PART SIX -- On The Road To Roswell 2007: A Discussion With Adam Gorightly

Editors note: This is the sixth in a special series of Raiders News Network interviews focusing on the 60th Anniversary of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO Incident. Tom Horn is joined by Adam Gorightly, a self-described "crackpot historian" and author of The Shadow Over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control, and "The Manson Family" Mythos. Adam will be speaking at the Roswell UFO Festival this year.

HORN: Adam, thank you for doing this interview. I received some of your as-yet unpublished and astonishing research material, which is scheduled to be discussed at the Roswell Festival this year. I am anxious to hear what you have to say on these subjects, but first let me ask you why you are billed as a "crackpot historian"?

GORIGHTLY: My approach to researching and writing about such subjects as conspiracy politics, the paranormal and high weirdness, has always been one where a large dose of humor is an integral part of the process. And so calling myself a "crackpot historian" was just my way of having fun and not taking myself too seriously, as oftentimes when people look into these subjects they lose their perspective and get so wrapped up with UFO research, or conspiracy research, and their own pet theory--whatever that may be--that they forget to step back now and then and take in the larger picture: that life is an adventure that’s meant to be fun, above all. I also have a penchant for writing about strange and interesting people who inhabit the marginal fringe—"crackpots" for want of a better term. But of course, some would also call me a crackpot. So there you have it. I take what I do seriously—but not so serious that I’m not willing to poke fun at myself, as well.

HORN: I have quoted John Keel and the idea of a superspectrum for years. Recently I said to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM that I could not discount as pure hallucinations the accounts of people who reported seeing UFOs and aliens as a result of hallucinogenic drugs. I said this because I assume there may be methods, even unintentional, for opening dimensional doorways to the unknown. Then I read the material you sent me and was surprised at some of your similar findings. Please explain for the audience what the superspectrum is.

GORIGHTLY: The Superspectrum theory is related to what are known as "UFO windows", or "UFO hotspots", where UFO’s and other weird sightings occur. And it’s within these "UFO windows" that a Superspectrum exists, according to Keel’s theory. A common description of UFO’s is that they often change colors, which suggested to Keel that UFO’s are some form of energy traveling through our visible light spectrum. The Superspectrum Theory contends that UFO’s exist at frequencies beyond visible light, but that they can also adjust their frequency and descend into the electromagnetic spectrum—just as you can turn the dial of your radio up and down the scale of radio frequencies. So when a UFO frequency nears that of visible light, it will first appear as a purplish blob. As it moves further down the scale, it changes to blue, and then to blue-ish green and so on, finally to white. This is how many UFO sightings unfold. So, according to Keel’s theory, UFO’s are energies of a different frequency. Like tuning a radio, you pick up and amplify only the signal coming in at a certain point, or frequency, of the electromagnetic spectrum. Your eyes are also receivers tuned to very specific wavelengths, as your brain is also a receiver.

Paranormal investigators often use infrared detection systems which reveal otherwise invisible activity. Altered states--such as those produced by ritual magick or the use of mind altering drugs--are other possible methods of seeing into the Superspectrum, which is akin to someone using infrared goggles at night to see what the naked eye cannot. This, in essence, is what psychics claim to do. They have simply fine tuned this ability to pick up these waves and frequencies that "normal" people can’t see. And once these waves or frequencies are filtered through a person’s consciousness and belief system, then what comes out on the other end of perception may be an angel if someone is religiously inclined, or alien beings in flying saucers, or whatever we view them to be through the filters of our belief systems. So, in essence, these entities appear to be temporary manipulations of energy. Keel likes to use the word "transmogrifications" to describe them. A transmogrification is reminiscent of what the Native Americans called a shapeshifter, or what the Tibetans call tulpas. Entities that can change shape and form. And this is how I view the UFO phenomenon: as an intelligence that can take on many shapes, and wear many masks.

