Central to the Dulce Underground Base mythos is Thomas Castello, a flash gun wielding security guard at the base who—according to legend—led a revolt against the ET overlords there conducting ghastly genetic experiments, all part of a traitorous secret treaty between the U.S. Government and those dastardly “White Draco” Reptilians! The aforementioned revolt—consisting of lab workers and security guards—led to the tragic Dulce War where sixty-six humans were killed at the hands (or claws?) of these diabolical ETs, although Tom Castello was able to escape with videotapes and other materials which would allow him to blow the whistle on the whole rotten deal.

Afterwards, Castello supposedly shared this bombshell Dulce Base material with a number of researchers, one of whom was “Anne West.” After Castello came up missing in the late 1980s, West (real name Cherry Hinkle) shared this material with gonzo ufologist John Lear, which, in turn, led to the release of The Dulce Papers. It probably should be noted that Tom Castello was a fictional character (a story to be expounded upon by yours truly in a forthcoming book, so stay tuned!)

In the mid 1990s, a fellow named Phil Schneider picked up the Tom Castello torch, presenting himself as a whistle-blowing former Dulce Base employee with a laser scar on his chest to prove it.

Prior to his Dulce Base revelations, Schneider had been immersed in ufology for a number of years. Along with his buddy—a guy named Ron Rummel (aka Crestor)—Schneider was involved with a ‘zine called The Alien Digest that ran the gamut of the ufo-conspiracy smorgasbord: alien bases on the moon, Alternative 3, MJ-12, Richard Shaver’s Deros, Dr. Tellers’ Anti-Gravity research, etc, etc, the whole kit and caboodle of the conspiratorial-saucer set.

Schneider claimed that the reason he decided to come forward and blow the Dulce Base whistle was due to the death of his ‘zinester pal, Rummel, who Schneider identified as a former Air Force intelligence officer. Police determined that Rummel committed suicide in a public park in Portland, Oregon, in 1993, shooting himself in the mouth with a hand gun. Schneider claimed that Rummel’s death was actually a murder by Deep State forces designed to silence his UFO and mind control investigations.

After rolling out his take on the Dulce Base story in the early 1990s, Schneider became a rising star on the UFO-Patriot lecture circuit with claims about how he‘d worked at Dulce and apparently even had some laser burn scars on his chest which he’d show-off at conventions as proof that he was a survivor of the Dulce fire-fight. According to Schneider:

“Back in 1954, under the Eisenhower administration, the federal government decided to circumvent the Constitution of the United States and form a treaty with alien entities. It was called the 1954 Greada Treaty, which basically made the agreement that the aliens involved could take a few cows and test their implanting techniques on a few human beings, but that they had to give details about the people involved. Slowly, the aliens altered the bargain until they decided they wouldn’t abide by it at all. Back in 1979, this was the reality, and the firefight at Dulce occurred quite by accident. I was involved in building an addition to the deep underground military base at Dulce, which is probably the deepest base. It goes down seven levels and over 2.5 miles deep. At that particular time, we had drilled four distinct holes in the desert, and we were going to link them together and blow out large sections at a time. My job was to go down the holes and check the rock samples, and recommend the explosive to deal with the particular rock. As I was headed down there, we found ourselves amidst a large cavern that was full of outer-space aliens, otherwise known as large Greys. I shot two of them. At that time, there were 30 people down there. About 40 more came down after this started, and all of them got killed. We had surprised a whole underground base of existing aliens. Later, we found out that they had been living on our planet for a long time, perhaps a million years. This could explain a lot of what is behind the theory of ancient astronauts. Anyway, I got shot in the chest with one of their weapons, which was a box on their body, that blew a hole in me and gave me a nasty dose of cobalt radiation. I have had cancer because of that…”

After high-tailing it from Dulce, Schneider landed a gig at Area 51 where he witnessed Bob Lazar type scientists reverse-engineering ET craft and ultimately decided that enough was enough, he was going to blow the whistle on this whole rotten government-working-with-the-ETs-deal as well as everything else going down at Area 51 that included a mash-up of Montauk and Philadelphia Experiment conspiracies.

