Shaver Mystery

\* PROOFS \*
By
RICHARD S. SHAVER
in
*Amazing Stories*
June 1947 ed.

**what he has presented in Amazing Stories and which**
**has become world-famous as The Shaver Mystery.**

thing but misguided imagination, or who think
the whole "Shaver Mystery" is a rather stupid
hoax, the following words are to be considered
exactly that: more stupid contributions from a
man who is purposely hoaxing stupid readers into
believing silly things that could not possibly be
true. To "Police Psychiatrist," I fearfully apolo-
gize for suggesting they might be wrong, and that
a George Murmans might exist outside a man's
head as well as inside. I apologize to position
power and solemnly swear that nothing said here
is to be considered as anything but a rather stupid
hoax which some readers enjoy being fooled into
suggesting he knows more than he might publicly
admit of such things, and solemnly swear that
this is all untrue and he does not have to worry
about it at all.
To you gentlemen who are intrigued by this
"Hoax," I can only say you will find very inter-
esting data here, and that such people as pro-
fessors of colleges, psychiatrists and policemen,
mayors and insurance investigators have to be
allowed their foibles, and we can disregard the
necessity for considering them sane quite as much
as they can disregard (and do) the need for con-
sidering us the same.

FIRST, clarifying is in order. Letters in large
numbers have accused me of implying this
and meaning that — which I didnt. The con-
fusion arises of course from the fictional treatment
my message has had to be given.

Some readers have drawn quite a variety of
erroneous ideas. Some of them are right. The
truth is wild enough to suit anybody. But I wish
to get the picture clearer for them.

One of the commonest errors is in the use the
word "dero" has been receiving. Readers infer in
their letters that all cavern people are "deros,"
that "dero" and "cavern dwellers" are synony-
mous. That is wrong ! We wouldn't be alive if a
large part of the people down there weren't fight-
ing like hell for us and for themselves against the
true "dero."

A dero is a cavern wight whose ancestors had
the habit of bringing in the sunlight over the
penetrays. Their evil nature is due to a constant
"hearing" (telepathic) of sun vibrants because
those same penetrays they use to bring in the sun-
light and warmth were designed to handle
thought-waves, to detect and augment waves of
those frequencies heard by the brain. Their brains
got dis (infections) on the lipoid films of the brain
cells, where thought is generated. This went on

for centuries, for an age, and the hereditary result
was a dero, the ancient "Devil" of mythology, and
his people — humans whose minds handle only dis-
integrant pattern thought. ALL CAVERN PEO-
PLE ARE NOT DEROS, thank God.

The good ones do a lot of work for us, in
subtle unseen ways, avoid tamper accidents by
helping out a driver, get some doctor info on how
to stop a plague, and are the source of some of
our modern inventions by handing over sugges-
tions to an inventor, unbeknownst, because they
saw a similar device in the wreckage of the caves.

Even all the bad ones are not deros. A dero is
an automaton of evil, and not an ordinary crook.
He isn't that smart.

I would like, too, to state clearly and simply
and generally the main themes I am trying to get
across in my fictional work. Rap has given me the
green on such an article, and here it is.

I am trying to say that our civilization is a
sham ! That our education is a very shoddy sub-
stitute for what it could be if the truth of our
past were known.

I am trying to say that if we knew who and
what some of our present-day bosses really were,
we would be vastly worried at their apparent
careless and oppressive attitude toward ourselves,

136

PROOFS

137

the people — which attitude is shown in their de-
liberate deprivation of all science of the advan-
tages that would arise from a general knowledge
of and study of the rays and rnech with which
their rule is enforced.

They hold that they won't turn over the info,
that it is like an atom bomb in importance, and
they are keeping it in their own hands.

I reply that I wish they would, because so
many deros use it, too — and that they don't need
to keep the whole of that science a secret. So
much of it is purely benevolent and medicinal.
Truth is, they are not educated, do not realize
what they are doing in keeping the whole a secret
still today.

I am saying there are millions of people besides
Shaver who know there are vast caverns under
earth, full of strange, miraculously potent ma-
chinery — and that they do not speak because it is
so obvious that they would be misunderstood to
the point of persecution.

