There wasn’t nothing there. Everything was clean as bone: no tracks, nothing. Harold was gone, just vanished away. No one ever seen him again.
When I think on it now, it all is kind of foggy. Pa and Albert is both dead, and sometimes I get to thinking that maybe it was all a dream, or some kind of spell. Sometimes I don’t believe none of it. But then I can still hear that scream, and I still remember that animal thing thrashing through Bachelar Creek. I heard them sing to Shubby Niggrath, too. There was something, and it took Harold, ’cause he crossed it. I don’t know if Harold did right or wrong in getting mixed up with it, but I do know, whatever made Harold to make that music, no matter what it was, man, it made the best damn blues you ever heard!
Documents in the Case of Elizabeth Akeley
by Richard A. Lupoff
Surveillance of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood Church of San Diego was initiated as a result of certain events of the mid and late 1970s. Great controversy had arisen over the conduct of the followers of the Guru Maharaj-ji, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (the “Hare Krishna’s”), the Church of Scientology, and the Unification Church headed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
These activities were cloaked in the Constitutional shield of “freedom of religion,” and the cults for the most part resisted suggestions of investigation by grand juries or other official bodies.
Even so, the tragic events concerning the People’s Temple of San Francisco aroused government concern which could not be stymied. While debate raged publicly over the question of opening cult records, federal and local law enforcement agencies covertly entered the field.
It was within this context that interest was aroused concerning the operation of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, and concerning its leader, the Radiant Mother Elizabeth Akeley.
Outwardly there was nothing secret in the operation of Mother Akeley’s church. The group operated from a building located at the corner of Second Street and Ash in a neighborhood described as “genteel shabby,” midway between the commercial center of San Diego and the city’s tourist-oriented waterfront area.
The building occupied by the church had been erected originally by a more conventional denomination, but the vicissitudes of shifting population caused the building to be deconsecrated and sold to the Spiritual Light Brotherhood. The new owners, led by their order’s founder and then-leader, the Radiant Father George Goodenough Akeley, clearly marked the building with its new identity.
The headline was changed on the church’s bulletin board, and the symbol of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, a shining tetrahedron of neon tubing, was erected atop the steeple. A worship service was held each Sunday morning, and a spiritual message service was conducted each Wednesday evening.
In later years, following the death of the Radiant Father in 1971 and the accession to leadership of the church by Elizabeth Akeley, church archives were maintained in the form of tape recordings. The Sunday services were apparently a bland amalgam of nondenomina- tional Judeo-Christian teachings, half-baked and quarter-understood Oriental mysticism, and citations from the works of Einstein, Heisenberg, Shklovskii, and Fermi.
Surviving cassettes of the Wednesday message service are similarly innocuous. Congregants were invited to submit questions or requests for messages from deceased relatives. The Radiant Mother accepted a limited number of such requests at each service. The congregants would arrange themselves in a circle and link their fingers in the classic manner of participants in seances. Mother Akeley would enter a trance and proceed to answer the questions or deliver messages from the deceased, “as the spirits moved her.”
Audioanalysis of the tapes of these seances indicates that, while the intonation and accent of the voices varied greatly, from the whines and lisps of small children to the quaverings of the superannuated, and from the softened and westernized pronunciations of native San Diegans to the harsh and barbaric tones of their New Yorker parents, the vocal apparatus was at all times that of Elizabeth Akeley. The variations were no greater than those attainable by an actress of professional training or natural brilliance.
Such, however, was not the case with a startling portion of the cassette for the session of Wednesday, June 13th, 1979.The Radiant Mother asked her congregants if anyone had a question for the spirits or if any person present wished to attempt contact with some deceased individual.
A number of questions were answered, dealing with the usual matters of marriage and divorce, reassurances of improved health, and counseling as to investments and careers.
An elderly congregant who was present stated that her husband had died the previous week, and she sought affirmation of his happiness “on the other side.”