Phil Schneider’s family background was chock full of supposed paranormal intrigue, including claims that his father, Otto Schneider, had fought for both sides during World War II, first as a German U-Boat Commander and then later became a repatriated (ala Project Paperclip) U.S. Naval Captain who was involved in nuclear testing programs as well as serving on the U.S.S. Eldridge during the fabled Philadelphia Experiment disappearing act.

According to information passed on to Norio Hayakawa (from someone Hayakawa described as a “highly reliable source”), Schneider’s father was indeed a naval captain, but the whole German U-Boat story was a fabrication, along with Schneider’s other fanciful Philadelphia Experiment yarns.

Hayakawa also learned that the official looking Navy documents Schneider was famous for trotting out at ufo conferences (as evidence of his dad’s connection to the Philadelphia Experiment) were actually forgeries created on blank Navy letterhead that Schneider purloined from his father’s estate. These spurious letters—allegedly written in Otto Schneider’s own hand during the 1940s and 50s—conveniently name dropped many of the purported MJ-12 members like Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter and Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining. Even Nikola Tesla and J. Edgar Hoover got thrown into the mix as it was evident Schneider had steeped himself in MJ-12 and Philadelphia Experiment lore to embroider his own fantasy world.

Schneider claimed he had worked for many years as a private contractor on black budget projects like Dulce—in addition to a stint with the Office of Naval Intelligence—all of which Hayakawa’s source dismissed, stating that for most of Schneider’s adult life he was terminally unemployable, subsisting on Social Security benefits. Schneider claimed he quit working as a government contractor in 1993 after which he started his whistle blowing Dulce Base survivor bit. Hayakawa obtained a copy of Schneider’s SSI benefits statement, which stated that he received disability payments starting in 1981 at the same time he was supposedly working on black budget projects. Norio’s source further alleged that Schneider suffered from mental illness and was a self-mutilator, which explained the chest scars and missing fingers he claimed came from some ET laser weapon that purportedly zapped him during the Dulce War shoot ‘em-up.

These allegations that Schneider was a mentally ill self-mutilator have been corroborated by a recent FBI-FOIA release which revealed that:

“Schneider was a former patient of Dammasch State Hospital, Wilsonville, Oregon from July 30 1968 to January 29, 1969. While at Dammasch, Schneider was characterized as schizophrenic with chronic and differentiated traits. Under stress Schneider would mutilate himself for self attention and had amputated two fingers and a thumb…”

However, the strangest fact to emerge from these FOIA files was that Schneider came into possession of a large quantity of radioactive material, which in turn came to the attention of the FBI who investigated the matter. This strange story began in December of 1974 when Schneider apparently met a fellow named George Meyer at a tavern in Portland, Oregon, who asked him if he was interested in certain “minerals.” Meyer took Schneider to a house in Portland where:

“Schneider removed approximately 300 pounds of material…since then [Schneider] claims to have suffered from nausea, hemorrhaging and soreness in his extremities. He had kept the material under a bed in his room…some of it was given or sold to unknown individuals in Portland….

“On 3/22/75, a Portland source advised that he had been in the house of one Philip Schneider…at which time Schneider displayed a quantity of material that he (Schneider) described as being material he was going to use to make a ‘nuclear device’…[Schneider] lives in Portland in a very dilapidated house alone and is allegedly conducting unknown-type experiments in an adjacent building. Source claims he is keeping the material under his bed and supposedly had to get rid of the bed because it had become contaminated with radioactivity.

“[FBI Special Agent] O’Rourke advised they were unable to locate subject’s father who is a retired Navy captain but they were able to locate the subject’s uncle who is a medical doctor in the Portland area. The doctor was interviewed and stated that his nephew had given him two chunks of the material which the doctor readily produced from his office. After checking with Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA)…they contacted the State Health facility in Portland and, under secure conditions, transported the above material to their laboratory for examination. The material was examined and our Agents were advised that the material was indeed radioactive and at least one piece was identified as thorium…The doctor advised our Agents that subject claimed to have 80 pounds of this material.”

