HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD!!!

One year ago today, Headpress published my twelfth book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS. I've been extremely pleased by the response to this book. Earlier this year, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD was nominated for a Rondo Award in the BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION) category alongside such fine writers as Chris Kelso, Tim Lucas, Gary D. Rhodes (who wrote an excellent foreword for HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD), David J. Schow, and Tom Weaver! You can hear me talking about the secret origins of the book on several different podcasts including CONSPIRINORMAL, THE FARM, FORGOTTEN HOLLYWOOD, HI, STRANGENESS, THE NEW BOOKS NETWORK, RAVENSTAR'S WITCHING HOUR, THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE, THE WARPED REALITY PARANORMAL PODCAST, and WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?  

You can read my introduction to HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD at FILM INTERNATIONAL right HERE.

A second excerpt (about William Richert’s 1979 parapolitical thriller, WINTER KILLS) is available at FILM INTERNATIONAL right HERE. 

Extra special thanks to David Kerekes and the whole crew over at Headpress for helping bring this book to life! 

Please don't make the ghost of Charlie Chaplin sad! Help him turn that frown upside down by ordering your own copy of HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD... today! The book is available directly from Headpress in both paperback and hardcover editions.  

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

 

"HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD is an eccentric, erudite, freewheeling, groundbreaking, tongue-in-cheek but facetiousness-in-check extravaganza. Robert Guffey’s wry homage to cinematic taboo-breaking delighted and captivated me.”

--James Morrow, 

award-winning author of ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER and BEHOLD THE APE 

 

 "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 

 

 "[A] work of remarkable consequence, one I urge you to read."

 

--Peter Normanton, CRYPTOLOGY MAGAZINE 

 

"Highest recommendation!"

 

--Stephen R. Bissette,

writer/artist of TYRANT, CRYPTID CINEMA, and SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING 

I VOTED

From Antonia Hitchens' 11-2-26 NEW YORKER article entitled "The MAGA Faithful Eye the Exits":

I’d met this staffer early in 2025, when it seemed like everyone around him in Washington was trying to find a way into the Administration. These days, he told me, you networked to find a way out, or at least away from certain corners [...].

Later, I ran into some MAGA types I hadn’t seen since the Inauguration, when they’d been gloating about their takeover. “I’m going to Argentina,” a Trump-aligned influencer told me, ducking out of an afternoon panel in a suburban strip mall. “Like, moving there. We’re all going to be indicted. Anyone who was ever close to this is going to be targeted. They’re going to come after us even if our fingerprints aren’t on anything.”

As the weeks went on, a pro-Trump super PAC sent out increasingly melodramatic fund-raising e-mails, warning that the end might be near. “Do not make me say goodbye,” one subject line read. A photo of the President waving from the door of a train was captioned “Farewell to Trump.” He was reportedly flirting with the idea of granting preëmptive pardons to all his White House aides [...].

In mid-October, I had lunch with a senior official who was waiting to be confirmed for a major role in the Administration [...]. He told me that his interest in Trump started at a rally in 2016. “There was a guy next to me with no feet,” he said. “He lost them in Afghanistan. I liked what Trump said about no more wars.” A friend had called him early in the morning after the President announced the start of the military campaign in Iran. “He just kept saying, ‘We’re fucked,’” the official told me. “It’s a complete betrayal.” He went on, “I don’t think it will be a mark of Cain to have worked in this Administration, but I think we’re all ready for this to be over” [...].

A strategist who used to work for the President maintained that Trump was not winding down but ramping up. “We’re already in a brave new world, and the next two years will be on hyperdrive,” she said. How many times, she asked me, had we all lived through predictions that Trump was finished? Trump was going to complete an epochal realignment, she said, a “big reset” encompassing everything from “rebuilding Gaza in the image of whatever the heck he wants” to “making sure cryptocurrency gets anchored in.” Some of the true believers I knew had faded out of these conversations, and were focused on the future. Ahead of the midterms, a group of them left Washington to attend a four-part lecture series given by Peter Thiel, who cautioned that the next President might be the Antichrist.