The Radiant Mother moaned. Then she muttered incoherently. All of this was as usual at the beginning of her trances. Shortly the medium’s vocal quality altered. Her normally soft, rather pleasant and distinctly feminine voice dropped in register until it suggested that of a man. Simultaneously, her contemporary Californian diction turned into the twang of a rural New Englander.
While the sound quality of this tape is excellent, the medium’s diction was unfortunately not so. The resulting record is necessarily fragmentary. As nearly as it has been transcribed, this is it:
“Wilmarth... Wilmarth...back. Have come... Antares... Neptune, Pluto, Yuggoth. Yes, Wilmarth. Yug—
“Are you...If I cannot receive...Windham County...yes, Townshend...round hill. Wilmarth still alive? Then who... son, son...
... ever receives... communicate enough Akeley, 176 Pleasant... go, California. Son, see if you can find my old friend Albert Wilmarth...chusetts...
“With wings. Twisted ropes for heads and blood like plant sap .
... Flying, flying, and all the while a gramophone recordi... use apologize to Wilmarth if he’s still alive, but I also have the most wonderful news, the most wonderful tales to tell him...
“... and its smaller satellites, well, I don’t suppose anyone will believe me, of course, but not only is Yuggoth there, revolving regularly except in an orbit at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic, no wonder no one believed in it, but what I must describe to you, Albert, the planet glows with a heat and a demoniacal ruby glare that illuminates its own... thon and Zaman, Thog and Thok, I could hardly believe my own...
"...goid beings who cannot...corporeally...Neptune...central caverns of a dark star beyond the rim of the galaxy its...
...wouldn’t call her beautiful, of course...dinary terms... than an arachnid and a cetacean, and yet, could a spider and dolphin by some miracle establish mental communion, who knows what...not really a name as you normally think of names, but... Sh'ch’rrrua'a...of Aldebaran, the eleventh, has a constellation of inhabited moons, which... independently, or perhaps at some earlier time, traveling by means simi...
"... ummate in metal canisters, will be necessary to . . . aid in obtaining . . . fair exchange, for the donors will receive a far greater boon in the form..."
At this point the vocal coherence, such as it is, breaks down. The male voice with its New England twang cracks and rises in tone even as the words are replaced by undecipherable mumbles. Mother Akeley recovers from her trance state, and the seance draws quickly to a close. From the internal evidence of the contents of the tape, the Radiant Mother had no awareness of the message, or narration, delivered by the male voice speaking through her. This also is regarded, among psychic and spiritualistic circles, as quite the usual state of affairs with trance mediums.
Authorities next became aware of unusual activities through a copy of the Vermont Unidentified Flying Object Intelligencer, or Vufoi. Using a variety of the customary cover means and addresses for the purpose, such federal agencies as the FBI, NSA, Department of Defense, NASA, and National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Agency subscribe regularly to the publications of organizations like the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau and other self-appointed investigatory bodies.
The President of the Vermont UFO Intelligenc
e Bureau and editor if its Intelligencer was identified as one Ezra Noyes. Noyes was known to reside with his parents (Ezra was nineteen years of age at the time) in the community of Dark Mountain, Windham County. Noyes customarily prepared Vufoi issues himself, assembling material both from outside sources and from members of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau, most of whom were former high school friends now employed by local merchants or farmers, or attending Windham County Community College in Townshend.
Noyes would assemble his copy, type it onto mimeograph stencils using a portable machine set upon the kitchen table, and run off copies on a superannuated mimeograph kept beside the washer and dryer in the basement. The last two items prepared for each issue were “Vufoi Voice” and “From the Editor’s Observatory,” commenting in one case flippantly and in the other seriously, on the contents of the issue. “Vufoi Voice” was customarily illustrated with a crude cartoon of a man wearing an astronaut’s headgear, and was signed “Cap’n Oof-oh.” "From the Editor’s Observatory” was illustrated with a drawing of an astronomical telescope with a tiny figure seated at the eyepiece, and was signed “Intelligencer.”