On January 17, 1996, Schneider’s no longer breathing body was discovered at his apartment in Wilsonville, Oregon, with a rubber catheter wrapped around his neck, and his death was ruled a suicide. For quite some time Schneider had been telling people about supposed murder attempts on his life, and to not be surprised if he suddenly wound up dead.  Schneider’s widow, Cynthia Drayer, contacted Gabe Valdez, most likely due to Valdez’s association with Dulce, and requested his help in investigating Schneider’s death. At the end of the day, Valdez found no evidence of foul play.

Whatever the case, Schneider’s legend lives on in UFO lore as a heroic freedom fighter and survivor of the fabled Dulce War.

Download the Schneider FOIA files here.

In the mid-1950s, Michael Barton took a pilgrimage to Giant Rock. Inspired by George Van Tassel’s apparent ability to channel ETs, Barton embraced the notion that the universe is composed of “mind stuff” that can transmit thought vibrations. On the historic night of May 22nd, 1955—his gaze fixed determinedly on Venus—Barton projected a “vibratory beam of light” and, using what he called “space telepathy,” broadcast the following interstellar message:

MICHAEL OF EARTH CALLING VENUS. COME IN VENUS. COME IN VENUS. OVER.

Soon after, a melodious-voiced Venusian informed Barton that he’d received his communication via “Telethot.” Thus began a dialogue between the two recounted in Flying Saucer Revelations (1957) in which Barton’s Venusian informant shared such enlightening nuggets:

The mystic purpose of all created human intelligence is to actively express love, which is the stabilizing power that harmonizes the impelling power of “will.” This brings about a balance – and is the primary law of the entire Cosmos…

Although he occasionally lectured at meetings of Daniel Fry’s Understanding, Barton was a bit of a recluse who adopted the pen name Michael X. to conceal his identity. Through his vanity press, Futura, Barton published a series of flying saucer pamphlets, many of which portrayed the space brothers as all sweetness and light. In addition to standard contactee faire, Barton dabbled in some of the more heretical areas of ufology with titles like We Want You: Is Hitler Alive? (1969), one of the very first books covering the Nazi-UFO angle. It was around this time that things started getting a little weird for the X-Man.

During one of his meditations, Barton received a mental message to meet at a secluded spot in the Mojave Desert for a face-to-face with his otherworldly contacts so they could lay some “important information” on him.  After arriving at the desert rendezvous point, Barton sat waiting his car when he noticed a glint of something in the distance and assumed it was the ET saucer arriving. As he walked toward the object, a sudden sense of dread overtook Barton and an inner voice instructed him to retreat post haste.

Just before he turned around to high-tail it, Barton caught a glimpse of someone partially concealed in the underbrush lowering a rifle, which he now realized was the object that had glimmered in the sunlight. Afterwards, Barton speculated that some Illuminati like secret society had somehow hijacked his telepathic transmissions in order to set up the ambush. Not long after, Barton left ufology in fear of his life to become a UPS driver.

In the early 2000s, Tim Beckley tracked down Barton in regards to republishing some of his old Futura books and Barton consented with the caveat that his Nazi-UFO titles be excluded from the mix. To this end it could be speculated that the perceived threat against his life—which prompted Barton’s sudden ufological departure—was somehow related to Hitler’s flying saucers in Antarctica!

For more amazing UFO contactee tales, go buy your very own copy of “A” is for Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees.

Much has been written regarding the brief but curious partnership between pioneering rocket scientist Jack Parsons and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, including a magick ritual the two men performed in 1946 called the Babalon Working, the intent of which was to conjure a child in the ethereal realm that would be called down and directed into the womb of a female volunteer. When born, this magickal child would incarnate the forces of Babalon and become the Scarlet Woman of Revelations, symbolizing the dawning of the Age of Horus, the coming new eon.

Jack Parsons received explicit directions from the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley, on a ceremony to summon the female participant for the Babalon Working. Not long after performing this Crowleyean ritual, a lightning bolt purportedly cracked outside of Parsons’ home at 1003 South Orange Grove in Pasadena, California, and seemingly out of nowhere Cameron materialized on his doorstep, a striking figure of unusual beauty with fiery red hair. Appearing disheveled, and unaware of how she’d landed on Parsons’ doorstep, the two soon fell into each other’s arms, spending the next couple of weeks in the sack getting to know each other on a more intimate basis. 1 Conversely, Cameron’s description of how she and Jack first hooked up was disappointingly more prosaic, but however their first encounter actually went down, the two began a torrid love affair that ultimately consummated in marriage in October 1946.