I am saying that if our scientists were AL-
LOWED to have but one of these machines
(which exist in great profusion and in fine repair)
for study, that our whole technical development
would be accelerated beyond imagination. I am
saying that some of our modern developments are
due to information about the Elder race methods
that filter through the age-old "iron curtain" be-
tween the deluded surface races of man and the
undeluded but oppressed races under our feet.

Man's age-old persecutors, the "Gods," the de-
generate debauchers, the secretive age-old monop-
olizers responsible for these delusions we have
and call history; the persecutors we have and
claim do not exist; the condition of war and
misery our races are in, once exposed would not,
perhaps be so terribly harmful to him, would find
a remedy.

I am saying that the people responsible for
filtering through to us some of the technical
secrets which find their way into our modern
technologists' brains are due to friends among
these hidden people, and that these friends in the
underworld are the only members of that strange
society that a sane modern man can consider as
also sane.

The rest would be beneath our attention except
that they can destroy us with the ancient mech
(and do, regularly, kill many), debauch us with
the ancient wonderful stim mech, and craze us
with the detrimental rays of that forgotten science.

I AM trying to show that it is possible and
probable that there have been members of that
society in the past who lived for centuries beyond
the normal life span — as legend tells us. That
they did so because of the nature of the ben-rays
and canned nutrients still to be found in the sealed
storerooms.

That there probably were rulers who lived for
centuries, and that some of the most repressive
and reactionary of the present-day rulers of the
cavern groups MAY have been alive for two or

more centuries.

That the medieval minds, cruel and vindictive
and vandalistic, are so because they are still in a
medieval state of development socially, and they
were raised that way.

That these secretive, reactionary, sadistic minds
among them are today holding back the whole
race of man from ALL true development. That
they are striving with might and main to place all
human life under a rule of a malignance unim-
aginable, that is so horrible in its aims, in its
degenerate cruelties, so destructive in its details
of government that the race of man will perish if
they succeed!

And you insist they do not exist — want an
"artifact." (Can you get hold of an atom bomb
to swap for the "artifact-mech" ? It's a deal!)

I am trying to say that the enlightened ones
among them who struggle against this goal need
our help if we can give it— and that we can't if we
insist they do not exist!

There are many things I have heard that I do
not know are facts. To mention these along with
the things I know are facts causes an almost
unavoidable confusion.

I have heard that surface light and power and
coal are possessions of the ray-people. I don't
know it, I heard it. I have heard that some of
them have harems of thousands of young women.
I don't know it. I DO KNOW they have harems,
and an oriental contempt for all western morality
— but because of the nature of social life de-
veloped around the use of stim-rays, I can under-
stand this different morality.

I KNOW many terrible things that I cannot
find a way to tell except as fiction. These are
things so lurid and impossible they are hard to
make credible even in a lurid stf. tale. They
could not be considered as facts by an ordinary
man, because he has not seen and could not accept.
These are looked for by those who know some-
thing of the great secret, and look for recognizable
information in the "forbidden" field.

I KNOW they have weapon rays that kill at
fifty miles and more. That they hit what they
shoot at with these. A man cannot even think of
such weapons without fear; still we must — and
they have been with us right along.

I KNOW they have telaug beams that hear
thought from a man's mind up to fifty miles and
more. That is an extremely sensitive receiver, for
the sending of one brain is not exactly powerful
in voltage.

I KNOW they visit space, and receive visiting
ships from space, some of which do not get away
again. 1 don't know why they return to earth, for
no one here is getting a square deal! The ships
that return must belong to those who think they
benefit from the repressive, throttling monopoly
of all the good things of earth.

I am saying that earth's peoples are supporting
a destructive, extravagantly luxurious and deca-
dent "secret class" who rob us of our birth right
— the science that could be learned from the

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AMAZING STORIES

mechanisms of the Elder race ; which same mech-
anisms are the instruments that have held this
class in power for many, many centuries.

I am saying that, due to many conditions which
we cannot understand over a long period of time,
many of these people are idiotic, and unfit to be
allowed to continue as our "secret" overlords.

I say that if people generally knew this condi-
tion, they would lose the awe and fear that keeps
from the race of man many great secrets which
would prove a new and greater path of life for all
of us.

