The Nonsense Bazaar

In the thrilling conclusion of Blood Over Intent, Willow gets brainwashed and Sequoyah meets his arch-nemesis. Who is the Grey Magician? What's he doing buying a compound?  Do unkempt beards give you magic powers? Why does Satan himself suddenly feel like the good guy? And what are the excellent benefits of eating poop? All of these questions and more will go entirely unanswered as we crash headfirst into the spiritual dead-end of the 21st century.   

We take a peek into one of the weirder corners of the internet and learn about a modern religious movement with thousands of adherents based around using blood magic to bring heaven on Earth and escape the flat disc we all live on (yep it's one of those) by journeying to the North Pole. Founded unceremoniously with a 2013 Youtube video posted by Florida-based plumber Mark Braun, AKA Satan himself, this is one of the weirdest and most ridiculous currents of belief that you have never heard of. 

Oh you're into UFOs, huh? What if we told you that it's all smoke and mirrors, a grand illusion dreamt up by those dirty hippies that run the United Nations to usher in the technological antichrist and assume total control of your inner and outer worlds? Microchipped birds, fake religious revelations, and mind control via common household appliances - welcome to the terrifying, hyper-paranoid mind of the crusadin' Quebecois Serge Monast and his classic conspiracy pamphlet NASA's Project Blue Beam.

We talk about our experience playing as much as we possibly could have of Harry Horse's (in)famous point-and-click adventure game from 1996. We went to weird Stonehenge, spun a couple weird clocks, and met the most infuriating, utterly, worthless drunk sack of bones who ever called himself a Templar Knight. All in all, well, it sure is something. The grab-bag of conspiracy and generally spooky references lead us to a deeper conversation regarding Harry Horse's art, his mindset, and the larger cultural phenomena of conspiracy theories and pathological dot-connecting.

The point-and-click adventure game Drowned God was released in 1996. Fusing seemingly every conspiracy theory ever invented and the arcane secrets of numerology, tarot, and kabbalah, Drowned God stood out from its contemporaries (other point-and-clicks like Myst and The 7th Guest) simply because of how strange it was. In part one, we look at the surreal and tragic life of Drowned God's creator, the gifted artist, musician, and prankster Richard Horne, AKA Harry Horse. From his early years as a banjo player in the bluegrass punk band Swamptrash, through his career as a children's book author and illustrator, manuscript forger, conspiracy theorist, and game developer to the brutal and confusing murder-suicide that ended the lives of Harry Horse and his wife Mandy Williamson, this is one of those stories that doesn't easily leave.

The Ars Goetia of the Lesser Key of Solomon is one of the most famous, or infamous, books of so-called "black magic" in history, providing instructions to those would-be conjurors who would attempt to summon demons to do their bidding. But what exactly are the entities known as the goetic demons? Are demons real? Where does the Lesser Key of Solomon come from, and does it actually have anything at all to do with King Solomon? Where do you find a magic worm to do your masonry work for you? All this and more as we take our first dive into the forbidden arts of demonic sorcery.

After learning about a dude who uses "A.I. assisted noise reduction software" to talk to spirits through white and pink noise, we decided to give it a try ourselves. So we took a field trip to Rhode Island's officially haunted patch of woods (as recorded in the 1885 census) the "Ramtail Factory" and interrogated a river. There's definitely some incredibly weird stuff in the recordings. But were we talking to spirits or just losing our minds and yelling at water? That, dear listener, is for you to decide.   Sequoyah's video on the history of the Ramtail Factory Grant Reed Optimal Frequency

We take a look at a collection of strange, short, and horrible stories: a cult leader is found mummified in colloidal silver and tequila, a scientologist job posting for a nanny is as bizarre as you hope it is, and people are being scammed by fake Keanu Reeves. We also take a longer look at the religious fundamentalism and culture of repression that made Josh Duggar (from that show about having way too many kids) a straight up monster and how TLC just doesn't seem to notice or care.

A mysterious declassified document on the CIA website details the government's investigation of The Monroe Institute's "Gateway Experience" program which purports to teach methods of astral projection, remote viewing, and "patterning" one's reality. Along the way Lieutenant Colonel Wayne C. McDonnell accidently explains how the whole universe works. Army Intelligence's conclusion? Yep, it's all real. The Nonsense Bazaar's conclusion? There's something weird going on here.

We all know reality television is bad for the audience's brains, but what about the contestants themselves? In this episode, Willow brings in the untold story of one of the most notorious "villains" in reality television history and how the producers of "Naked and Afraid" created a character and reality that simply does not exist, yet which the real Honora Bowen can't escape.