My Top 10 Favorite Conspiracy Books

Here's a list of my ten fave books about conspiracies, UFOs, the paranormal, and etc. Even more than being books I love, the titles on this list are great for the "beginner" who is just starting to delve into these topics of interest:



10. Hollywood Babylon, by Kenneth Anger

This book isn't about the "Entertainment Illuminati" per se -- but it maps out the framework upon which much of that lore is based. Come thrill at the utter murderous debauchery of Hollywood (where life is apparently cheap)! The author/filmmaker was, and is, heavily into the occult, idolizing Aleister Crowley and working with such luminaries as Anton LaVey and Jack Parsons' widow Marjorie Cameron -- so if anybody would know about the Illuminati's influence in the movie industry, it would be this guy. Also had a sequel book with gorier photos.

9. Dead Names, by Simon

Purporting to be a history of the "Simon" version of the Necronomicon, this book provides not only a nice history of the occult in New York City and background on one of the most famous books of magic in the world -- but it also gives you an "insider's" look at the mass corruption (with possible connections to international espionage) of the various "Orthodox" Christian churches. You'll never quite feel like you're getting the complete story from author Simon, in part because the author is really Peter "Sinister Forces" Levenda (who has a great deal of fun with it all).

8. Subliminal Seduction, by Wilson Bryan Key

If you are into spotting the "secret messages" behind pop-culture, this book is the Bible. Key's ground-breaking work analyzes advertising for "hidden" subliminals (most involving sex) designed to help sell products. These subliminals include sex acts painted in ice cubes and the word "sex" drawn faintly all over photographs. You'll literally never look at ads the same way again; this might mean that you are going as mad as Key, or stumbling upon one of the greatest conspiracies of all time.

7. Hellhounds On Their Trail by R. Gary Patterson

An exhaustive look at the connection between the occult and the music industry, this book is a must for anybody interested in Illuminati/pop-music lore. As with "Hollywood Babylon," the secret societies within Music aren't named as such, but it becomes quickly clear that something bigger and more systematic is going on rather than a handful of unrelated cases. This is one of the few books that have massively creeped me out; as if there was something demonic hidden in the pages themselves (which I realize sounds corny, but that's how I really felt).

6. The Secret History Of The World, by Mark Booth

An epic overview of the history of esoteric thought since the dawn of recorded time, and of the secret societies that keep this knowledge alive (and hidden). You get a really good foundation in alchemy and occult symbology here, and it's stuff you can then apply to a whole host of other research. The only caveat is that, like "Dead Names," you always feel like the author is not telling you the full story -- or that he may have an agenda of his own (I am specifically referring to Booth's postscript entitled "Is The Anti-Christ Already Here?" -- a sharp departure from the balanced tone of the rest of the book).

5. Book Of Lies: The Disinformation Book of Magick

This is one of the very first books that introduced me to the word of conspiracies and the occult, and as such it was very formative for me. It covers it all: Crowley, Hitler, Sirius, William Burroughs, Lovecraft, LaVey, psychedelics, the Apocalypse. It will crack open your head and take you on a whole bunch of different directions (which, strangely, will all sort of take you to the same destination point).

4. The Spear Of Destiny, by Trevor Ravenscroft

This another of those conspiracy "meta-narratives" that ties together a massive amount of different people and ideas -- in this case, the occult, Nazis, secret societies, Christianity, reincarnation, and etc. And again, the narrator seems somewhat unreliable; but more than unreliable, he also seems somewhat mad. The conclusion Ravenscroft makes at the end of this book as to the Jews and the Holocaust is also quite jaw-dropping; the equivalent of driving a car steadily down a road for miles and then taking a sudden and violent left-turn right through the highway's shoulder and into a densely wooded area.

3. The Gods Of Eden, by William Bramley

This is, like "Behold A Pale Horse," a seminal work in conspiriology that countless writers have stole borrowed from. Bramley, a lawyer, systematically goes through the entire history of mankind, methodically building a case that alien "Custodians" have been manipulating humanity. Just like any good lawyer, Bramley will have you convinced of this tale of ancient astronauts and masonic secret societies whether you're a "believer" or not.

2. Sinister Forces, by Peter Levenda

I've admittedly only read the third and last volume of this series -- but its grand, operatic, all-encompassing narrative makes it a titanic work of conspiracy lore. This is Levenda's magnum opus, a work connecting the dots on everything from Satanism to JFK to MK-Ultra to Charles Manson to Jeffrey Dahmer. You can almost feel Levenda fighting off madness/depression/mania as he struggles to part it all down on paper; which is why, more than just conspiracy books, they almost read like works of art.