From the outset of their relationship, the specter of flying saucers surrounded Parsons and Cameron’s relationship. While sitting in the garden at Parsons’ mansion one day, Cameron witnessed a silver cigar shaped UFO hovering silently overhead. When she related this sighting to Parsons, he considered it a sign that she was the chosen one with whom to conduct the Babalon Working.

Parsons’ life ended with a monumental bang on June 17^th, 1952 when he blew himself to smithereens while mixing explosives at his home lab. There are those who suspect that the explosion was no mere accident, and that foul play was involved. Other speculation includes the theory that Parsons was attempting to conjure into existence an elemental being by way of an “homunculus” experiment—an experiment that evidently backfired in a big way. Crowley protégé Kenneth Grant suggested that Cameron—during the course of the Babalon Working—became possessed by malevolent ETs and this somehow led to his demise.

Shortly after Jack Parsons’ death, a swarm of UFOs reportedly buzzed the White House, the Capitol and Pentagon. These were sightings apparently confirmed by photographs, radar and pilot testimony, putting the nation on alert. When Cameron read about this event in the newspapers, she considered it a cosmic acknowledgement of Parsons’ passing from the Earth plane to higher levels of consciousness. According to Cameron’s friend, artist Allen Midgette, “UFOs provided Cameron with a transdimensional link to Jack [Parsons].”

In the late 1950s/early ’60s, Cameron moved to Pioneertown, California, just a stone’s throw from Giant Rock and befriended George Van Tassel. Inspired by the Integratron, Cameron had plans to build a Temple of Thelema on her ranch property that would consist of five interconnecting pods on stilts, serving as a beacon to draw in exotic energies, earthly and otherwise.

According to a poet friend named Aya:

Cameron had her visions out there. And she was going through all that spiritual messaging, and even seeing saucer sightings, and just feeling the energy of the ships and lights following you out there, that was just part of what she was searching for. It had to do with time travel and getting into the other dimension thing, which we’re so sure is there, but you don’t know how to reach it.

 

 

The unanimous winner of the “Miss Out Of This World Contest” held at Gabe Green’s 1960 AFSCA Convention, Daryle Nieman was described by the Los Angeles Herald Examiner as a “beautiful, blonde dancer-model who says she has a way of getting in touch with the real space people via a kind of mental radio.” According to Jim Moseley:

“[Nieman] and a group of friends had met a spacewoman named Soloma. Decked out in a white robe, Soloma discoursed at some length about interplanetary life and philosophy and then suddenly disappeared. However, Daryle stayed in “mental contact” with her, had seen saucers on various occasions, and once saw a space animal named Mika, which she described as appearing like a cross between a rabbit and a cat. While Daryle’s tale was no more convincing than the others told at Giant Rock (actually, even less so), there was something (!) about Daryle that filled me with the Will to Believe…”

Notes

Crenshaw, James. “Giant Rock Spectacle Perplexes: Was It A Flying Saucer?” Los Angeles Herald Express, May 31, 1960.

Moseley, James & Karl Pflock. 2002. Shockingly Close To The Truth: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist. New York: Prometheus Books.

Saucerial nuggets such as this can be found in “A” Is For Adamski: The Golden Age of the UFO Contactees available at this very instant form amazon.com

 

For those of you involved in ufology—or at least with a passing interest in the subject—the name Gene Steinberg might ring a bell as the host of the semi-popular Paracast podcast, the self anointed “Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio.”

A long time UFO buff, Steinberg was among a handful of teen-aged lads back in the ‘60s who started a flying saucer club in New York City along with pals Allen Greenfield and Tim Beckley.

Back in those halcyon days of pimpled-faced saucer watchers, Steinberg became a protégé of sorts of the late, great clown prince of u-fool-ogy, Jim Moseley, working on the staff of Moseley’s Saucer News.

Moseley, a long time ufological prankster, could be considered an early Discordian (at least in spirit) due in part to his involvement with the infamous Straith Letter Hoax.