I am saying to these men who cry : "we want
an artifact, an inscription, an ancient mss, we
want proof I " — you have proof all about you!
But your minds are so slanted by wrong teach-
ings that you misinterpret these artifacts and
remnants on the surface which tell the truth about
the God cavern's existence.

Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mayan temple drawings,
innumerable such sources are chock-full of refer-
ences to the caverns, but since the science which
interprets these relics has no word for any of these
"myths" except as myths, that is how they are
interpreted — as childish tales only.

Only by going into the caves and returning
with the actual pieces of mechanism could these
gentlemen be convinced. If any of the thing is
true, any logician can know that is an impossible
request. It is like sending an Ambassador to
Russia in a top hat and frock coat, striped pants
and brief case, and asking him to bring back proof
that the Russians are contemplating a world revo-
lution. He would be turned aside everywhere he
went, and would come back with what we already
know (if he came back at all — which is improb-
able) — "the Russians have an Iron curtain on
information."

I don't blame the Russians overmuch. But I do
blame the cavern people because so much of the
cavern mech is medical in nature. It would revo-
lutionize all medicine if M.D.s had penetrays;
electric needle rays for surgery without incision ;
beneficial rays that can keep a dying man alive
long, long after he would ordinarily die ; beneficial
rays that make a man think several times as well.
Their science was based on a knowledge of man's
nature far beyond our own — and nearly every one
of their mechanisms is of some immediate physical
use to health !

So we are deprived of them because they keep
some idiot in wealth and power, who does not
even know enough to have technicians hired to
study and develop a knowledge of the nature and
uses of these machines. Who has no real grasp of
the importance of the caves!

YOU ask for proofs of the giganticism of the far
past — and you can find Devil's Tower (Wyom-
ing) in any Atlas. It is a national monument ! If
it isn't a gigantic petrified stump larger than any
redwood ever hoped to be, I will eat my hat ! The
stump alone is taller than the Empire State build-
ing! What size were men when trees grew that

size?

THEY were the men who are spoken of as the
Aesir, under Ygdrasil's branches, planning a battle
against the Frost Giants 1 And they had telaug
beams (Odin's Eye), and they had "magical" un-
derground dwarfs, and icy underworld realms of
magic — and we have only the Devil's Tower to
prove it today. But it was a long time ago ; when
the sun itself was more beneficial and less aging.
BUT, BROTHER, HOW CAN YOU ASK FOR
PROOF WHEN YOU HAVE A DEVIL'S
TOWER?

Through our dope rings (now don't tell me
there are no dope rings) daily many men and
women are sent to the underworld. What be-
comes of them? They don't come back? No!
They become slaves or worse. In some cases they
are employees; but at the mercy of a capricious
despotic class who kill for pleasure. One might
as well be a slave.

These people leave no traces ! Did you ever try
to trace a man to a dope den? You can't. It has
"protection," and it is not a dope den. Don't tell
me you don't understand. How could I prove a
certain place was a dope den, and that people
disappear there regularly? You know even the
F.B.I. has a hard job with these things, never get
them all. I don't think they even touch a ray-
graft; because it is an old "taboo," and they know
better than to try. I think they leave it strictly
alone.

We don't know hoiv the secrecy is maintained.
I do know that it is, and that the things I say go
on, do happen.

But I could no more prove many such things
than I could prove that Standard Oil cheated on
their income tax. Nor could anyone.

But there is a vast number of eye-witness testi-
mony; there is a vast amount of writing from
the past that is misunderstood; there is a mass of
incontrovertible proof— IF YOU INTERPRET
IT CORRECTLY! But you don't I You say the
old standard explanations over and over — and
they are part of the curtain that has been erected
for an age between common people and the For-
bidden Fruit.

For the Forbidden Fruit is the greatest pleasure
on earth ; and from our present day standards or
morals, it is an immoral pleasure. Hence it re-
mains hidden — although the truth is it would be
the greatest stimulation our form of society could
receive. Men would develop — for it would furnish
a vast incentive to science and invention and
medicine (especially) that is now lacking!

