#625: Maxine Dietrich

A.k.a. Andrea Herrington (real name)

Maxine Dietrich is the founder of Joy of Satan, which is a noe-nazi satanic UFO cult, and yes, you read that right (the website is here), and off we go. According to Dietrich, her brand of spiritual Satanism differs from other religions in that everything can apparently be explained scientifically, including the astral plane, our souls, telepathy, magic experiences, and the very real, anthropomorphic deity she worships (Satan is not “evil”; “good” and “evil” are “nothing more than cultural concepts; Satan transcends this,” which, though it is a feeble attempt at postmodern relativism, makes no real sense). How does science explain her religion? “Our limited understanding of Quantum Physics has revealed a bit about the human soul.”

Ah, I see.

“How”, you may ask – though you probably won’t, since you probably suspect that you won’t get a particularly informative answer. Anyways, here goes Dietrich”s scientific, quantum explanation of it all: According to Dietrich “Kirlian Photography” reveals “the fact that we have an aura. Kirlian photography is a specialized form of photography, along the same lines as x-ray imaging.” I don’t suppose it really surprised you that Dietrich would be unable to distinguish science from incoherent woo, or distinguish scientific evidence from idle speculation (there is also this)?

Furthermore, according to Dietrich, “the U.S. Government and other world powers are well aware of this ability within humans and the reality of psychic warfare, though they keep much of this from the public.” The Catholic Church, for instance, is a Jewish conspiracy – according to Dietrich, all of their leaders are really Jews, and aliens are behind Christianity – in particular, Christianitly was instigated by a group she refers to as “the Intergalactic Federation (IGF)” (these guys – they don’t seem very nice). Christianity itself was their program “for the destruction of Aryan peoples”. Furthermore “Satan and the Original Gods are from Orion. The IGF is at war with Orion.” I guess that explains a lot. Poor Orion.

I think I’ll let readers rummage through that webpage for themselves (this quote is telling). Its crazy is fascinating in a Gene Ray-sense. It is admittedly hard to find any reliable information about the size of Dietrich’s church or the extent of her brand of theistic satanism, but it doesn’t seem to be too influential.

Dietrich’s husband, Clifford Herrington, used to be the leader of the National Socialist Movement. The connection between Herrington and satanism has at least made Hal Turner uncomfortable, but then Turner was an uncomfortable man to begin with.

Diagnosis: Fascinating, though her webpage design really gives her away from the start.

#604: Ed Dames

A.k.a. “Dr. Doom”

The absolutely legendary Major Edward Dames is a retired US Army soldier who worked as a remote viewer in Project Star Gate and was trained by the equally legendary Ingo Swann (though Dames quickly became known as “extreme”, having target sessions on Mars, Atlantis, and alien spacecrafts). After he left the military Dames founded the company Psi Tech to offer his remote viewing services to the general public. Much hilarity would ensue, though Dames has not yet quite got the joke.

For these purposes Dames teamed up with Harry Deligter, a guy who ran a company producing videos on paranormal subjects. The companionship ended in a court settlement after Dames ran off with some of Deligter’s material and tried to produce them with his own employee F.M. Bonsall. After the court case Dames was apparently forced to retire, and his ex-wife Joni Dourif took over Psi Tech (no, I haven’t quite managed to disentangle the various intertwined narratives here). So Dames founded another company, the TRV intstitute. Somewhat later, according to Psi Tech’s new CEO Dane Spotts, Bonsall would break into Dourif’s house and steal lots of material that he would bring to Dames.

Psi Tech is still running, though, and offers paranormal assistance for instance to criminal investigations, as exemplified by (Spotts, Dourif, and others) making profound fools of themselves in the Elizabeth Smart case (also here). Their product is demolished by Randi here, but they nevertheless continue to offer educational opportunities, in more or less complete disregard of the fact that no remote viewer has ever been close to figuring out anything whatsoever.

