BEHOLD!!! THE GUFFEY LIBRARY (2022)

Depicted below is the ever-expanding GUFFEY LIBRARY (with at least two more volumes to come in 2023)! Visit my Author's Page on Amazon and own the complete set before the tick of midnight... or else THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE will steal your soul!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, my friends!

THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (REDUX)

The perfectly disturbing New Year’s Eve cinematic experience could be nothing other than Victor Sjöström’s 1921 film, THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, an adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf’s 1912 Theosophical novel entitled THY SOUL SHALL BEAR WITNESS! Though little known today, this film had a tremendous impact on such major filmmakers as Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick. Despite a relatively complex story structure composed of flashbacks within flashbacks and stories within stories, the central conceit of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is not at all dissimilar to that of a traditional fairy tale….

Once upon a time, on New Year’s Eve, three men sit in a dilapidated cemetery passing a bottle of cheap liquor back and forth while talking about a local legend: that of Death’s Driver. According to the prevailing myth, the last person killed on New Year’s Eve must take over the reins of a horse-drawn carriage fashioned by Death himself. For the next year, that person must serve Death by collecting the souls of the recently deceased until the following New Year’s Eve. Inevitably (at least according to the logic of fairy tales), our protagonist, an alcoholic ne’er-do-well named David Holm (played by the film’s director, Victor Sjöström), is accidentally murdered just before the stroke of midnight. Then comes Death’s Driver, who just so happens to be a fellow derelict named Georges (Tore Svennberg), the man who first told Holm about the legend. Georges died exactly a year before in Holm’s presence under very similar circumstances. (As in all fairy tales, coincidence and fate play a crucial role in this film.) Georges removes Holm from his physical body, binds his astral body hand and foot with rope, and leads him on a soul-searing journey through the world of the living, forcing Holm to confront the consequences of his misspent life in a sermonizing manner that might remind one of Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843), but THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE lacks all of the sentimentalism so integral to Dickens’ far more famous novel.

I wrote a rather lengthy article about this film for Olaf Brill and Gary D. Rhodes' 2016 anthology, EXPRESSIONISM IN THE CINEMA, published by Edinburgh University Press. The article, nearly 10,000 words long, is entitled “Here Among the Dead: THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE and the Cinema of the Occulted Taboo." Since the film has now fallen into public domain, you can watch the digitally restored Blu-ray/DVD version of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE on YouTube (this version was originally released by Criterion back in the Fall of 2011). Watch Sjöström’s groundbreaking phantasmagoria as the clock strikes twelve….

The Phantom Carriage (1921) Victor Sjöström

TAMPA BAY TIMES: "Where is Scientology’s David Miscavige?"

From Tracey McManus' 12-29-22 TAMPA BAY TIMES article entitled "Where is Scientology’s David Miscavige? Opposing lawyers want to know.":

The process servers showed up to 10 Church of Scientology properties in Clearwater and California with legal documents in hand.

They tried 27 times over four months to serve Scientology leader David Miscavige with a federal trafficking lawsuit that names him as a defendant, according to records in the case.

Security guards, the court filings state, refused to accept documents from the process servers, declined to answer questions and said they did not know where Miscavige lived or worked despite him being the ecclesiastical leader of the organization.

The case revolves around allegations from three former Scientologists who say they were trafficked into the church as children and forced to work through adulthood for little or no pay. Valeska Paris and husband and wife Gawain and Laura Baxter, who filed the complaint in April, left the church’s military-style workforce called the Sea Org in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

Five church entities named as co-defendants already have been served and filed motions in July to push the lawsuit into internal arbitration, where it would go before a panel of loyal church members. A judge has not yet ruled on the church’s request to divert the case out of the U.S. court system. But as that decision is pending, attorneys for the three former church workers still have been unable to serve Scientology’s secretive and elusive leader. 

To read the entire article, click HERE.

Billionaires Want to Save Civilization By Having Tons of Genetically Superior Kids

From Julia Black's 11-17-22 BUSINESS INSIDER article entitled "Can Super Babies Save the World?":

Elites have used lineage to consolidate money and power for most of human history. But as couples in the developed world are increasingly putting off parenthood until later in life — or abandoning it altogether — people like the Collinses are looking for hacks to make large families feasible in a modern, secular society.