Back in Washington, the Trump staffer asked me what it was like on the trail. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the Grateful Dead,” he told me, after I summarized a recent rally. “In the eighties, they got massive and they started playing stadiums—they would take over entire towns. But by the end of the decade it became a much darker scene, where the local criminality would come, sell all kinds of drugs, there’d be violence. A lot of the old Deadheads decided it was too dark.” Each time I saw this staffer, over the course of the past eighteen months, he had less and less contempt for the system he’d come into government wanting to destroy. “We’ve been through the fucking fire with Trump,” he told me. “I don’t want the Democrats to win, but I feel ready for some new programming.” Before joining the Administration, he had convinced himself that the 2020 election really was stolen from Trump. But he found himself irritated by the President’s recent warnings that the Democrats were trying to steal the midterms, too. “Before, it was a Trump-versus-the-world vibe,” he said. “The broader narrative of them stealing from us felt directionally true. We were dispossessed, and we were robbed of a Presidency. But now? We took over and we just kind of fucking botched it. The Democrats didn’t create some bullshit. We had a generational opportunity and we basically squandered it. Look at the coalition we had in 2024. Those people might not ever vote again in their lives.” [...].

Near the buffet, a few people were looking at Polymarket bets on their phones. “I’m a patriot, so I’m betting on Republicans,” one said. I stood with a person close to the Administration, who told me that he had started telling his dreams to A.I. in the morning. He pulled out his phone to show me Claude’s four-act analysis of the previous evening’s anxiety reverie, featuring a cast of Administration officials. He said the most interesting part of life after the midterms would be watching the warring factions within Trump’s government try to take one another down. “I can’t wait to see everyone coöperating with the Democrats to try to send their enemies to jail,” he said. “It’s going to be chaos.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

CHARLIE CHAPLIN HAUNTS THE WORLD!

Once a year, on All Hallows' Eve, the ghost of Charlie Chaplin rises from the earth and wanders the Hollywood landscape, searching desperately for the latest salacious rumors flowing through the streets, the cafes, the parking lots, the film palaces, the newsrooms, the thirsty veins of the movie capital of the world. He shuffles from one unfamiliar location to another, swinging his bamboo cane in the autumn twilight, trying to reconnect with his own distant past, to somehow recapture the glories of the Golden Age of Cinema. This year, near a lonely bench in an empty city park, he stumbles across a most unusual tome, Robert Guffey's HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS, which contains revelations about the shadow side of Tinsel Town that shock even him. These improbable disclosures jump-start his long-dead brain waves, almost startling him into physical form once again... but, alas, not quite. At the stroke of midnight, as October 31st fades into Dia de los Muertos, the phantom of the Little Tramp once again collapses into its insubstantial form, doomed to waddle back to the misty limbo from whence it came. At least for a little while. Until next year. Until the barrier between the worlds becomes ever so thin again. And in the meantime, the Little Tramp has been allowed to bring back some engaging reading material. For this, at least, he is eternally grateful. In his final moments on Earth in the year 2026, he shouts out the following speech: "Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD by Robert Guffey! Without these, life will be violent and all will be lost!" And then he flickers into nonexistence, drifting away to the Other Side once more...

Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller's Final Halloween Lecture

The late Dr. Stephen A. Hoeller, who passed away this past May, delivered his final Halloween-themed lecture a little over a year ago at the Ecclesia Gnostica in Los Angeles. You can hear the audio of that talk directly below...

The Value of Halloween in Gnosis, by Dr. Stephan A. Hoeller, October 17th 2025: 

 

THE FARM: "John Carpenter's The Thing as a Marxist Parable"

This would be an appropriate day to check out the 10-16-26 episode of THE FARM PODCAST, "John Carpenter's The Thing as a Marxist Parable," in which J.G. Michael and Heart Attack Gun join host Steven Snider to perform a deep dive on one of John Carpenter's greatest cinematic achievements. To listen to this entire episode of THE FARM, click HERE.

 

IT'S ALMOST TIME, KIDS! EAT OUR SPECIAL SPOOKY CHEESE GHOST PIZZA...

...AND JOIN THE RANKS OF THE LIVING DEAD!!!