HORN: Years ago, scientist Vic Tandy was experimenting with infrasound frequency below the range of human hearing and he caused what appeared to be an alien gray or ghost to come out of the darkness after him. His thesis "Ghosts in the Machine" was published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. He was a scientist and a skeptic who believed all of this was just in his head -- a trick of frequencies and eyeball resonations. But I've wondered over the years if he had simply stumbled onto a novel way, like possibly the use of hallucinogenic drugs, to peer into something he couldn't understand, or maybe couldn't accept. Have you considered his research as supportive of the superspectrum?

GORIGHTLY: I’m not familiar with the work of Vic Tandy. However, his experiences, as you described them, seem to fall in line with my theory: that sometimes--whether witting or unwittingly--we are able to lift the veil and see what’s always there; that which is concealed by our waking trance. As Gurdieff suggested, we are all just walking zombies, lost in a trance of our own creation, many times completely unaware of what’s going on all around, right under our nose, that which we can only "see" when we open ourselves up--take the blinders off, have you. Children, of course, are known for seeing things that grownups can’t see, and having imaginary friends and such. Perhaps they are really seeing into other dimensions, or another aspect of reality, what Castaneda termed, a "separate reality." But then as children grow older, into adulthood the curtain is drawn, closed to these "imaginary realms" as we become more conditioned by society; as our maps of reality became more clearly defined. However, consensus reality, in my mind, is just another blinder placed over our consciousness, taking us away, distancing us from who we should truly be: creators of our own realities.

HORN: There are also documented cases of electromagnetic effects in conjunction with paranormal phenomena. Often in movies like "Poltergeist" we see electrical appliances and light fixtures reacting to the presence of ghostly apparitions. The same has been reported in some alien and UFO reports. Do you have a theory about this?

GORIGHTLY: Well, the whole phenomenon seems tied to the Earth’s electromagnetic field. UFO windows are perhaps where there is some weakness or aberration in the magnetic field, which allows access to flying saucers and creatures and strange phenomena. And, at the same time, these weak spots in the magnetic field presumably cause electronic equipment to go batty. Now, I know psychically gifted people who are always having problems with electronic equipment, as their own auric fields--or human energy--seems to affect electronic equipment. And so it could be theorized that certain humans are really the cause of these weird electromagnetic affects, by the energy they give off—or it could be a combination of human vibes, coupled with weak spots in the magnetic field of the planet, in addition to strange entities appearing in these UFO hotspots that make electronic equipment fail or go screwy—a cumulative affect, have you, of different energies competing with each other. Like at sunset, with the winds come down off the mountains, into the valley, and complete with each other, causing erratic winds that swirl and change directions, until the sun goes down and the diurnal shift is complete. Perhaps that’s what’s happening with all these energies facing off with each other. How’s that for a long winded answer? I’m just thinking out loud…In other words, I have no idea. J

HORN: Without giving up too much of your Roswell presentation, tell us about occultist Aleister Crowley and his efforts to open a magic portal into another dimension.

GORIGHTLY: In 1918 Crowley performed a magical ritual called the Amalantrah Working. To this end, he presumably created a magickal portal to allow entrance to ultradimensional entities, and in particular an otherworldly being named Lam, who looks strikingly similar to the grey alien on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s Communion.

HORN: Do you really think Crowley succeeded in open this magickal portal? If so, why?

GORIGHTLY: I certainly suspect that Crowley affected great change on some level. Now whether he opened a magick portal to another dimensions, I can’t say for sure. Whatever the case, he was indeed an agent of planetary brain change. Although not widely recognized today--or during the time he lived, for that matter--Crowley has had a profound effect on society and culture, although most people have no idea who he is. Or, if they hear his name, are just aware of this spurious legend that surrounds Crowley as a child sacrificing Satanist. Hell, maybe he was. And maybe he was one of the great religious teachers in the history of the planet. Or the consummate con man. Or all of the above. Crowley is hard to pin down as to what exactly his motives were and what he actually accomplished. I think it’s entirely possible that he may have indeed opened a Stargate or magickal portal. But frankly, I don’t know anything for sure

HORN: Nearly three decades after the Amalantrah Working, Crowley students Jack Parsons (rocket scientist and cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and his pal L. Ron Hubbard (Church of Scientology founder) conducted a second ritual, the "Babylon Working," in an attempt to reopen the gateway created by Crowley. But these guys were not seeking audience with Lam. They wanted the spirit of Babylon, the archetypal divine feminine, to pass through the portal and to incarnate itself within a human being. Many adepts of Enochian magic and Ordo Templi Orientis believe they succeeded and that she—the whore of Babylon—walks the earth today. You have any thoughts on this?