They both said they were warned by friends not to talk to me. After all, a political minefield awaits anyone who wanders into this space. The last major figure to be associated with pronatalism was Jeffrey Epstein, who schemed to impregnate 20 women at a time on his New Mexico ranch. Genetic screening, and the underlying assumption that some humans are born better than others, often invites comparisons to Nazi eugenic experiments. And then there’s the fact that our primary cultural reference point for a pronatalist society is the brutally misogynist world of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

The Collinses, who call themselves “ruthless pragmatists,” consider the inevitable backlash a small price to pay.

“We’re frustrated that one of the inherent points of this culture is that people are super private within it,” Simone said. They not only hope that their transparency will encourage other members of the upper class to have more children; they want to build a culture and economy around the high-birth-rate lifestyle.

The payoff won’t be immediate, Simone said, but she believes if that small circle puts the right plans into place, their successors will “become the new dominant leading classes in the world.”

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Thom Hartmann's 12-1-22 LAPROGRESSIVE article entitled "The Wealthy Human Race: Beware of Those Who Believe They Were Sent By God":

Whether they believe their God sent them or that their DNA is superior to the rest of us, the new supremacists who own the GOP represent a threat to American democracy. They’ve tried to conquer America three times in the past: will they actually do it this time?

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who describes herself as a Christian Nationalist, is lying to the families of imprisoned January 6th traitors that Trump couldn’t possibly have pardoned any of them. She’s quite concerned that they’re upset with him.

Many, perhaps most, of the people who attacked our Capitol on January 6th believed they were doing work endorsed by their white male all-supreme god. Just like the men who flew planes into the Twin Towers believed they were doing work endorsed by their brown male all-supreme god.

There is no negotiating with people who believe they were sent by a god. Even in America. Or, perhaps, especially in America in 2022.

The events, podcasts, programs, and politicians whipping up the traitors who attacked us on January 6th were funded, at various levels and in various ways, by morbidly rich men, and women, who believe in their own version of a personal divinity.

They see themselves as standing apart from the rest of humanity, as genetically superior to the rest of us.

The headline from the November 17th edition of Business Insider pretty much sums it all up: “Billionaires want to save civilization by having tons of genetically superior kids. Inside the movement to take ‘control of human evolution.’”

Ask relatives of holocaust victims if it’s possible to negotiate with people who consider themselves genetically superior. Or ask the descendants of enslaved Africans.

This is where the rightwing billionaire movement finds common cause with white evangelicals and Republican American fascists. And none of them — billionaires, evangelicals, or fascists — will negotiate in good faith with those they consider inferior to them.

Their goal is to subjugate America and Americans, to create a Potemkin democracy in this nation (and others), to stand apart from and above the teeming masses of humanity, particularly those who are poor or whose skin is dark. They have no interest whatsoever in sharing or even paying taxes to support the common good.

Democracy, they believe, is their enemy.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD REVIEWED BY CEMETERY DANCE

Haley Newlin (author of NOT ANOTHER SARAH HALLS and TAKE YOUR TURN, TEDDY) just published a review of my latest novel, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD, on CemeteryDance.com. Here's an excerpt:

Universal monsters Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolf Man and others, primarily produced between the 1930s and 1950s, still stand today as not only icons of horror but pop culture.

And yet, so many of the horrifically haunting films featuring these creatures, including Bela Lugosi’s infamous bloodthirsty Count Dracula, have been buried away and forgotten.

Robert Guffey’s Bela Lugosi’s Dead revives Universal monsters. Furthermore, it raises the stakes, pun intended, with a second storyline depicting a writer down on his luck (Mike) who dreams of writing a supernatural screenplay and publishing a magazine all about classic horror, and… you guessed it, Bela Lugosi.

Mike meets a young actress, Lucy, at the grave of Sharon Tate, the actress notoriously known for her brutal murder at the hands of Charles Manson’s Family. Shortly after, Mike finds backers for his magazine called Ramboona, dedicated to remembering “forgotten films,” and stumbles into a haunted maze of sorts — attempting to uncover the lost test reel of Lugosi as Frankenstein (eventually played instead by Boris Karloff).

What readers and fans of classic horror movies will revel in is Mike and Lucy’s run-ins with Maila Nurmi (Vampira), Manly P. Hall (Lugosi confidant and author), and others.

Bela Lugosi’s Dead is a remarkably authentic, hypnotizing interpretation of all the glitz and pure talent behind Lugosi’s fame, as well as the hubris that steered his downfall. Guffey depicts how Lugosi’s Dracula transformed horror from a genre of make-believe to one that spreads the notion that monsters lurk among us....

Read the entire review HERE.