WHEN CRYPTOSCATOLOGY MEETS CRYPTOLOGY!

In the pages of CRYPTOLOGY MAGAZINE #11, British horror comics historian Peter Normanton (editor of the excellent long-running fanzine FROM THE TOMB) recently published a positive review of my latest book, HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMA OF OCCULTED TABOOS. Normanton's review ends with the following words of wisdom:

"Hollywood Haunts the World is a work of remarkable consequence, one I urge you to read."

This issue also contains articles about the weird art of painter Richard Powers, the making of Dan O'Bannon's THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, the pre-code horror comics of the 1950s, the unsung accomplishments of special effects artist Milicent Patrick, the paleontology of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, a history of the Golem archetype in horror films and beyond, and much, much more! If you want to buy a copy of CRYPTOLOGY #11, click HERE.

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

 

"HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD is an eccentric, erudite, freewheeling, groundbreaking, tongue-in-cheek but facetiousness-in-check extravaganza. Robert Guffey’s wry homage to cinematic taboo-breaking delighted and captivated me.”

--James Morrow, 

award-winning author of ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER and BEHOLD THE APE 

 

 "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 

 

"Highest recommendation!"

 

--Stephen R. Bissette,

writer/artist of TYRANT, CRYPTID CINEMA, and SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING 

You can hear me talking about the secret origins of HOLLYWOOD HAUNTS THE WORLD on several different podcasts including CONSPIRINORMAL, THE FARM, FORGOTTEN HOLLYWOOD, HI, STRANGENESS, THE NEW BOOKS NETWORK, RAVENSTAR'S WITCHING HOUR, THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE, THE WARPED REALITY PARANORMAL PODCAST, and WHERE DID THE ROAD GO? 

Heat Rays and Roving Eyes at the US-Mexico Border

1) From Adam Gramegna's 10-21-26 MILITARY.com article entitled "DOD Memo Greenlights DHS Use of Military 'Heat Ray' at US-Mexico Border":

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reportedly loaned the military's so-called "heat ray" to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), handing civilian law enforcement a crowd-control weapon the Pentagon developed two decades ago.

The memo, signed by Hegseth last month and obtained by CNN, authorized a "temporary loan" of one Active Denial System for seven months starting in September. The system was originally sent to Afghanistan and brought home without ever being used in combat.

The memo says the system "shall not be operated by DoW (Department of War) personnel," leaving DHS solely responsible for employing the weapon and for developing the tactics, techniques and procedures governing its use.

DHS can ask to keep the system longer when the loan ends.

Former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta first reported the leaked memo Oct. 8 on his independent platform. CNN published additional details Tuesday, reporting that internal discussions have centered on using the system to disperse crowds at the southern border.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

2) From Ariana Baio's 10-22-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "Pete Hegseth Reportedly Authorizes DHS to Test ‘Heat Ray’ at US-Mexico Border":

The “heat ray”, known as the Active Denial System, is a military-grade weapon that shoots an energy beam causing “a sensation of intense heat on the surface of the skin”, according to a 2009 National Defense University case study on the weapon [...].

When used, the Active Denial System can produce an invisible beam of 95 gigahertz that penetrates about 1/64th of an inch into the skin, causing a burning sensation [...].

During the first Trump administration, officials sought to use the Active Denial System, first in 2018 to stop migrants from crossing the border, the New York Times reported. Later, in 2020, the administration also sought it to control protests in Washington DC after the killing of George Floyd, the Washington Post reported.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

3) From Sam Sifton's 10-23-26 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "You're Being Watched":

You think Americans don’t like Flock cameras reading their license plates? The federal government has installed hundreds of powerful new A.I.-enabled cameras on tall towers all across the southern border of the United States, with plans to cover the nation’s perimeter, according to new reporting from Bora Erden and Nicholas Nehamas in The Times.

President Trump’s 2024 campaign soared partly on the popularity of his argument that too many immigrants had crossed the border illegally. Large majorities back tough enforcement there. And for decades, Republicans and Democrats have agreed that a high-tech “smart wall” would be a good and cost-effective way to stop people sneaking in.