GORIGHTLY: You know, quite honestly, I have no idea. I must admit that I’ve never dabbled in ritual magick, at least not consciously, and I really don’t keep up to speed with what’s going on in the OTO/Thelema scene. I know there are people who claim such things: that the whore of Babylon has been reincarnated, or that Lam has been contacted in recent years. But I don’t really know one way or the other if there is any reality to any of these claims. Even if the whore of Babylon came and sat on my lap or if Lam blew in my ear, I still wouldn’t know what to think or believe. Was it my imagination? Were these entities something I conjured, that are actually just forms of energy I have shaped to meet my own expectations? Are they demons, are they angels, are they just a waking dream? The real question I think is "What is real?", and how much of a player are we in creating our own reality. Pretty big players, I suspect.

HORN: On June 17, 1952, Jack Parsons blew himself up. Do you think there was more to his death than the official story?

GORIGHTLY: Yes, I do. One of the more popular "crackpot" theories suggests that Parsons was performing a magickal ritual to create a homunculus, a living being, and it literally blew up in his face. Other theories hint at murder—that Parsons was an expert with explosives and could never have blown himself up in the manner that he did. I have a friend who has looked into Parsons' death and he thinks it has something to do with the testimony Parsons’ provided at high profile trial in Los Angeles during the 1940’s. At the trial in question, Parsons was called in as an expert witness on explosives, and it was his testimony that blew the whistle on a criminal organization with deep connections to the LAPD. Anyway, my friend thinks it was Parsons' testimony that led to his ultimate undoing. There’s also an online manuscript entitled Jack Parsons and the Curious Origins of the American Space Program which, in veiled language, suggests that the late televangelist Dr. Gene Scott was involved in Parsons' murder. These are just some of the theories that I’ve stumbled upon during the course of my research.

HORN: What about men like George Adamski and George Van Tassel. What do you make of their stories of alien interaction?

GORIGHTLY: "Serious" UFO researchers write off Adamski as a hoaxer, and probably fit Van Tassel into that same box. But that’s too easy an explanation to me; that they were making up their encounters with the space brothers out of whole cloth. Particularly Van Tassel, who if you listen to in old interviews comes across as a sincere sounding fellow—a no-nonsense kind of guy. As I point out in my lecture, Adamski and Van Tassel displayed many aspect of ritual magic in their approach to contact with the space brothers. Van Tassel in particular who used channeling to contact ET’s, as well as George Hunt Williamson, who devised something similar to an Ouija board to channel the ET’s messages. Like the spiritism movement of the turn of the century, the UFO Contactees were a mix of sincere believers along with opportunistic hoaxers, and sometimes it’s hard to separate the true believers from the hucksters. Whatever the case, I feel that some of the Contactees had legitimate experiences, which is not to say that they necessarily contacted beings from another planet, or at least not physical beings who came to earth in nuts and bolt craft. My theory suggests that the beings contacted by these early UFO witnesses are akin to what Vallee talked about in Passport to Magonia, that the phenomena takes on many shapes and forms: from the angels of the Bible to elves and fairies of Celtic lore to the miracle at Fatima to the modern era of UFO’s. It’s all the same thing, just filtered through our consciousness and colored by our belief systems.

HORN: I gave a radio interview years ago on UFOs and the possibility of a Sirius Cult in the US Government and Military. I hadn't thought about that lately, but then noticed some interesting tidbits in the info you sent me. Care to talk about that in this forum?

GORIGHTLY: That’s a line of inquiry I don’t delve into to deeply during the course of my Roswell lecture, though I do mention it in passing, in particular the rumor that there was a Sirius Cult with military connections that performed rituals at Mt. Palomar, a theory that comes courtesy of the late conspiracy researcher James Shelby Downard. What did you discover in this area?