FURTHER PRAISE FOR BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD:

“Blending intertextual rampage through the horror-movie canon with engrossing noir mystery and a backdrop of Hollywood esoterica, Robert Guffey serves up an intoxicating pulp cocktail that will leave you wanting more. A crepuscular treasure from a fascinating author.”

--ALAN MOORE, author of V FOR VENDETTA and WATCHMEN

“In Robert Guffey's latest and greatest novel, dreams of old movies and nightmares of classic horror rack into sharp focus through the lens of a brave film historian, one determined to squint clearly at fleeting grains of film through the shifting sands of time. Never has the truth of Hollywood been so well revealed through fiction. As a result, BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD delightfully and definitively proves that Bela Lugosi isn't dead.” 

--GARY D. RHODES, author of LUGOSI and TOD BROWNING'S DRACULA

"[H]orror fans will delight in how Guffey cleverly immerses movie monsters in the real world. Film buffs and monster enthusiasts will relish the supernatural characters brought to life in this atmospheric celebration of monster mayhem." 

--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"The sensation [of reading BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD] is like being led deep underground while your flashlight grows dimmer and dimmer, until you’re left in total darkness. That’s when the lights of a subterranean crypt flash on to reveal that you’re not where you expected to be, and where you are is far worse than you could have imagined. The result is an ending that left me chilled and took me a few days to fully process. As shocking as it was, everything was set up from the beginning. I know, I went back and checked, and have to give Guffey credit for pulling off a literary sleight of hand that caught me by surprise. I won’t spoil it with more, except to say that like the frog in water that’s warmed so slowly it doesn’t realize it’s coming to a lethal boil, Guffey’s readers face an equally stunning conclusion." 

--TERENCE TAYLOR, NIGHTMARE MAGAZINE

The unabridged Audible Audiobook of BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD is also available! It's brilliantly read by the talented SAMUEL E. HOKE. Hoke was so dedicated to nailing the audio version that he contacted me before he began narrating the novel to make sure the accent of a particular character was exactly correct. He also went out of his way to research some of the films and documentaries about the real people and events upon which the novel is based. If you're interested, you can listen to a sample of the audiobook right HERE!

Richard Neal Schowengerdt: In Memoriam

Richard Neal Schowengerdt, the scientist whose breakthrough ideas are spotlighted in my 2015 book, CHAMELEO, passed away on Christmas Eve morning in 2021 at the age of 91. I announced his death in my 12-28-21 blog post. There have been many times during the past year when I've thought to myself, "I should ask Richard about...." I could no doubt complete that sentence in any number of ways, as Richard had a broad range of interests. Alas, this idle thought is followed by sadness when I quickly realize that communication with him is now (almost) impossible.

This past November, Richard's daughter, Maria, created an ofrenda for her father in honor of Dia de los Muertos. You can see her beautiful and esoteric altar in the photographs below....

 

 

 

Just as Richard's indomitable spirit hovers over every inch of Maria's ofrenda, I find his influence still inhabiting my own work as well. Earlier this year, I published a follow-up to CHAMELEO in the January-February issue of NEXUS MAGAZINE (Vol. 29, No. 1). It's a rather long article entitled "Invisible Predators: Strange Creatures, Secret Weapons, and Shadow Biospheres," in which I examine the history of humanity's interaction with ostensibly invisible entities while acknowledging the technological, back-engineered aspect of such phenomena in recent decades. The article includes several quotes from Richard. You can read a downloadable copy of that article right HERE.

Those of you interested in knowing more about Richard and his unique work might also want to check out another piece entitled "Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, and Esoteric Science," which I published in the July 2016 issue of NEXUS. Here's the editor's description of the piece: An interview by Robert Guffey. Retired military scientist and engineer Richard Schowengerdt, who was awarded a patent for an electro-optical camouflage system, shares his thoughts on the link between science and mysticism as well as on the cloaking abilities of UFOs. 

If you want to read Richard's obituary, it can be seen on the Dignity Memorial website right HERE.

QAnon & Elon Musk

From Drew Harwell's 12-14-22 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "QAnon, Adrift After Trump’s Defeat, Finds New Life in Elon Musk’s Twitter":

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

The billionaire has spread bogus theories about the violent attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband to his 120 million followers, and he called for the criminal prosecution of infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci. He has thrown around baseless accusations about adults sexualizing children, helping stir up an angry online mob against Yoel Roth, a former Twitter safety executive Musk praised in October for his “high integrity.”

And on Tuesday, he tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”

Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.

One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine, said the tweet was only his latest flirtation with QAnon ideology.

“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” the account said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.

To read the entire article, click HERE.