It is believed that both “Cap’n Oof-oh” and “Intelligencer” were Ezra Noyes.
The issue of the Vermont Unidentified Flying Object Intelligencer for June, 1979, actually appeared early in August of that year. Excerpts from the two noted columns follow:
From the Editor’s Observatory
Of greatest interest since our last issue—and we apologize for missing the March, April and May editions due to unavoidable circumstances—has been the large number of organic sightings here in the southern Vermont region. We cannot help draw similes to the infamous Colorado cattle mutilizations of the past year or few years, and the ill-conceived Air Farce coverup efforts which only draw extra attention to the facts that they can't hide from us who know the Truth!"
Local historians like Mr. Littleton at the High School remember other incidents and the Brattleboro Reformer and Arkham Advertiser and other Newspapers whose back files constitute an Official Public Record could tell the story of other incidents like this one! It is hard to reconciliate the Windham County sightings and the Colorado Cattle Mutilization Case with others such as the well-known Moth Man sightings in the Southland and especially the batwing crea-
cure sightings of as long as a half of a century ago but with a sufficient ingeniusity as is definitely not a task beyond undertaking and the U.S. Air Farce and other cover-up agencies are hear-bye placed on Official notice that such is our intention and we will not give up until success is ours and the Cover-up is blown an Sky-High as the UFO sightings themselves!
Yours until our July issue,
Intelligencer.
Vufoi Voice
Bat-wing and Moth Man indeed! Didn’t I read something like that in Detective Comics back when Steve Englehart was writing for DC? Or was it in Mad? Come to think of it, when it’s hard to tell the parody from the original, things are gettin' mighty strange.
And there gettin’ mighty strange around here!
We wonder what the ole Intelligencer’s been smoking in that smelly meerschaum he affects around Intelligence Bureau meetings. Could it be something illegal that he grows for himself up on the mountainside? Or is he just playing Sherlock Holmes?
We ain’t impressed.
Impressionable, yep! My mom always said I was impressionable as a boy, back on the old asteroid farm in Beta Reticuli, but this is too silly for words.
Besides, she tuck me to the eye dock and he fitted us out with a pair of gen-yew-ine X-ray specs, and that not only cured us of Reticule-eye but now we can see right through such silliness as bat-winged moth men carrying silvery canisters around the skies and hillsides with ’em.
Shades of a Japanese Sci-Fi Flick! This musta been the stuntman out for lunch!
And that’s where we think the old Intelligencer is this month: Out 2 Lunch!
Speaking of which, I haven’t had mine yet this afternoon, and if I don’t hurry up and have it pretty soon it’ll be time for dinner and then I’ll have to eat my lunch for a bedtime snack and that’ll confuse the dickens out of my poor stomach! So I’m off to hit the old frigidaire (not too hard, I don’t want to spoil the shiny finish on my new spaceman’s gloves!), and I’ll see you-all nextish!
Whoops, here’s our saucer now! Bye-bye,
Cap’n Oof-oh.
Following the extraordinary spiritual message service of June 13, Mother Akeley was driven to her home at 176 Pleasant Street in National City, a residential suburb of San Diego, by her boy friend, Marc Feinman. Investigation revealed that she had met Feinman casually while sunning herself and watching the surfers ride the waves in at Black’s Beach, San Diego.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth had been invited by a friend of approximately her own age to attend a concert given by a musical group, a member of which was a friend of Akeley’s friend. Outside of her official duties as Radiant Mother of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, Elizabeth Akeley was known to live quite a normal life for a young woman of her social and economic class.
She accompanied her friend to the concert, visited the backstage area with her, and was introduced to the musician. He in turn introduced Elizabeth to other members of the musical group, one of whom Elizabeth recognized as her casual acquaintance of Black’s Beach. A further relationship developed, in which it was known that Akeley and Feinman frequently exchanged overnight visits. Elizabeth had retained the house on Pleasant Street originally constructed by her grandfather, George Goodenough Akeley, when he had emigrated to San Diego from Vermont in the early 1920s. Marc had been born and raised in the Bronx, New York, had emigrated to the West Coast following his college years and presently resided in a pleasant apartment on Upas Street near Balboa Park. From here he commuted daily to his job as a computer systems programmer in downtown San Diego, his work as a musician being more of an avocation than a profession.