HORN: Before he died tragically during the 1999 Burning Man Festival, Jim Keith wrote about this UFO / Sirius occult connection in his "Saucers of the Illuminati." The ‘Sorcery, Sex, Assassination and the Science of Symbolism’ work by Downard which argued that a Sirius cult exists at the highest levels of U.S. military intelligence and that the Palomar Observatory is used for its rituals, which are performed in telescopically-focused light from the Dog Star. I believe David Ovason’s book "The Secret Architecture of our Nation’s Capitol" and some like it have tied Freemasonry to an occult Sirius / Lucifer representation.

But let me move on this another question for you. From 1948-1958, Dr. Andrija Puharich ran the Round Table Foundation doing research into the human mind, telepathy; that sort of thing. At one point his research allegedly came in contact with nine intelligences -- "The Nine". What can you tell us about this and why would it be important to ufology?

GORIGHTLY: Well, Puharich’s research connects to so many things I talk about in my lecture. There’s a lot of common threads that run through what he was doing with the Round Table Group that parallels the early UFO Contactee Movement in terms of channeling ET’s--going as far back as 1948 and predating the halcyon days of the Contactees. What Purharich was involved with forms a bridge--from old school to new school Contactees--as he continued this work for many decades, combining several novel methods to establish contact with The Other. Some of these early experiments included Amanita Muscaria, a mushroom containing strange powers of divination, as documented in his book The Sacred Mushroom. Although many remember psychic superstar Uri Geller as someone who spent his time performing apparent parlor tricks--bending spoons and stopping clocks--Geller had a number of strange encounters with apparently otherworldly denizens during the period he was working closely with Puharich. Geller also claimed contact with "The Nine", which was the basis for a research group known as "Lab Nine" that included many cutting edge scientists, as well as the likes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who at one time wrote a script based on "The Nine" which he had planned to produce. So you can see the impact that Puharich and his group had on popular consciousness.

HORN: Before we get too far away from Crowley and his alien looking "Lam", you have some interesting thoughts about Crowley's Book of the Law and the messenger Aiwass.

GORIGHTLY: Yes. Although Lam seems to be getting a fair amount of pub these days in certain circles of UFO research, Aiwass certainly deserves his props. Aiwass was another otherworldly entity that Crowley made contact with many years prior to Lam. And it was Aiwass who dictated the infamous Book of the Law, the bible of Crowley’s religion, Thelema. UFO researcher Allen Greenfield contends that The Book of the Law is actually a coded book with instructions on how to contact these otherworldly beings, and that certain magic adepts have indeed decoded the book and now use it for just this purpose.

HORN: This is the 60th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident. I've talked to Jesse Marcel and Stanton Friedman on several occasions and both of them believe there really was something unusual that occurred there in 1947. What do you believe?

GORIGHTLY: My guess is that it was some sort of government disinfo campaign—using the alien crash scenario—to cover up some type of government black ops—but that’s speculation, as admittedly I never looked to deeply into the Roswell affair.

HORN: When and where can people hear your lecture in Roswell this year?

GORIGHTLY: On July 8 at 11:30am, I’ll be speaking at the Roswell Museum and Art Center. I hear it’s a great state of the art facility, with good audio-visual equipment, which will be important, as I have a pretty involved PowerPoint I’ll be showing to compliment my presentation. So come on out and say hi.

HORN: Thanks for discussing this with me. I find this all very interesting for a crackpot historian.

Some of the speakers at this year's Roswell festivities include Col. Jesse Marcel Jr, Dennis Balthaser, Greg Bishop, Donald Burleson, PhD, Stephen Bassett, Richard Dolan, Adam Gorightly, Stanton Friedman, John Greenewald, Paola Harris, Michael S. Heiser PhD, Tom Horn, Dr. Roger Leir, Guy Malone, Nicholas Redfern, John Rhodes, Peter Robbins, Rob Simone, and many more.

Learn more about the 60th Anniversary Roswell Festivals see both websites: http://www.roswellufofestival.com
http://www.roswellufomuseum.com/festival.htm