The Monthly Undergrounder

The Monthly Undergrounder is a counter-culture periodical, referred to as a "hippie magazine" in a phone call from Phil Isidore. In June 1968, this magazine ran an article about The Vanishing, titled "The Original Drop-Outs: The Secret History of the Vanishing" by Colin Anton Ressnak. This article mentions several groups and people who researched the Vanishing, including Celeste Roget and the James Millard Oakes League. The article goes into greater depth on Orrin Oscar Lutwidge. It tells of his background, his strange encouragement of the other conspiracy theorists, and his own disappearance after 1958 in search of "true Rapture". The June edition of the Monthly Undergrounder also featured a reader's letter from Flann McDonagh, who dismissed the idea that all of the vanished were "brilliant" in some way, saying instead that the real connection between them was the belief in Andrew Ryan's capitalist philosophies.
In May 1966 the magazine also published an interview with Lee Wilson Seward, entitled "The Grey Ghost of Tangiers." This article mentions that Seward's sister and lover both vanished in 1946.
==There's Something in the Sea==
Mark Meltzer first discovered this article of the Monthly Undergrounder in June 1968 after receiving a phone call from Phil Isidore that mentioned the article about "The Vanishing". This led Mark to research the possible connections between the Vanishing and the kidnapping of young girls all around the world, including his own daughter Cindy, in 1967. After Mark received the "Rise, Rapture, Rise" album in July, Lutwidge's quote in the article, "true Rapture," made Mark question whether Lutwidge might know the location of the "Rapture" where the vinyl disk had been made. This led to Mark's investigation of Lutwidge. Later, during Phase Three, Mark read the interview with Lee Wilson Seward to find out more information about the "Grey Pawn".
==Article Fragment Transcripts==
==="The Grey Ghost of Tangiers"===
22the monthly undergrounderMay 1966	 	
THE GREY GHOST 	 	
of TANGIERS 	 	
{| 	 	an afternoon with the infamous
 	LEE WILSON SEWARD 	
 	BY 	
 	COLIN ANTON RESSNAK	
Atomic Flesh. The Bourgeois Bomb. The Oblivion Hook. A Harvest of Broken Glass. The titles are
dark poetry. The books are sardonic and cold-blooded, interlacing the fact and fiction in a vicious
indictment of the 20th Century. Lee Wilson Seward's words have made him a major figure in his.
native America, spoken in the same breath as names like Mailer, Miller and BurroughsNorman Mailer, Henry Miller, and William S. Burroughs, all considered to be influential authors in the Beat Generation; Wikipedia ... but
Seward hasn't set foot on American soil in over 20 years. One hot afternoon in Morocco, I had the
great good fortune to sit down with the most dangerous man in letters.
MONTHLY UNDERGROUNDER: First thing's first. Why, after all these years, are you still in
Tangiers?
SEWARD: Because you're not. You, and people like you.
MU: (laughs) I see you're not worried about bad press.
SEWARD: There's no other kind. I should know, I started as a newspaperman. You're out to get a piece
of me. Something no one else has got. So spit it out. Ask me about Mimi and Elgar.
(Seward is referring to his half-sister, Mimi Tabor and his close friend and purported lover, avant
garde artist Elgar Vankin. Vankin and Tabor disappeared together under mysterious circumstances
in 1946.)	
Atomic Flesh. The Bourgeois Bomb. The Oblivion Hook. A Harvest of Broken Glass. The titles are
dark poetry. The books are sardonic and cold-blooded, interlacing the fact and fiction in a vicious
indictment of the 20th Century. Lee Wilson Seward's words have made him a major figure in his.
native America, spoken in the same breath as names like Mailer, Miller and BurroughsNorman Mailer, Henry Miller, and William S. Burroughs, all considered to be influential authors in the Beat Generation; Wikipedia ... but
Seward hasn't set foot on American soil in over 20 years. One hot afternoon in Morocco, I had the
great good fortune to sit down with the most dangerous man in letters.
MONTHLY UNDERGROUNDER: First thing's first. Why, after all these years, are you still in
Tangiers?
