When Mac Tonnies’ final tome ‘The Cryptoterrestrials’ was released for publication last month, it was received with critical acclaim, mostly good.
Mainly the good receptions were from whom I consider Tonnies ‘posse’ when he was alive, but hey, loyal friends are needed in life and death, right?
Now it seems that there is some opposition to Mac’s cryptoterrestrial theory and no it’s not from Mac’s friends, it comes from a person who pushes the extraterrestrial ‘nuts and bolts’ theory of UFOs and that the US recovered an ET craft at Roswell, New Mexico many years ago in 1947:
In recent months a myth about the “true” origin of aliens has made a troubling re-emergence. Several authors and bloggers seem to once again be touting the possibility that the interior of the Earth is the main center of operations- if not the ultimate origin- of the various alien groups present on our planet. New books such as “The Cryptoterrestrials” with the bizarre subtitle, “A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us” by the late Mac Tonnies put this notion forward again. Tonnies’ delusional book is now being vigorously promoted by notable commentators such as Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball and Gene Steinberg. But the truth is that such utter nonsense finds its impetus in writings by the certifiably insane, in occult antecedents that speak of “master races” and in religious fable.
In Tonnies’ just produced book (published by Anomalist Books) Mac attempts to make the case that we should be looking down, not up, for the origin of aliens. Mac maintains that there may well be “indigenous humanoids” that are a race of people who quietly live deep below the Earth in hidden caverns, caves and tunnels. Such “cryptos” may be the pilots of advanced technology. These people believe that we should seriously consider that UFOs come not from beyond Earth, but from under the Earth’s surface. This supposed terrestrial race accounts for things that we previously thought as extraterrestrial. This secret and ancient race, says Tonnies, is a possible reason for flying saucer and alien sightings by people who live on the Earth’s surface. Such speculation should have been put to rest decades ago and has no place whatsoever in trying to discern from whence the alien comes.
THE SHAVER MYSTERY
Richard Shaver was a crane operator and welder for an auto-body shop in Detroit. Shaver had the idea that there was a race dwelling beneath our feet. He believed that this “underworld” was inhabitated by beings he called “Deros” which stood for “detrimental robots.” They were in constant conflict with another inner-earth race he called “Teros” which were constructive or “integrative” robots. Shaver attracted thousands of fans to this concept in the late 1940s when he began to submit manuscripts to Ray Palmer, the managing editor of the pulp magazine “Amazing Stories.” Though most of what was written in Amazing Stories was acknowledged as fiction fantasy, Shaver insisted that his story was fact. When a series of Shaver stories (collectively called “the Shaver Mystery“) were published in the magazine, the circulation hugely increased. Palmer never disagreed with Shaver – and Palmer enjoyed the boost in sales from these subterranean stories.
What is little known about the Shaver Mystery is that a diligent researcher named Michael Barkun found out the sad, sick truth about Shaver a long time ago. Barkun discovered that Shaver was hospitalized for psychiatric illnesses in the 1930s. Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he had spent much of his life as a hobo vagrant. Once settled, Shaver carved out a menial life doing welding jobs here and there. Shaver suffered delusions that one of his welding guns “by some freak of its coil’s field attunements,” was allowing him to hear the thoughts of tortured entities deep within the Earth. He began to discern a proto-language spoken by these cryptoterrestrials that spoke of marvelous technologies of aviation and weaponery. The “people beneath us” were a highly advanced pre-historic race that liked to come above to the surface and torture humans. Incredibly, even well after the publication of Shaver’s stories in Palmer’s magazine -and even after Amazing Stories went defunct- “Shaver Clubs” sprung up around the country to discuss the “mystery” even well into the 1950s. During the 1960s and 1970s, Shaver began to sell “rock books” through the mails by advertising in the classifieds sections found in the backs of occult magazines like Fate. He claimed that within certain rocks he found images of the Deros and Teros entites. These “rock paintings” were slices of polished agate that had grotesque images emblazoned on them by what Shaver called “special laser-like devices.” With a little imagination, even this author (who as a child, had purchased such rock paintings) could discern the strange cryptoterrestrial images. Today, as an adult, this author is ashamed at considering such nonsense. The authors who tout Mac Tonnies’ “theory” about such subterraneans should be similarly ashamed.
OCCULT ANTECEDENTS
Victorian novelist and occultist Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote such volumes as “The Coming Race.” Published in 1871, the book describes a vast subterranean world in which dwelled a vast subterranean world inhabited by a technologically superior “master race.” Like Shaver’s Dero, with their ray guns, Bulwer-Lytton described powerful “ray machines” that emanated an energy called “Vril.” Soon other books such as “The Lost World of Agharti” by Alec MacClellan appeared, repeating similar themes.
Other authors have proposed the idea of “ascended masters” of esoteric wisdom that inhabit subterranean caverns. Antartica, Tibet, Peru, the North Pole and Mount Shasta have at various times all had their advocates as locations of entrance to an underworld realm of sentients.
Wow, Bragalia has a problem with Tonnies’ theory, equating it with spiritualism of all things!
This is good in a way though, I think Mac’s book has largely had a huge pass since its release, accepted as fact without much scrutiny at all. Bragalia’s post against the theory seems to me as the proper thing to do.
But I don’t like his choice of words for the title of the post. I don’t think Mac was trying to perpetuate a ‘lie.’
Just a theory.
Like the ‘nuts and bolts’ “theory” of UFOs.
Read the comments section after you read the entire post, very entertaining!
THE LIE ABOUT ALIENS FROM THE INNER EARTH by Anthony Bragalia