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Steinberg was involved with the UFO zine Caveat Emptor edited by his then wife, Geneva Steinberg.

Recently—while rummaging through the Discordian Archives—I came across a couple zines called Crossroads Quarterly: An Erisian Journal, and was surprised to see these were a Gene/Geneva Steinberg production, featuring not only UFO related articles, but also Discordian material—hence the Erisian title—with contributions from Discordian Society founder Greg Hill, and fellow Discordian Robert Anton Wilson (aka Mordecai the Foul), including such gems as “Discordian Politics,” “The Sacred Chao” and “Dropping In On The Invisible College.”

All of this I found mildly amusing as I’ve never heard Steinberg discuss Discordianism, and the distinct possibility that Mr. “Gold Standard” himself is…wait for it… a closet Discordian! (As opposed to a pantry Discordian.)

        Crossroads Quarterly: An Erisian Journal

Crossroads Quarterly was published during the same time frame Greg Hill was living in NYC in the mid ‘70s—where the Steinberg’s were likewise located—although when asked about possible Discordian associations recently on the Paracast forum, Steinberg was excruciatingly obtuse regarding the matter. Granted, his ex Geneva seemed to be the brains behind Caveat and Crossroads, although Gene certainly played a role in the production of these zines.

         Back cover of Crossroads Quarterly

In 2004, Steinberg joined forces with David Biedny to launch the aforementioned Paracast, which streams live once a week (in the middle of the night) on the GNC radio network that features programs hosted  by conspiratorial minded Christian “patriots” dedicated to overthrowing the New World Order with alternative health cures like beet supplements and colloidal silver, whatever that is.

Back in the day (the “day” being about ten years ago or so) the Paracast found its niche primarily due to the influence of then co-host Biedny’s penchant, upon occasion, for outing ufological hucksters, and one of the more memorable episodes in this regard featured a sketchy flim-flam man named Bill Knell, who created an entire false history for himself as a supposed UFO expert, claiming he’d lectured at universities and investigated all kinds of UFO cases, when he’d actually done nothing of the sort.

Although Steinberg exudes the persona of the wise old ufological sage, his contributions to the Paracast (the dozen or so times I’ve listened) seem somewhat minimal, and the heavy lifting, by and large, has been done by his previous co-hosts, first David Biedny, and more recently Chris O’Brien, who eventually got tired of Steinberg using the Paracast platform for a never-ending string of email solicitations and wisely bowed out, leaving Gene to bring on other co-hosts to keep the Paracast boat afloat as it increasingly takes on more water due to fallout from a series of recent exposés courtesy of Jack Brewer’s UFO Trail, which includes these zingers:

Gene Steinberg Personal ‘Emergency’ Cash Solicitations Span Years, Hundreds of Emails

Steinberg Bankruptcy Failed to Slow Claims of Cash Crisis

Caveat Emptor: A Paracast Saga of Discrepancies, Omissions and Unpaid Restitution

Steinberg Court Docs Include Scathing Beizer Letter

The Paracast’s history of busting the balls of certain ufological figures now rings exceedingly hollow in light of these revelations.  Steinberg’s email solicitations—which must be well over a thousand by now—presumably started way back in 2004 as a way to raise money for his brother in law (BIL) who had incurred certain “legal expenses.” According to Steinberg, he (allegedly) forked over his life savings to help the BIL with the promise that BIL had some sort of stock sale that would soon happen and Gene would be paid back in full once it went through (which apparently never happened.) This in turn precipitated Gene’s on-going financial woes, and these weekly—and sometimes twice and thrice weekly—emails with such doom and gloom titles as:

“Living on Fumes!”

“The Landlord’s Warning!”

And the ever popular,

“Slight Progress!”

All punctuated with exclamation points!

Once again if you want to get deep into the weeds on all of this, check out The UFO Trail, but the long and short of it is that Steinberg’s perpetually teetering on the edge of financial ruin, basically because he can’t catch a break, and that the Man is keeping him down. On top of that, there’s always some calamity going on in his bad luck Schleprock life—from medical emergencies to evictions to tripping over dog toys—although none of this has ever affected his ability to produce the latest episode of The Paracast.