SEWARD: Because you're not. You, and people like you.
MU: (laughs) I see you're not worried about bad press.
SEWARD: There's no other kind. I should know, I started as a newspaperman. You're out to get a piece
of me. Something no one else has got. So spit it out. Ask me about Mimi and Elgar.
(Seward is referring to his half-sister, Mimi Tabor and his close friend and purported lover, avant
garde artist Elgar Vankin. Vankin and Tabor disappeared together under mysterious circumstances
in 1946.)	
May 1966the monthly undergrounder23
MU: You've been accused of being involved in their disappearance.
SEWARD: Elgar's family likes to make reckless accusations from time to time. But you can't charge
someone for murder without a corpse. In this case, two.
MU: You've denied all involvement in their disappearance.
SEWARD: The sad truth is, I'd like to find out what happened to them as much as anyone. It's my streak
of morbid curiosity.
MU: Mimi and Elgar moved with you here in 1945. What happened?
SEWARD: After the war, we were sick of civilization – all three of us. We made a trip here simply to
get away from things. Pretty soon the vacation became permanent. There was a persistent rumor we had
business to take care of back in New York. I argued against going. The modern city is a disease. It gets
into your blood like a stainless steel virus. I'd finally gotten free of it. But Elgar and Mimi were still
hooked. They went to the City without me – and they fell in with some odd characters. That fraud
Sander Cohen and others of that ilk. Very strange beliefs. When Mimi and Victor returned, they were
different.
MU: Some say there was jealousy. That you and Elgar–
SEWARD: Don't believe every rumor you hear.
MU: What about the rumor that Mimi and Elgar had started an affair?
SEWARD: Worse, much worse. They'd found religion. They were both glitter-eyed. Spouting off some
insane balderdash about how escaping civilization wasn't the answer. That what we'd better do is
rebuild it. That, I believe, is why they disappeared. The fools were looking for Utopia.
MU: You say it like it's a dirty word.
SEWARD: It is a dirty word. Perfecting civilization is like perfecting the gun. We already did it in
Hiroshima. The bomb is just civilization dressed bare. You want to improve this world? Set the bombs
off, all of them. Give something else a fresh start. The cockroaches can only do better.
==="The Original Drop-Outs: The Secret History of the Vanishing"===
12the monthly undergrounderJune 1968	12the monthly undergrounderJune 1968	12the monthly undergrounderJune 1968
the original 	the original 	the original
drop-outs: 	drop-outs: 	drop-outs:
The Secret History of the Vanishing 	The Secret History of the Vanishing 	The Secret History of the Vanishing
BY 	BY 	BY
COLIN ANTON RESSNAK 	COLIN ANTON RESSNAK 	COLIN ANTON RESSNAK
 	
In the wake of World War II, hundreds - possibly thousands - of
people simply vanished, including some of the world's most uncom-
promising and unappreciated talents in the world of art, science and
industry.	
Where did they all go? 	Where did they all go? 	Where did they all go?
And why? 	And why? 	And why?
I'm sitting in the sun dappled kitchen of a Burbank prefab house on an unseasonably warm
March day. The yells of kids playing kickball echo from the backyard while Mom, in her
green polyester sundress, cuts tuna sandwiches into neat triangular strips. There's only one
thing wrong with this scene's serene suburban squareness:
The List.
Tacked to the walls are seven huge scrolls of butcher paper covered in neat, cramped
handwriting. They're in different colors and festooned with orgies of strange punctuations -
stars, asterisks, hearts and diamonds. And every single one of these tiny entries is the name
of a person who's been missing, presumed dead, for about two decades. As I stare, utterly
transfixed, at the wall, aeronautics engineer Arthur Gene Tuggle offers me the plate of care-
fully de-crusted sandwich fingers that his wife, Anna May, just made.
"How many?" I ask.
"Well," he drawls, "That depends on who you ask. That's why Anna May came up with all the
symbols. We're comparing our list with the other folk's lists. The other researchers," Arthur
explains. "Some say it's just a few dozen that can't be explained. Others estimate it's
hundreds, maybe even thousands."
Thousands? I almost choke on my sandwich finger.