As I see it, what the two classes, the two
"worlds," need most is a mutual port of trade, a
city or a market or a place where the things of
value from one world may be openly traded for
those of the other. For our washing machines we
would get telaugs and stim mech and small levi-
tators and similar apparatus which would be
infinitely valuable to us — and from what I have
seen, they could use the washing machines, yes I

Secrecy has acted as such a throttling thing on

PROOFS

139

their life that they cook on stoves Ben Franklin
would have called obsolete ; sit on wooden
benches; slave in child labor factories; are two
hundred years behind us socially. Many of their
pieces of furniture (brought in in past, much of
cavern needs furnishing) would bring a fortune
as Victorian and pre- Victorian antiques. (Not
speaking of Elder race antiques.) For, since the
days of telegraph and newspapers and radio, the
secrecy has required an almost total lack of com-
merce or intercourse between the worlds. (Before
the days of newspapers, there was commerce.)

And it is a world, the Elder World, and it does
contain wonders in the still working ancient mech-
anisms, but it also contains the most brutally
reactionary minds on earth; as well as the most
modern and liberal minds in certain groups.

They can't have radios, because radio can be
traced. (Many freighters had to give up radio
when crossing enemy waters, as the radios re-
broadcast a wave that can be detected.)

They can't have clean modern markets full of
good food from America's canning factories — the
commerce necessary to fill them would cancel their
"secrecy." Thus this reactionary policy from the
past is just as disliked and as unpopular among
them as it would be among us if we even knew it
existed. Thus such enterprising young men as my-
self have backing more valuable among them
than among the surface people. Truth is, I have
more friends among the cavern people than on
the surface, and far more valuable ones.

They want the ancient barrier to the full de-
velopment of their life removed, too, just as much
as "we who know" on the surface want it re-
moved. They want the sweat-shops made humane
down there, they want better living conditions,
better sun camps where they can take their days
on the surface without worrying about watching
eyes. They want less restrictions on their life,
and the "secrecy" custom is the most irritating
and harmful of all their restrictions.

Such things as Hecate, the blood-sucker, will
exist among them in the future if the science mo-
nopoly continues. Such things have plagued their
lives in the past when the great ben-mech rays
were more potent than today. The rays and the
superior nutrients found in the storerooms of the
Elders kept them alive much too long — and they
were evil. But we do not think we have any
immortal Hecates today.

BUT, TODAY, we do have a parasitic (class
of) creature battening upon us, who has de-
veloped a technique of parasitism as highly
evolved as a vampire bat's, and as ingrown in
his nature! This is the "reactionary" behind the
"secret" monopoly of the antique Elder weapons
and pleasure mechs — and he is the enemy we seek
to expose. He is the enemy I would die to harm
in any way; to wrest but one of the mighty Elder
secrets from Ms unworthy and unusing hand. I
would die cheerfully for the race of man. It was
what I expected when the Shaver Mystery series
began ; but I found there were more of the cavern

peoples in my way of thinking than I had ex-
pected. Publicity was its own protection.

For he deprives them quite as much as he does
us, and it rankles them much more because they
are fully conscious of his cost while we are ig-
norant even of his existence. We do not see the
young girls go into his harems; we do not see
their wrecked bodies later. We do not know of his
awful abuses of the rights of man or see the
tortures and battles in his game arenas ; do not see
the human pieces in his "Bickro" games. (Human
chess to the death.)

But they do know all these horrible things and
they want the course of decadence changed and
reversed as much as myself. So it is that we try
to give you what you naively call "proofs," it is
like a blind man trying to ask a man with eyes
to prove that he sees.

/~^NE either "knows" of the underworld or one
" does not. It is very much like a seeing race
with eyes living beside and among a race without
eyes who refuse their existence. BUT WE ARE
PRESENT AND WE DO SEE! (We meaning
those on the surface "who know.")

But for a man who doesn't care to go out and
question pimps and prostitutes, criminals and
dope peddlers, yeggs and assassins; who doesn't
care to pore over newspaper and police files for
strange and unexplainable occurrences, or Miss-
ing Persons lists for data on the losses to the
underworld; for a man who would like something
more than eye-witness accounts from the lips of
such "unreliable" humans; who doesn't care to
question the personnel and inmates of an insane
asylum on "what the voices say" (which I will
admit could develop into an embarrassing ex-
pedition), there is a simple method of proving to
himself that the Underworld (in the Classic sense
of the word UNDERWORLD) does exist in all its
miraculously preserved wonder-mech, building on
building and boring on boring, city bowl on city
bowl and city tier on city tier — deep in the earth
— peopled with a citizenry of diverse and numer-
ous skills in using the ancient mech to cause
miracle and devilment

This method is in the application of the Shaver
alphabet to the English language and indulging
the deductive faculties in tracing the words of the
Elder tongue which still can be found, many of
times in a good state of preservation, in our own
English language.