That wall is rising now during an outcry about A.I. in general and mass surveillance in particular. It’s a stark illustration of a political axiom: Every policy choice comes with trade-offs. This one brings a potential loss of privacy.

The new technology can see for miles in all directions, tracking people and vehicles for 24 hours a day, without a human at the controls. A tireless A.I. algorithm does the work. Many of the cameras are in remote locations deep in the desert. But others are in more populated areas, where they can see into bedrooms, watch over public beaches, track children on playgrounds and transmit footage back to the authorities.

At least one million people in the United States and Mexico live in areas along the border where they can be seen by the surveillance towers, the Times analysis found. And at least four million more live under the gaze of an older generation of cameras that the government plans to retrofit with A.I. technology.

There are many more to come. The Trump administration wants them in Florida, Puerto Rico and the nation’s northern border. America has Ring cameras on its entryways now — and they can pick up a lot...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

ANNOUNCING THE CRYPTOPOLIS HALLOWEEN SALE!!!

To commemorate this most devilish of all holidays, I'm opening up the legendary Guffey Vault for a limited time only. I'm selling signed copies of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES for only $20.00! Shipping and handling is included in the price (if you're located in the United States, that is). I'll write whatever you want in the book, within unreason. Offer applies while supplies last! If you're interested, feel free to contact me via my email address: cryptoscatology@gmail.com.  

As All Hallows' Eve descends upon us once again, why not take this opportunity to curl up with a tome that PUBLISHERS WEEKLY describes as "not for the faint of heart"? I invite you to imbibe a few of the mind-distorting, poisonous treats hidden between the ominous covers of my debut short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES, released by Lethe Press in 2024. The peculiar tales in this volume have been compared to the works of Jorge Luis Borges, William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, Franz Kafka, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert Anton Wilson! If you'd like to experience precisely what these critics are talking about, consider buying a copy of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES just in time for Halloween!  

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!

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.

Here's what a pack of raving maniacs have to say about CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES...

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

THE GUARDIAN on the Recent Acquisition of a "Havana Syndrome-style Device"

From Shaun Walker's 10-10-26 GUARDIAN report entitled "Why the Mystery Over Havana Syndrome Refuses to Die":

Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to emerge recently has been the alleged US government acquisition of a “Havana syndrome-style device” in an undercover operation. First reported by the independent journalist Sasha Ingber this year, two sources confirmed to the Guardian that a device had been acquired and brought to the US in late 2024 for testing, after a purchase from a dark-web seller.

[Michael] Rey and [Oriana] Zill’s book [The Havana Syndrome] recounts a meeting with a person who claimed to be part of the undercover team that acquired the device. The source told them the device was “man-portable”, shot non-thermal pulsed microwaves and was acquired from “a complex Russian illicit network”.

It was not believed to have been used in a Havana syndrome incident, but testing on animals has reportedly shown it may cause similar symptoms to AHIs ["Anomalous Health Incidents"], which could prove that building such a device is scientifically possible.

That would make the case for a weapon being involved in some incidents more plausible, and would also raise new and worrying questions. If such weapons have proliferated to the extent that one can be bought on the dark web, how many devices could be out there and who may have access to them? Could AHIs thus have not one perpetrator, but many? And is there a future in which such weapons become a widespread element of warfare? “We know the technology has reached a level that enables it to be used in weaponisable ways,” said [James] Giordano. “I see that as a clear and present threat.”

For those who have had symptoms for years, the acquisition of the device and the rescinded intelligence assessments provide some hope that, one day, they will receive official confirmation that they were targeted by a foreign adversary. For many of them, the lack of recognition at home has angered them more than the attack itself...

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

If you find Walker's news report intriguing, I highly recommend checking out Steven Snider's comprehensive rundown of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's Havana Syndrome Conference. Snider, host of THE FARM PODCAST, attended the event earlier this year. There are many fascinating revelations to be found here. In fact, Part Two is especially informative.

Click HERE for THE FARM: "Who's Afraid of Havana Syndrome? Part 1 (2-16-26).

Click HERE for THE FARM: "Who's Afraid of Havana Syndrome? Part 2 (2-17-26).