Ok, that’s the rough background story. Remote viewing apparently involves viewing not only distant locations but also the future, and Dames has made a name for himself predicting large-scale disasters and destruction (hence the “Dr. Doom” alias, though something in the vicinity of “Nostra-Dames” would have been equally daft). Among the more interesting predictions is the claim that the world would be destroyed by alien fungus spores in 1998, as well as “the killshot: […] a series of powerful, deadly solar flares which will be impacting the Earth in the near future.” As evidence that he actually has the ability to see the future he offers the alleged fact that two remote viewerseach won the “Texas Pick Three” lottery twice. In 1993 Dames declared that he and his team had remote-viewed UFOs landing in the New Mexico desert, and that the desert is home to colonies of hibernating aliens. Furthermore, there were alien-human hybrid children in existence “not far from Earth.”

Dames is of course a mainstay on Coast to Coast AM, and particularly respected for his continued commitment to “evidence” for various theories that Art Bell has admitted to having fabricated (though it is easy to see Dames’s predicament: Bell makes a claim, Dames concurs and claims that he has remote-viewed what Bell claims to have seen; then Bell admits that he made it up … what is Dames supposed to do?)

If you want to do some remote viewing yourself, you can always buy TRV’s Magical Technical Remote Viewing Pen (now “anyone can learn this formally top secret skill and for less than a dollar convert an ordinary pen into a magic pen worth millions”). There is a fair and balanced review of said item here). On TRV ‘News’ you can furthermore learn that if you attend TRV University “… you will be trained along with the best and brightest minds on the planet” to use your Magic Pen to be able to “accurately sketch a nuclear weapon located inside a mountain in China, thousands of miles away” (wtf?) and “probe the mind of Osama bin Laden in real time, uncovering his current intent and next move.” (this was written before bin Laden’s demise, but I am not sure that would have mattered much). The “university” offers you a certification: “Having the Technical Remote Viewing Certification guarantees you a certain level of credibility amongst the law enforcements, amongst science and technology – who already know about us by the way.” I suppose. Whatever.

A too generous but comprehensive description of the failures of Ed Dames can be found here.

Among Dames’s pupils and, I suppose, TRV University alumni you will find the absolutely incredibly insane Aaron C. Hanson.

Diagnosis: Incorrigibly out of touch with anything but his highly incoherent imagination, Dames still manages to collect money enough to keep things going. Dangerous insofar as he panders to people in desperate situations, although the world would admittedly be a less colorful place without him and his helpless attempts to locate himself anywhere close to reality.

#218: Judy Zebra “JZ” Knight

A.k.a. Judith Darlene Hampton
A.k.a. Ramtha

Ramtha is, according to the press releases, a dead guy who led a huge army to conquer two thirds of the earth some 35,000 years ago. His main opponents were the Atlanteans, and the battle apparently led to huge, cataclysmic disasters. As a token of his goodwill, Ramtha is currently warning us about similar cataclysmic changes in the near future, so apparently we have to prepare. Ramtha also seems to have remarkable insights into various conspiracies, illuminati-type, ruling the world at the moment, and very up-to-date (read “trendy”) new age fads, including quantum woo and “the Secret”-style fluff and snowflakes magical thinking (“you are God” is one of Ramtha’s messages to mankind).

Being dead is no hindrance to spreading the word, and Ramtha is letting himself be channeled by JZ Knight (of Yelm, Washington), who makes a living selling books containing Ramtha’s advice and various healing trinkets (with her husband, James Flick). More here.

To help spread Ramtha’s important messages to mankind, Knight also opened Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment (rather a cult, really) which takes approximately 6000 students yearly and teaches them to utilize their inner wisdom and create their own reality (post-modernism is the best friend of stuff like this). Among the important courses offered is “breathing”, which seems less interesting than the various classes focusing on drug use (through which the students are sent on their to becoming as "enlightened" as other shamans, or even "real magicians" who can alter the world and reality at will). Among the powers good students will obtain are (seriously!) raising the dead, freezing a rocket in mid-air, make gold appear out of thin air, and predicting the future. It is unknown whether the school has produced any GPA above 2.0 yet. Eventually psychic progress will lead to "ascension" of the body into the "Void", what Knight calls the ultimate spiritual state (an uncanny version of “graduation” it seems). Students also learn psychokinesis, telepathy, clairvoyance, other ESP skills, and that HIV is nature’s way to get rid of homosexuality. To ensure obedience, the school teaches that “unless students remain faithful to Ramtha, they will become prey of the "lizard people", and that the ancient figure of Jehovah would return to earth accompanied by lizard people, in a spaceship” (no kidding!). The school’s official webpage is here; their newsletter is here. It’s a little difficult to find the school’s faculty and staff, but former teachers have included the Wayne Allen Geis, Ruth Beverly Martin, spiritual teacher Whitewind Weaver (whom Knight later sued), and school administrator Mike Wright.