1. Cosmic Trigger, by Robert Anton Wilson

Yet another meta-narrative, this time weaving together the Illuminati (yes, referred to by name), aliens, synchronicities (as embodied by the "23 Enigma"), mind-expanding drugs, mythology...and of course Aleister Crowley. But what really made me place this book at the top is not just the skillful and humorous way we handles the subject matter -- but his overall advice on how to "handle" conspiracy/occult studies in general. Which is to say: keep an open mind and don't get too hung up o any one point of view (or, "reality tunnel"), as to avoid going stone-cold paranoid and get trapped in the "Chapel Perilous."

There were other books that I've also enjoyed that didn't quite make this list for one reason or another. I quite like David Icke's books, but they are hard to read straight through & are very derivative of other works (read "Gods of Eden" to see how much Icke "borrows"). "Behold A Pale Horse" by Bill Cooper is another book that I just couldn't read straight through, and was really bogged down by all the disparate sources and pages and pages of "official documents." Much of the MK-Ultra lore (Fritz Springmeier, "Trace-Formation," etc.) have some good stuff in it but also seems to go off the rails. Lastly, there's a rich library of conspiracy material with a specifically Christian view-point; I've avoided these in this list, as a lot of it hinges on "if you are not Saved you are going to Hell."

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Book Review: "Thanks For The Memories" By Brice Taylor

"Thanks For The Memories" is a relentless, horrific, and haunting memoir about a woman who claims to have been a "mind-controlled slave," "presidential sex toy," and "personal computer." Even if you don't buy the basic premise here -- that the author was the subject of a massive multi-generational MK-Ultra experiment that involved being prostituted to, and tortured by, many of the key figures in politics and entertainment over the last 50+ years -- this is is still a must-read for both those interested in both conspiracies and just far-out narratives in general.

In short, is there an "Outsider Art" designation for books? Because "Thanks For The Memories" would certainly fit into that category. It has all the aesthetics of a Henry Darger piece. Also: the text is one big "trigger warning," so keep that mind if you have PTSD, abuse issues, etc.

"Thanks For The Memories" opens with Brice Taylor (a.k.a. Sue Ford) being raped by her father as an infant, "signed" into some sort of awful multi-generational abuse/slave situation by her "Uncle Charlie" (which I elaborate more on here) then later "sold" to comedian Bob Hope in a surreal cross between a child beauty pageant and a "child slave" auction. These scenes are deeply hard to read, and yet at the same time bring to mind, at least metaphorically, current pop-cultural phenomena such as "Toddlers in Tiaras."

Bob Hope: Mind-Control Guru?

And yes, I did say "Bob Hope." He is one of the two main "handlers"/masters in Taylor's life, the other being Henry Kissinger. While Hope keeps her (from a very young age) as a personal concubine, pornography subject, and sexual "gift" to friends (the scene where she is literally wrapped as a birthday president for Bing Crosby is particularly striking), Kissinger operates more as a MK-Ultra mad-scientist. The goal of both parties is to both deliver sensitive information to high-value targets in business, entertainment, and politics -- as well as entrap them in "honey pot" schemes to use as blackmail.

Taylor also claims to have been prostituted to John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton (Jimmy Carter respectfully declined to have sexual congress with Taylor). Other alleged johns and/or pedophiles include Sylvester Stallone (who she describes as an aficionado of "dolphin porn"), Neil Diamond, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Ted Kennedy (a supposedly especially nasty fellow), and so on. Each of these encounters are delivered in excruciating detail, complete with commentary as to who liked rough sex, who had a bigger penis, what their bodies smelled like, and what type of underwear they preferred to wear.

According to Taylor, Reagan had sex "passively"

It is at this point that even the most paranoid, dyed-in-the-wool scholar of Mind-Control/DID/MPD/MK-Ultra/Ritual Abuse is tempted to drop out of Taylor's narrative and dismiss it as utter rubbish. Her credibility is not helped by the relentless, repetitive nature of the storytelling -- much like the carousel-type rides/devices Taylor claims to have been forced to ride as she received her daily dose of "programming."

This includes the frequent use of rhymes as "programming cues," which are particularly disturbing and begins to entrance the reader him- or herself. There is simply not a single thing Taylor has apparently done in the first 35 years of her life -- not a family vacation, not even the mundane acts of stepping outside to cross the street -- that does not get tangled up in shadowy men snatching her and torturing her with cattle-prods and needles, or Hope/Kissinger sending the young woman off to one political sex-mission after another.