Those college products who have been endowed
with a complete knowledge of the past history of
every word by etymological wizards of the col-
leges, by those professors who assume that the
past students of the evolution of languages have
all been correct in their assumptions, and have
carefully grafted all this hoary paraphenalia of
error upon their students; those gentlemen are
the men who have the greatest difficulty in finding
any sense in this alphabet.

They cannot successfully make the mental ad-
justment necessary to a study of the alphabet,

140

AMAZING STORIES

because they cannot, even for the sake of experi-
ment, admit for one moment that it "could be\*
possible." So they glance at it and throw it aside
because it was not on the curriculum at college
and hence can be of no possible importance on
this green earth.

Nevertheless by its use the basic meaning sounds
of an ancient ancestral tongue can be traced by
any student flexible-minded enough to make that
initial allowance for a base from which to pro-
ceed.

These basic sounds, such as RA TE DE AN
BE CE FE GEN ENG I KIN LO LEE LI MA
MU MO NIN NE O SIS TEAT ST UND VI VE
VIE VIT WIN WER TER DER XE Y ZE and
RO can be found in so many words meaning the
same thing, in so many languages meaning the
same thing, that we get a picture of basic sound
meanings that we can trace back and back to a
once universal tongue. Gradually to a student
this once universal tongue emerges as Mantong —
and every word he says is translated by his mind
into its Mantong meaning, which is a greater
meaning.

It cannot be done by utilizing any system of
word derivation now taught; for they are false,
and it did not happen that way ! If it did happen
as they say it did, it happened long after the word
had come into use over the whole earth, and their
assumptions of its adoption into use and its
spread are consequently error because they mis-
take in a given language an already existent word
for a later derivation from some other word in
some other language.

It wasn't that way. They only had a common
universal source in one ancient tongue. If they
did derive from two or more Elder sources, they
still intermingled during the great lapse of time
to form a mixture inextricable today because of
their original similarity in concept-symbol or
basic-sound-meanings.

This point of departure on the study of ancient
tongues forms an insurmountable barrier between
the classical student and myself. He cannot ad-
mit to begin with that there could be possible a
basis for such an assumption that there was an
original universal tongue.

He is confused by the multitude of his learn-
ings. He KNOWS the Egyptian came first, or
the Coptic or some other irrelevant tongue, and
he knows that all similarities must be traced to
original source of which he has already been in-
formed. He presupposes himself into a state of
admiration for his deduction which is only, after
all, a complex assumption of firsts, derivatives,
etc.

But, above all their squabbling over each word,
Mantong emerges as the great Rosetta stone of
the past. Touch any tongue with it and the veils
fall away; the Mantong stands clear and clean
above it all.

NO OTHER tongue contains their knowledge
of energy, or gives a key to their wisdom—

a wisdom greater than our own — and any student
proceeding from an assumption that this wisdom
never existed cannot proceed even experimentally
in the study of the tongue.

For it is based on the play of two forces, and
all phenomena of life are described as an interplay
between these two forces De and Te, evil and
good, Dis and Int.

Ssstt describes the touching of fire to water, of
water to a hot stone — to us as to any primitive.
BUT to a student of Mantong sssst is the survival
of the ancient symbol for sun-fire, for dis striking
against the ancient symbol for TE, for growth.
The water contains the TE or growth force, and
when it comes in contact with S, the fire, the noise
sssstt always comes with it— and they used the
symbols of these two primal forces with the sound
which they make.

De was their sound symbol for the processes of
disintegrant energy. De vi was their word for an
evil man's energy. De vile their word for one
filled with de; de cay, Dee See a (animal) Y.