"That seems high to me." Arthur shrugs amiably "We're all just guessing."	
I'm sitting in the sun dappled kitchen of a Burbank prefab house on an unseasonably warm
March day. The yells of kids playing kickball echo from the backyard while Mom, in her
green polyester sundress, cuts tuna sandwiches into neat triangular strips. There's only one
thing wrong with this scene's serene suburban squareness:
The List.
Tacked to the walls are seven huge scrolls of butcher paper covered in neat, cramped
handwriting. They're in different colors and festooned with orgies of strange punctuations -
stars, asterisks, hearts and diamonds. And every single one of these tiny entries is the name
of a person who's been missing, presumed dead, for about two decades. As I stare, utterly
transfixed, at the wall, aeronautics engineer Arthur Gene Tuggle offers me the plate of care-
fully de-crusted sandwich fingers that his wife, Anna May, just made.
"How many?" I ask.
"Well," he drawls, "That depends on who you ask. That's why Anna May came up with all the
symbols. We're comparing our list with the other folk's lists. The other researchers," Arthur
explains. "Some say it's just a few dozen that can't be explained. Others estimate it's
hundreds, maybe even thousands."
Thousands? I almost choke on my sandwich finger.
"That seems high to me." Arthur shrugs amiably "We're all just guessing."	
I'm sitting in the sun dappled kitchen of a Burbank prefab house on an unseasonably warm
March day. The yells of kids playing kickball echo from the backyard while Mom, in her
green polyester sundress, cuts tuna sandwiches into neat triangular strips. There's only one
thing wrong with this scene's serene suburban squareness:
The List.
Tacked to the walls are seven huge scrolls of butcher paper covered in neat, cramped
handwriting. They're in different colors and festooned with orgies of strange punctuations -
stars, asterisks, hearts and diamonds. And every single one of these tiny entries is the name
of a person who's been missing, presumed dead, for about two decades. As I stare, utterly
transfixed, at the wall, aeronautics engineer Arthur Gene Tuggle offers me the plate of care-
fully de-crusted sandwich fingers that his wife, Anna May, just made.
"How many?" I ask.
"Well," he drawls, "That depends on who you ask. That's why Anna May came up with all the
symbols. We're comparing our list with the other folk's lists. The other researchers," Arthur
explains. "Some say it's just a few dozen that can't be explained. Others estimate it's
hundreds, maybe even thousands."
Thousands? I almost choke on my sandwich finger.
"That seems high to me." Arthur shrugs amiably "We're all just guessing."
14the monthly undergrounderJune 1968	14the monthly undergrounderJune 1968 	14the monthly undergrounderJune 1968
Arthur Gene Tuggle and his wife are among a handful of people around the world looking into
a phenomenon they call "The Vanishing." They claim that between 1946 and 1950, there
was a sudden, large spike in unexplained missing persons cases on a global scale. It's hard to
ascertain the exact figures; there's no central clearinghouse for these kinds of cases. The
researchers have to glean their information from myriad different sources, culling details from
local police stations and unreliable estimates. Government officials look askance at their conclu-
sions. Some claim that in the Unites States alone, perhaps a half million people are reported
missing each year. Most of them are eventually "found" - in a jail cell, in a hospital, in a
Haight-Ashbury crash padHaight-Ashbury, street intersection in San Francisco known as the center of the "Hippie" movement in the 1960s; Wikipedia or on a slab. But every year, thousands remain undiscovered. Some
may be victims of suicide or murder, the bodies lost in the sea or remote locations. Some are
mentally ill or mentally handicapped. And some simply don't want to be found. Most officials
say "the Vanished" are just mundane missing persons cases - no mystery need apply.	 	
{| 	Some believe theVanishing wasn't aconspiracy... but amovement	
But many disagree. They claim that among the list of
missing persons in the 1946 to 1950 range, we find a
large number of highly functional, highly talented people.
The list includes radical artists, unconventional scientists,
restless innovators in business as well as "ordinary"
people who subscribed to iconoclastic notions of freedom
and self-reliance.