Somewhat controversially, Knight has encouraged her students to engage in tax evasion (since the government is an illusion and the US will be invaded by Chinese communists right away).

Among the school’s more successful ventures was the creation of the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know”.

J.Z. Knight was previously heavily promoted by the clinically delusional Shirley MacLaine.

As an interesting aside, Don & Carol Croft (covered earlier) seem to think that she is some kind of front for alien lizard people, Tavistock and the Rothschild family, and (like many psychics) is secretly working to open some time tunnels or other. They talk about “Ramtha hives” of lizard people. It is not completely clear and has something to do with Montauk and Al Bielek (also covered earlier) – try to make sense of it yourself; also covered in this, uh, remarkable diary.

Diagnosis: The very queen of new age insanity, one step up from Deepak Chopra. Severely mentally challenged, and in fact rather dangerous.

#213: Larry Klayman

Larry Klayman is a legend in the law business for his long row of knee-jerk, utterly unhinged lawsuits. The founder and chief representative of the Miami and D.C. based Klayman Law Firm, Larry is best known as the founder and former Chairman of Judicial Watch (which Larry has, of course, subsequently sued as well). Judicial Watch gained notoriety through the initiation of 18 civil lawsuits against the Clinton Administration, and subsequently an unsuccessful lawsuit against Vice-President Dick Cheney in order to obtain information about the White House's energy task force. He currently runs an organization called “Freedom Watch”.

Among the lawsuits Klayman has filed is (at least) one against the Islamic Center in Manhatten on the grounds that the project was a “nuisance”.

Klayman is predictably enough among those who suspect Obama of harboring secret, less than benign motives: “Despite Obama's early claims that his is a Christian, the American people are not stupid. Simply calling oneself a Christian, does not make one a Christian. Obama's heart tilts toward radical Islam and the terrorist states which it foments". He also argued that Obama was behind the swine flu. His evidence is a little unclear. He has also raged about what he perceives as a government conspiracy to hide evidence for extra-terrestrial life (yes, that’s the level his mind operates at).

Klayman likes attention, and has apparently realized that making a fool of himself is a good way to get it.
Diagnosis: Legendary kook, and a rather entertaining one. Probably relatively harmless.

#178: Arthur David Horn

Arthur David Horn is not a creationist. He believes in guided evolution, a view that is common enough among religiously oriented Americans. But he’s got his own twist, of course. Modern man isn't the result of natural selection selection. Rather, evolution was artificially controlled by reptilian extraterrestrials who bred mankind as servants and continue to rule the planet today (from the shadows). The reptilians, devious rascals as they are, have subtly altered our perception of and understanding of history and hold power over humankind. They operate by directly controlling an elite group of humans. Can you guess who? Well, if it is not the Jews, it must be … the Illuminati (just spot the eye in the dollar bill!). He presented his views during a "Galactic Gathering" organized by The Institute for the Study of Galactic Civilizations. I cannot really find a website, but some info is given here, or perhaps here, or here - all seem delightfully whacky and unprofessional.

At least here you have Horn himself, giving you the details of his theory (including the twelfth planet). He even has Sumerian hieroglyphs and interpretations of them – and a fascinating web design. Horn was a pupil of Zecharia Sitchin. Guess which planet the twelfth one is … yep, it’s Nibiru, of Mayan Calendar fame. (We had planned an entry for Sitchin, but he disqualified himself by dying October 9th last year; a real pity – he was a gem).

For more on lizard people, you can check out the discussions on the blog belonging to the seriously mentally challenged (but British) David Icke.