I just can't figure out how she had the time to do this all. It would have had to be that she was watched 24/7 by several interested and powerful organizations, being one of the most important MK-Ultra assets in U.S. history.

Taylor repeatedly refers to herself in the book as a "human computer" and "robot"

I would have to write like ten posts to get anywhere near a complete breakdown of the major points brought up in "Thanks For The Memories" -- and maybe one day I will. We have major political intrigue, a whole system of mind-control involving "human computers" who retain massive amounts of information in "files" within their brains, and, of course, the "New World Order" (the masterminds of which are referred to as "The Council").

Now, there is a quick-and-easy way to explain away the deeply disturbing content of "Thanks For The Memories." That is: early on in the book Taylor writes she had two very bad brain injuries, which she credits in part for "reactivating" her suppressed memories of being this mind-control victim. The brain injuries: they "created" this whole story, right?

But you see: that is the "quick and easy" of assessing this text. Using the "binary" method of the "Ultimate Yes" and the "Ultimate No" -- it either has to be all true, or all false.

don't know where this creepy pic of Taylor and JonBenet Ramsey came from...but it's creepy

In actuality, however, there are so many possibilities here:

1. Taylor made the entire text up on purpose -- possibly, it has been alleged, even plagiarizing content from other well-known "MK-Girl" cases like Cathy O'Brien -- just to make a buck off the credulous.

2. Taylor didn't make up the text and honestly believes it, but it is all sadly the result of a delusional mind.

3. Taylor remembered some content accurately -- such as the sexual abuse she suffered as a child -- but other stuff like Hope/Kissinger was the result of organic/psychological mental delusion partially brought on by her head injuries.

4. Taylor remembered some of the content correctly -- including being in essence a "presidential prostitute" and Bob Hope's concubine. But that she unknowingly overlayed these memories with an elaborate mis-remembered conspiracy/intrigue narrative (including psychic adventures, the dolphin porn, etc.)

5. Taylor remembered some of the content accurately & was involved in a horrible MK-Ultra experiment -- but her handlers purposely gave her "screen" memories involving celebrities an politicians as to "discredit" her story should she ever wish to go public.

6. Everything in "Thanks For The Memories" is accurate.

7. Lastly, what I like to refer to as "The Icke Maneuver" -- 85% of Taylor's story is accurate, but she added the more "out there" elements to make it seem ridiculous on purpose, so she wouldn't immediately be "taken out" as a threat. (I'm not saying that this is what David Icke has actually done with his own work -- but he has most certainly been accused as such).

not a flattering portrait of the comedian

For example, one of the people who contributed introductions to the book confirms that he saw Taylor work for Hope decades ago. An unauthorized biography of Hope written by Groucho Marx's son paints a picture of the beloved entertainment icon Hope as a rather unpleasant individual who did keep a number of mistresses and concubines -- as well as actively connived with the Republican Party to keep Americans in the Vietnam War and so on.

The Jimmy Savile and Vatican cases absolutely prove to skeptics that massive conspiracies to perpetrate and cover-up pedophilia do exist. Schemes to blackmail high-value targets with prostitutes/child sex is a very common tactic used in international espionage. And there are simply waaaaay too many abuse/mind-control narratives similar to Taylor's -- at least in the basics -- to dismiss all of these aspects of her tale.

So to even begin to suss out the relative validity of Taylor's book, one would have to do a substantial amount of detective work -- using the book as a guide, not an impossible task if one was so inclined.

My personal take on the book, based on just what I read? Looking back on my "possibilities" list above, I place it so far somewhere in the murk between #s 3-5.

Or perhaps I've completely been, as the say, "taken for a ride."

And hence the inherent pitfalls of delving into these sorts of texts -- the ever-present danger of falling into what Robert Anton Wilson dubbed "Chapel Perilous."

Yet, the desire for even shredded tendrils of the Truth moves me forward.

You can purchase "Thanks For The Memories" at Amazon.com.