Decay is a sentence in Mantong. It means: see
dee in the animal, WHY? It taught. When the
child learned the word decay, he learned to look
for the cause of the decay, too. Hence the letter
Y (why) is tacked on so many of their words.
But no classical product of our colleges would
ever admit that such a system of word building
ever existed for he cannot admit that anyone in
the past knew that much I

Add a little more detrimental disintegrant en-
energy— we get DE AD. Dead meant: if you
keep adding de you will die. You can't even
monkey with the stuff (as we are learning with
atom bombs— and are going to learn really by
losing all our "precious" civilization in one flam-
ing battle).

Dead also meant: someone had killed a DE
unit of the social pattern. Their words had these
coincident punning meanings packed in ! De a De !
A command to go out and make likewise any
Hitlers or would-be Hitlers was inherent in their
word for a dead person.

The word teat we cannot even say without
lewd and comic thoughts. They meant something
more ; they meant : TE force is here at teat. (The
child absorbs integrative energy here.)

Get a college word wizard to admit that any
first race on earth ever knew any such thing
about energy as that there were two basic forces,
integrative and disintegrative! It isn't even
taught yet (or is it?) that there is an integrative
force, that disintegration demands an equivalent
integration, or there wouldn't be anything to dis-
integrate in all space. OUR COLLEGES DO
NOT TEACH AN INTEGRATIVE FORCE (to
my knowledge), or even suggest that it could be a
pole about which all life proceeds upon its be-
ginnings until it meets DE and ceases to BE !

How then get them to admit that the ancients
knew there was an integrative force and used it. as
a basic symbol for GOOD, for a way of life in the
word TIC, even though the word tic itself de-

PROOFS

141

scribes our present world system of finance and
commerce. They called it TIC — we call it Credit.
But they meant a lot more by TIC than we do by
the word credit. They meant a social order based
upon credits — we call it money and we get it for
work. Credit— (See RED, I T). Our own word
is one of theirs: "I will stand T for your RED
(ink)." We still get in the "RED." We think it is
modern slang for the red ink used on losses
columns, but in truth they used the word before
there was ink. Before Carters ever made a bottle
of red ink for bookkeepers to itemize their bills
with men Used the words "in the red" to describe
their debts.

We all have these unconscious assumptions in
our minds about words, and most of them are
wrong.

I can go on and on with this, but I don't want
to tire you. BUT if you are interested in a proof
of the Shaver mystery, it can be had by any de-
ductive mind for a few hours work with the
alphabet (I hope it will be printed herewith),\*
and the Mantong of the Elder race will emerge
in all its wonderfully simple meanings before
him, and he will have a complex and wonderful
plaything for his mind in its idle moments all his
life. For every word bears some flavor of their
thought, if you can search it out. And it isn't so
hard as our complexly misinformed professors
would have us believe. Because they are wrong
about the past, and there is better history in King
Arthur and Merlin, in Froissart's Roland and
Oliver, in fairy tales and myths than there is in
any standard text on Classical history on "Rome
and Her Fall," on the "Rise of Athens." Those
histories are correct as far as they go; but they
missed the true beginnings. We did not begin with
the pyramids, the way the history books do 1 We
had a vaster beginning than any Pharaoh's fool-
ish piling of block on block to provide a place to
put his mummy. And a much more intelligent
beginning. To me, the Pyramids are not a great
mystery; they are a sample of the imbecility of
men in certain early periods AFTER THE FALL.
That the cumbrous piling of those square chil-
drens blocks of stone into a pyramid had a mean-
ing, a vast significance, or any other fol-de-rol
that is taught about them is not my way of think-
ing. They are sheer imbecility made concrete,
and we still pretend to ourselves that the Egyp-
tians who built them had "wisdom." The wisdom
they are talking about existed long before the
pyramids, the latter priests who understood that
wisdom had nothing whatever to do with causing
the pyramids to be built.

Wrap all the mists of wool about a pyramid
that you want. I still see a fool making a million
lives painful that he may have a hole to be placed
in when he dies. PWA on a grand scale in ancient
Egypt; a fool king who wasted the lives of his
people upon idiocy.

* Shaver Alphabet and article about it will be

found on page ISO. — Ed.

'"PHE Elder race had wisdom. Some of it can be
found in the basic sound-meanings of our
tongue by use of the Shaver alphabet. I do not
claim to have "originated" the alphabet. (To me
it was a discovery. Others may have done so.)
Maybe I heard it with "voices." Whatever is the
truth, it will discover to you a vast race, prove
their existence on earth, and give you an inkling
of their mighty thought-ways.