Funny thing is that Horn (apparently) has a Ph.D. from Yale and was employed by Academia for a while (a biologist, in fact), but apparently something happened. It is claimed that it all changed when Arthur met his wife Lynette, a “metaphysical healer”, but something must have gone wrong before then, given that they met in July of 1988 when they spent a week in Northern California's Trinity Mountains searching for Sasquatch, commonly known as Bigfoot.

PZ Myers puts it in context here.

Diagnosis: Totally insane, of course, but completely harmless and kinda cute.

#176: Richard C. Hoagland

Up next is one of the main entries of our Encyclopedia of Loons, Richard Hoagland. He is, according the Enterprise Mission (Hoagland’s own organization), a former space museum curator, NASA advisor, and science adviser to Walter Cronkite and CBS news. Some window-dressing of facts is evidently going on here, as it is with respect to the claim that the Enterprise Mission is supported by many NASA senior officials, and has visited NASA centers multiple times.

Thing is, Richard Hoagland is ravingly insane. It is presumably in virtue of this qualification that he is also on the Board of Directors for American Antigravity.

Among other things, Hoagland is one of the most active promoters of Däniken-like theories in the States, and was the first to procure the ultimate evidence for the existence of a high-tech civilization period prior to the known Egyptian civilization, namely the infamous Abydo helicopter.

He is perhaps most famous, however, for his theory that the Face on Mars in Cydonia Mensae was made by aliens. He offers as proof many coincidences about ratios of angles formed by structures in Cydonia Mensae, most of which are made up. The rest is pure numerology. Apparently (according to Hoagland) it has something to do with crop circles.

But even that is only a start. Among his other claims is that Iapetus (one of Saturn’s moons) is artificial, and that there are semi-transparent glass structures on the moon. Now, you might ask: if these claims were true, why are they not better known?

Ahh … you don’t really need to ask, do you?

You see, NASA has covered up nearly every discovery they’ve made through space exploration (it is a little unclear why), and the conspiracy that the moon-landing was a hoax (common enough in Hoagland’s natural habitat) was set forth by NASA itself to divert attention from the real issues. NASA also murdered the Apollo 13 astronauts. And 9/11 was a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy with the US government. The 12 moon-walkers, who would be qualified to confirm the existence of lunar artifacts and glass structures, have of course had their memories selectively edited via hypnosis so that they no longer remember seeing evidence of a lunar civilization. Furthermore, interplanetary warfare is currently being waged right now in Earth orbit, conducted by factions of a secret supra-national World Government.

To give you a taster of Hoagland’s deranged mind, he claims that The Norwegian Spiral was more than a Russian missile test failing; rather, a torsion field weapon intercepted the missile
in mid-flight. Who was behind it? Well, most probably one of many "Nazi-derived off-world colonies". For what purpose? To intimidate Obama (who was accepting his Nobel Peace prize in Oslo at that time) – and it was successful, Hoagland claims, since Obama subsequently cancelled the Constellation program. Hence, Obama was "blackmailed (...) Into "imprisoning" Humanity on Earth ....". Oh, those darn Jewish-Masonic Nazi Muslim Aliens terrorizing the stratosphere, always causing trouble.

He has also proposed a form of physics he calls 'hyperdimensional physics' based on the work of pseudoscientific overunity claimant Thomas E. Bearden (briefly discussed here), who might be a notch more delusionally cranky than even Hoagland, thus proving to be an irresistible magnet for the latter.

Hoagland is discussed in some detail here, and there is more food for thought in the wikipedia article (he is, among other things, a global warming denialist, though for interesting and unusual reasons).

Diagnosis: Astronomy’s answer to Ken Ham – with conspiracy theories attached (every conceivable one) – who thinks X-files is a documentary and apparently believes every single random claim that enters his head (entertaining a hypothesis without accepting it is apparently not a skill he has managed to develop). It is unclear how harmful he is, but he has achieved some notoriety and fame. Well deserved.

#27: Al Bielek

Al Bielek claims to have been involved in The Philadelphia Experiment as well as The Montauk Project. Bielek believes he was placed into another person's body back in time, and was age recessed as well as physically recessed. He currently gives lectures and is involved in numerous books, retelling his stories and explaining his involvement with both The Montauk Project and The Philadelphia Experiment. He traveled in time to ancient times (6452 B.C.) and met himself in the future during those experiments.

