low overhead in the night skies, well below the cloud cover. He watched in amazement as the drone seemed to release several lights that looked precisely like the UFOs he’d seen so often before.

It’s important to note that this area of Humboldt County is filled with marijuana farmers who are protective of their crops, suspicious of outsiders, and trigger-happy to boot. As these drones began appearing in waves over the Mattole Valley, the local rednecks whipped out their rifles and began firing at the ominous craft. A rumor spread through the area that the farms would soon be raided by the FBI, or the ATF, or the DEA, or some similar government agency. One day a local resident spotted two “agents” (if, indeed, that’s what they were) camped out on a nearby hillside; the “agents” appeared to be spying on the farmlands below with a pair of binoculars. (The sunlight glinting off the binoculars gave them away.) En masse, the local farmers ran up into the hills with their firearms, intent on blowing the intruders into jagged, bloody shards. The “agents,” or whoever they were, beat their feet and scurried away like panicked vermin. 

Later that night the drone sightings in the valley grew even more intense. They were now so frequent that even Dion’s mother (who had always been skeptical of Dion’s San Diego experiences) admitted she couldn’t explain their presence in the skies above her modest little home…

END OF EXCERPTS

SPECIAL BONUS: In July of 2012, Damien took this photo of a flying-saucer-like drone that streaked off into the skies above Humboldt County. A black-and-white version of this photo appears in CHAMELEO, but this is the first time it's being seen in color...