===Article about Orrin Oscar Lutwidge===
June 1968the monthly undergrounder22	June 1968the monthly undergrounder22	June 1968the monthly undergrounder22
kookier than JFK assassinations theorists, further out than flying saucer buffs, the smallcircle of "Vanishing" researchers includes some pretty unusual characters. One of theoddest was Orrin Oscar Lutwidge.
Orrin Lutwidge was best known as an inventor.His real passion was building mechanicalpuzzles but his fiendishly difficult devices nevercaught with toymakers. Instead, he madea tidy sum developing patented concepts formanufacturing, including dozens of innovationsfor the printing and reproduction industries.Like a less ambitious Buckminster Fuller,Lutwidge was a restless polymath, dabbling innumerous fields. He authored books andarticles for young readers; he allegedly consulted with the U.S. government on code-breaking during World War II; and of course,he pursued his on eccentric research into"The Vanishing." Being Lutwidge, he did it inhis own uniquely baffling way. 
For most of the "true believers," The Vanishingis a bit like a psychologist's inkblot test. Whenthe look into the inexplicable abyss that this missing mass of people left behind, they seesome exotic never-land here on Earth. The paranoid see dark government agents at work.And right wing nutters, inevitably, see the Commies. 
Lutwidge, apparently, saw all these possibilities — and more. 
June 1968the monthly undergrounder23	June 1968the monthly undergrounder23	June 1968the monthly undergrounder23
He corresponded with Celeste Roget, providing dozens of links amplifying her post-Blavatskian notions of Ascended Masters and lost Himalayan cities. He wrote letters tothe James Millard Oakes League, offering behind-the-Iron-Curtain whispers from samizdatnewsletters, hinting at coordinated plans to eliminate the West's best minds. He quietlyforwarded news-clipping about missing individuals to the Tuggles, extending their ever-growing list. 
But Lutwidge never, ever offered up a theory of his own. Instead, he seemed to throwhis full support behind whatever theory his most recent correspondent believed. 
Maybe he was being guarded; or maybe he was just being polite. Or possibly it was justa symptom of the insanity that some claim overtook Lutwidge in his later years. Between1956 and 1958, Lutwidge's correspondence became increasingly erratic, laced with frag-ments of poetry, nonsense phrases and references to children's literature. In one of thelast letters he ever wrote, he claimed that no on would hear from hi, again until hehad found "true Rapture." No one know exactly what he meant. All that's clear is thatshortly after he wrote that cryptic phrase, he disappeared without a trace — leavingprojects half-complete and business arrangements in utter disarray. He had vanished asutterly as any of The Vanished.
===In The Bag===
June 1968the monthly undergrounder5	June 1968the monthly undergrounder5	June 1968the monthly undergrounder5
::::IN THE BAG
Fringe Thinking
I'll admit your piece on The Vanishing ("TheOriginal Drop-Outs," June '68) was fascinating butI, for one, can't figure out what the flippin' mystery is.
My uncle vanished during this time period. Now,everyone always claims that the "best and brightest"were taken. That sure doesn't describe my Uncle Bill(unless by the "best and brightest," you mean thebrass fittings he insisted on using in all hisplumbing jobs!) But my sainted uncle does sharesomething in common with many of the other"Vanished." He was one of the hundreds who fellunder the spell of fat-cat Andrew Ryan's B.S. phi-losophy. Ryan was notorious for his screeds againstthe Church, the State and anyone who would rob aman of "the sweat of his brow." It's been clear to mefor a long time that a bunch of these "Ryanist"buffoons — possibly including Ryan himself —packed off to parts unknown and put their"philo$ophy" to the test. My guess? The narcissisticfound out the hard way that self-interest(i.e., "greed") is a lousy foundation for a society.Long may they rot!
::::::::Flann McDonagh
::::::::: Brooklyn, NY
==Gallery==
File:Grey ghost.png
File:Grey ghost2.png
File:Undergrounder12.png
File:Undergrounder14.png
File:Undergrounder22.png
File:Undergrounder23.png
File:Undergrounder5.png
==References==
Category:There's Something in the Sea
Category:Pages with written transcripts