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Book Review: "Dead Wrong" By Richard Belzer and David Wayne

 "There are those in positions of power who malign the pursuit of justice by intentionally associating the word "conspiracy" with the delirious hallucinations of unbalanced minds. They're wrong. The real-world definition of conspiracy is simply; two or more persons agreeing to commit a crime. In short, they are everywhere, a constant component of daily events throughout our history, and are by no means the restless imaginings of an over-attentive audience.
--Richard Belzer, "Dead Wrong"

Richard Belzer, the co-author of the book "Dead Wrong" (2012, Skyhorse Publishing) is a synchromystic "nexus" in his own right; his conspiracy-theorist role John Munch appearing on more different TV shows than any other character. Outside of his main "beats" on Homicide and Law & Order SVU, Munch has "crossed over" in The X-Files, Arrested Development, The Wire, Luther, and a number of others. These "crossovers" are significant in that they not only have transcended the barriers of individual television programs, but even whole networks.

Munch/Belzer on "X-Files"

But perhaps even more "meta" than that is the fact that in real life, Belzer is a real, for lack of a better term, "conspiracy theorist." Or perhaps he is just a man who has a great deal of curiosity; an investigator into cases that are considered "closed" by our mainstream media. In that sense, he is truly not that different from Detective Munch.

And the book "Dead Wrong" indeed reads far more like a police procedural than a standard "conspiracy" text. Reviewing the deaths of such public figures as Martin Luther King Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and JFK, "Dead Wrong" places a strong emphasis on forensic evidence; while there is some speculation on motives and grander assassination plots, the focus always returns to "just the facts, ma'am."

Belzer and co-writer David Wayne's approach here, therefore, continually maintains this subliminal connection to Munch and the Homicide/Law & Order shows. And it becomes increasingly clear that these murder/"suicides," when seen through the cold, clinical eyes of the detective, have a whole lot more going on about them than the "official story." In the cases of figures like Monroe -- the forensic evidence of her death pretty much ruling out suicide -- this is quite disturbing.

Unless the forensics and other evidence that Belzer and Wayne so meticulously present here are falsified, "Dead Wrong" is a bombshell text in not only the genre, but in history books in general.

I do not exaggerate when I use the term "meticulously." If there is a flaw in this book, it's that the same evidence will be repeated over and over in the course of a chapter; though I have to wonder if this is less a problem with the editing and more of a conscious tactic to literally hammer home into our heads the importance of the forensics here.

While there's not a lot of actual conspiracy "theory" here, Belzer and Wayne come up with some very interesting ways of looking at famous cases that I never considered before. For example, the assassination of JFK. It is suggested in "Dead Wrong" that the reason the government engaged in such a massive cover-up was not so much because they were involved in the assassination (though a few rogue elements within might have been) -- but that discovering the truth about the assassination would in turn compromise other CIA operations:

"The cover-up was apparently necessitated by the exposure and implication of covert U.S. intelligence anti-Castro operations which were utilizing the Mafia to attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. It is an often overlooked fact that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Robert F. Kennedy was the most powerful person in the United States -- more so than even new President Lyndon B. Johnson. In the hours after the murder, it was Robert Kennedy and Kennedy loyalists who controlled the autopsy, the doctors, the body of President Kennedy, and the actions of much of the Secret Service, law enforcement, and emergency personnel...Obviously, Robert Kennedy was not involved in the death plot against his brother. But just as obviously, his hand was forced into covering up the true circumstances surrounding the murder."

The forensic evidence is inconsistent with the notion she fatally overdosed on these pills

So we have the idea here that the parties who engage in cover-ups might not be the same ones who have committed the initial crimes. Same thing for Monroe -- she wasn't murdered by the Kennedys, but the Kennedys had to conduct a full cover-up in order to keep other secrets safe.

"Dead Wrong" ends with an afterward by Jesse Ventura. He reiterates a crucial point Belzer mentions in the introduction and which is exemplified in the methodology of the book itself: the idea that the word "conspiracy" has been automatically conflated with "crazy" in our mass-media, and why this is an erroneous assumption to make. Writes Ventura:

"Another disturbing trend in recent events is what I see as the very intentional manipulation of the word "conspiracy." They would have us believe that any person who believes that something might possibly be a conspiracy has to be a demented individual. They make it sound like one would have to be crazy to even suspect that members of our government could take part in a conspiracy. I suggest that the truth of the matter is quite the contrary. As this book has clearly established, conspiracies are not some rare occurrence in history. They are common. They can and do happen all the time."

Unless reading a lot of procedural/science stuff deeply bores you, I would strongly recommend adding "Dead Wrong" to your library. As much as I like the more esoteric/"outre" books on these topics, texts like this have the greatest ability to change minds...or at least render minds more open to new ideas and possibilities.

"Dead Wrong" is available at:
Skyhorse Publishing
Amazon.com
the iBooks store, and more

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