On Sunday, June 17, for the morning worship service of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, Radiant Mother Akeley devoted her sermon to the previous Wednesday’s seance, an unusual practice for her. The sexton of the church, a nondescript looking Negro named Vernon Whiteside, attended the service. Noting the Radiant Mother’s departure from her usual bland themes, Whiteside communicated with the federal agency which had infiltrated him into the Church for precisely this purpose. An investigation of Mother Akeley’s background was then initiated.
Within a short time, agent Whiteside was in posession of a preliminary report on Elizabeth Akeley and her forebears, excerpts from which follow:
AKELEY, ELIZABETH—
HISTORY AND BACKGROUND
The Akeley family is traceable to one Beelzebub Akeley who traveled from Portsmouth, England, to Kingsport, Massachusetts aboard the sailing caravel Worthy in 1637. Beelzebub Akeley married an indentured servant girl, bought out her indenture papers and moved with her to establish the Akeley dynasty in Townshend, Windham County, Vermont in 1681. The Akeleys persisted in Windham County for more than two centuries, producing numerous clergy, academics, and other genteel professions in this period.
Abednego Mesach Akeley, subject's great-great grandfather, was the last of the Vermont Akeleys to pursue a life of the cloth. Born in 1832, Abednego was raised in the strictly puritanical traditions of the Akeleys and ordained by his father, the Reverend Samuel Shadrach Solomon Akeley upon attaining his maturity. Abednego served as assistant pastor to his father until Samuel’s death in 1868, at which time he succeeded to the pulpit.
Directly following the funeral of Samuel Akeley, Abednego is known to have traveled to more southerly regions of New England, including Massachusetts and possibly Rhode Island. Upon his return to Townshend he led his flock into realms of highly questionable doctrine and actually transferred the affiliation of his church from its traditional Protestant parent-body to that of the new and suspect Starry Wisdom sect.
Controversy and scandal followed at once, and upon the death of Abednego
early in 1871 at the age of 39, the remnants of his congregation moved as a body to Providence, Rhode Island. One female congregant, however, was excommunicated by unanimous vote of the other members of the congregation, and forced to remain behind in Townshend. This female was Sarah Elizabeth Phillips, a servant girl in the now defunct Akeley household.
Shortly following the departure of the remains of Abednego Akeley’s flock from Vermont, Sarah Phillips gave birth to a son. She claimed that the child had been fathered by Abednego mere hours before his death. She named the child Henry Wentworth Akeley. As the Akeley clan was extinct at this point, no one challenged Sarah’s right to identify her son as an Akeley, and in fact in later years she sometimes used the name Akeley herself.
Henry Akeley overcame his somewhat shadowed origins and built for himself a successful academic career, returning to Windham County in his retirement, and remaining there until the time of his mysterious disappearance and presumed demise in the year 1928.
Henry had married some years earlier, and his wife had given birth to a single child, George Goodenough Akeley, in the year 1901, succumbing two days later to childbed fever. Henry Akeley raised his son with the assistance of a series of nursemaids and housekeepers. At the time of Henry Akeley’s retirement and his return to Townshend, George Akeley emigrated to San Diego, California, building there a modest but comfortable house at 176 Pleasant Street.
George Akeley married a local woman suspected of harboring a strain of Indian blood; the George Akeleys were the parents of a set of quadruplets born in 1930. These were the first quadruplets on record in San Diego County. There were three boys and a girl. The boys seemed,
at birth, to be of relatively robust constitution, although naturally small. The girl was still smaller, and seemed extremely feeble at birth so that her survival appeared unlikely.
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