Interviewed here (whale.to’s interviewer, Preston Nichols, is very sympathetic – he will receive his own entry in due time).

Apparently the leader of the experiment was John von Neumann (who died many years before). Bielek’s explanation for that fact is:

“He was still alive up until 1989. He has run into a problem with the government as well as other problems, such as a personality split in 1977, when he resigned as director and became a consultant. The government told everyone he died in 1956. The government is still interacting with him.”

Read that quote a couple of times to get the full gist of it.

Another priceless quote:
“No one has picked up a tangible future beyond 2012 AD. There is a very abrupt wall there with nothing on the other side. Prophecies speak of earth changes around then. Curious, isn't it?”
Not really, no. Bielek’s views are relatively predictable on these matters.

Oh, and about the Philadelphia experiment - the time travel is conveniently covered up by the government, and was of course made possible through the use of alien technology.

His website is here (warning: the lunacy here is boundless).

Diagnosis: Stark, raving mad. Ûber-nut (though he might at least initially have been a fraud); probably relatively harmless.

#21: Fred Bell

According to his own website, “… at age 14 Bell was not only working at the University of Michigan on nuclear energy projects, but was also inducted into the U.S. government's project called M. K. Ultra. This early mind control research covered such topics as past life regression [check], and the popular remote viewing used today by the CIA and other intelligence gathering factions worldwide [check]. ... Dr. Bell worked on a magnetic disintegration project later known as the Philadelphia Experiment [check], a high temperature fusion experiment, a bubble project later known as Cold Fusion [check] ... . In addition, Dr. Bell worked with the University of Michigan's Cyclotron doing experimentation with the bombardment of nuclear particles and their collisions involving reverse time as observed in a Wilson Cloud Chamber [check]. As a result of this, Dr. Bell built the World's first time machine called the T-1 Time Travel Transposer that allows time travel into the future in increments of microseconds [words fail, but check]. On his 17th birthday, he was transferred into the United States Airforce. There he began working on highly classified projects, several involving early warning radar defense systems and the detection and tracking of extraterrestrial craft [check].

He then left the defense sector and began studying with Himalayan Masters [check]. During this time he became internationally known as a contactee to a Pleiadean group of extraterrestrial humanoids whom were here to help the people on earth save themselves from their own destructive tendencies [check, I guess]. This group comes from a star system 500 light-years from earth.

Today Dr. Bell is a practicing naturopath, scientist and environmentalist, and political activist ...”

So what does he do? Well, dr. Bell is kind enough to want to sell you, for a fairly steep price, various healing devices of his own invention, based on for example Ozonic Electro-Magnetic Technology, quantum receptors, bio-plasmic energy (a.k.a. healing pyramids) to block negative energy, or the Amazing Andromedan Holographic Projector, which "when worn on the head accelerates the brain into quantum entanglement focusing mode”. Who wouldn’t want that?

His website is here.

It is discussed here.

A somewhat more moderate version of his background.
Diagnosis: Words fail. Probably harmless.

#15: Gary Bates

Bates is the author of “Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection", a central book within the Christian UFO movement. Bates is a Biblical literalist and creationist, conspiracy theorist and a UFO “scholar”. Official website here (apparently you can get a free anti-alien sticker for each book purchase; you can also take a quiz on the Bible and UFOs – Bates claims that the Bible is the best UFO book ever written).

Short story according to Bates: Alien stories are part of the conspiracy! There are no extraterrestrials – beliefs in these are just result of atheistic sci-fi writers’ biases and a distortion of the truth caused by the prevalence of the false theory of evolution (you can sort of see the strangely twisted reasoning here) . The true account of UFO-related phenomena is found in the Bible (demons and angels), but this true account is covered up by the liberal, atheistic government conspiracy.

You can read an interview here (from the creationist “peer-reviewed” journal Creation).

Diagnosis: Deranged dingbat who panders to not-entirely-conservatively-Christian but gullible UFO-enthusiasts and new age conspiracy theorists. Mad as a hatter. Impact: Might be able to influence the divisions of labor among already crazy fringe-cranks, and possibly able recruit some religious fundamentalists. Potential recruits must already be quite unhinged.