posted on Aug, 31 2007 @ 08:44 AM
About two years ago, when I started writing the book about Secret Societies, I was treating it all pretty much as a goof. Because listen, when it
comes down to it, most "secret societies" consist of successful, bored people who want to run around in old houses or tunnels or lodges playing
grabass by candlelight. Usually they've worked hard to get where they are and if that's their idea of fun, hey, who am I to judge? But in the
process of doing some lighthearted research, I came across a woman who had what she thought was a very serious story to tell.
I mean, she was nuts. I don't want to sound judgmental, but she was stark raving howl at the moon crazy. Here's something you learn when you deal
with people who have been ritually or systematically abused: they tend to be crazy. The fact that they are crazy (deliberately driven crazy) is one
way the abuse stays covered up. "Oh, did she say that we did horrible things in order to program her? Well, she has always been...you know.
Different".
I was in Colorado at the time and she had this idea that Columbine and the Ramsey case were linked, along with a huge mural in the Denver airport, the
CIA oh and I think there were some Satanists in the mix as well. We met at a cafe, because I didn't really want her to know where I was staying.
She seemed unstable on the phone.
For the next 2 hours, she told me the most bizarre, implausible, completely ludicrous tale I've ever believed. She claimed that she had been the
victim of Illuminati mindkontrol techniques from a very young age and that she had been part of their Monarch sex slave program. The details were
chilling and what was more chilling was that she obviously believed every word. She kept looking out the window and all around the cafe, like she
expected to be strangled at any moment. She couldn't even finish. Her cellphone kept ringing and she'd check the number and put it away without
answering. Finally she said "I shouldn't have ever talked to you, now we're both in danger". I believed her. That afternoon I felt like half
Fox Mulder, half Hunter S Thompson.
After having drinks with friends I was able to laugh everything off and write my own credulity off as contagious insanity, folie a deux. I patted
myself on the back for letting an obviously disturbed woman tell her story without judging her and hoped that maybe the whole thing had been cathartic
for her.
I caught a flight home a few days later. What I found when I got back to my apartment made me feel like I'd been nutchecked by an angry kung fu
master.
Nothing in my apartment had been disturbed. Nothing was out of place. Except that in my bedroom an entire wall was full of deeply personal e-mail
correspondences with friends, relatives and my girlfriend that had been printed out from my computer and taped to the wall. Some particularly tender
or personal passages in each mail were circled in red ink.
I'm generally a pretty calm guy, but that night I checked into a hotel and spent the next few days staying with friends.