Gene’s apologists would argue that he’s simply the hapless victim of a series of financial fubars that have placed him in this never ending-Sisyphean cycle; whereas Steinberg’s detractors peg him as a shameless grifter using the Paracast platform to reel in marks to help him “get across the finish line” for the umpteen time. Personally, I think both propositions could be true, and that (perhaps) Gene’s just not real good at the grifting part, but is quite accomplished at mismanaging his finances.

But perhaps, just perhaps, there may be a third explanation: that’s where my closet Discordian theory comes in, and that what we’re witnessing—those of us who pay attention to Steinberg’s persistent dramas—is all just an elaborate Discordian put-on, the sort of sociological experiment Discordians back in the day became famous (and infamous) for.

You could equate Steinberg’s emails to the spoof letters of his mentor Jim Moseley a la the Straith Letter Hoax—or letters the early Discordians concocted as part of “Operation Mindfuck”—just to see how the recipients would react; to perhaps enlighten and/or blow their minds, and as  a method to test critical faculties; to see how much  and how long people could possibly buy into the scam, with a storyline that gets increasingly preposterous with each new email detailing Steinberg’s life and death battle against dystopian forces, or what he melodramatically refers as the “faceless corporation” that has kicked him out of  no less than four apartments in the last three years, not to mention a certain heartless Constable that’s constantly on his case. Of course none of this is ever his fault—that’s where the “faceless corporation” comes in—who seem unsympathetic for some reason that Steinberg’s always stiffing his landlords.

Steinberg’s latest gag is that he’s now under around-the-clock harassment by a gang of online “stalkers and haters” who have orchestrated a so-called “hate campaign.”  Steinberg recently made the seemingly spurious assertion that these stalkers hacked his social media accounts as well as his bank accounts, all of which appears to be dust kicked up to cloud his own ongoing series of misadventures, one of which was chronicled by a commentator at the UFO Trail about an incident that occurred last year when Steinberg blundered his way into the type of Internet scam you’d expect your computer illiterate grand-folks to get suckered into—not someone like Gene who’s supposedly an AOL pioneer, Apple products guru and all around computer whiz.

Long story short, Steinberg apparently got bamboozled by someone with the Twitter handle (you’re gonna love this) of @TonyGynnSex. Yes, you read that right —@TonyGwynnSex—who contacted Gene with a promise of “a huge wad of cash” in his immediate future. In response, Steinberg posted his bank routing number on his Twitter page when, it appears, what he really intended to do was DM it to this TonyGwynnSex character.Thus began what has now become known as the “merry chase” that included Steinberg wandering around a McDonald’s in Mesa, Arizona asking if anyone had seen “TonyGwynnSex.”  You can read about the whole crazy caper here.

Screenshot of the nefarious Tony Gwynn Sex Tape caper

(Word to the wise, if someone named TonyGwynnSex asks for your personal information, well…)

While all of this craziness has been playing out the last year or so, a Twitter group surfaced called the Scheme Gene Research Community (SGRC) that monitors Steinberg’s “emergency messages” and dishes out hot takes, not only commenting on structural style and the literary merits of his email solicitations, but also Steinberg’s many inconsistent statements, all of this delivered by the SGRC crew with a high degree of snark. I must admit that much of it is lost on me; you sort of have to be a Scheme Gene-ologist to understand a lot of the in-jokes that go on there, as well as references to the many oddball characters that inhabit the SGRC universe, such as Paranormal Davey, Porno Bob, and the Steinberg’s beloved pooch, a bichon poodle named Teddy Bear.

Apparently the SGRC is planning an awards ceremony (to be held later this year in the banquet room of the Extended Stay Hotel in Mesa) called the “Schemeys,” which sounds like it should be a hoot, and basically a way to recognize the many contributions of Schemegeneologists, far and wide.

             Promo logo for “The Schemeys.”

What’s really wacky is that the SGRC has spawned a whole subculture of Scheme Gene enthusiasts—or “Scheme Gene Heads,” as they like to call themselves—including a  handful of spinoff Twitter accounts like Teddy Bear Steinberg, and Scheme Gene the Musical, not to mention Youtube parodies like this one where Scheme Gene Heads croon their little hearts out.