I could go on talking about the Elder language
for a large book-full, but there is no space for
that. Eventually it will (the book) be done, if not
by me, by some one like yourself who has read
me and understood there was more to the Shaver
alphabet than meets a college know-it-all's eye.

About proofs of the Shaver mystery, it is so
self-evident to one who talks to ray people over
rays from their caverns every day, it is somewhat
like asking an ordinary householder to prove the
Electric Light Co. exists.

It is not evident to you who have not "heard
voices," "seen ghosts," experienced what are
called "illusions due to mental derangement," but
which we who know call "projections," or "tele-
solidographs."

It is like- two men living near the same river.
One has never seen a fish in that river all his life.
The other has caught fish in the river every day.
They get into an argument, the one who believes
there are no fish in the river says : "Show me the
proof, the bones and tails, the heads of these fish
you have caught."

Well I will show you what is left of some of
the fish I have caught in the river of sound that
flows from the cavern world to those who are
allowed to hear. Snatches of conversation heard
over ray: "GOES UP— IS COMING!"

The words mean nothing to you; to me they
tell that the ancient plan of coming to the surface
and ruling openly is again being taken out of the
closet and being brushed off for a new trial. Per-
haps "they" will come out and rule with antique-
ray openly, and all of us will see it in our lifetime.
It is a thing that has been planned many times,
fell through because of fear, difficulties of moving
apparatus, disorganization due to their medieval
governmental set-up, etc.

" WAS DOWN HERE. HE

WAS THE TOUGHEST MAYOR IN TOWN."

The words mean our surface Mayor

was down In the caverns on a

visit, and that he was seemingly the "toughest"
of the group of big-shots with him, of the under-
world characters whom he visited. One does not
hnow if he really was down there, we only hear
the words.

"TELL, 'EM OUTRIGHT, SHAVER, GET
'EM DOWN HERE? WE NEED 'EM
PLENTY 1"

It means that there are plenty of the people
down there hoping and praying that some effort
like my own does break through the dense cloud
of "modern" ignorance in America and gets some
action out of our powerful nation before less

142

AMAZING STORIES

worthy rulers than our own Republicans and
Democrats take over — both up on the surface and
down in the caverns. But they themselves find
no way of telling the men of the U. S. that will
be understood, believed and acted upon. When
they do talk to a man, he is frightened, thinks he
is having delusions, goes to a psychiatrist and has
himself psycho-analyzed. There is no greater ig-
norance, no greater barrier to progress than the
blindness engendered by the sense of all-knowing
self-sufficient egoistic fol-de-rol our educational
system has given our average American school
product.

I love those people down there, fighting unseen
and unheard and unhonored, fighting and warding
off from us a fate that words cannot describe. The
dero of the caverns could depopulate the earth
within months if they were free to do so, with the
antique mech-rays. These people are ignored by
our "omniscient" statesmen, though many of
them know much of the caverns and their se-
crecy, and we could help them much if only the
curtain of "it isn't true," "they don't exist,"
'Voices are imagination" were gone.

That is what I am trying to do; remove that
curtain once and for all. Believe me, it is vitally
necessary, or I would not have the courage to face
the possible consequences!

"HAND ME SOME DRY NEEDLES 1"

Meaningless phrase, isn't it ? But not if you see
the torturer, his needles slippery with blood,
reaching for less elusive tools.

It would be possible to buy some of the mech
in certain parts of the cavern world. These loca-
tions where the caverns are peopled by humans
with some idea of developing a future for man
could be found— if the whole governmental and
"scientific" set-up of the nation, of the world,
were not too "smart" to be taken in by such a
"hoax." Hex doctors, other practitioners of the
black art such as Demonist cults, do buy appa-
ratus from the underworld. Not the men who
DONT "hear voices" (even when they do). Statis-
tics show that everyone hears voices sometimes —
not the scientists who call everyone who does not
agree with them "crack-pots"; not the gentlemen
who have learned all there is to know about life,
the interior of the earth, science and Einstein.
You yourself, if you are honest with yourself,
must admit that you have "heard voices" at one
time or another in your life. Think carefully.
AH ! You had put it aside as imagination ! But
was it? No, it wasn't! It happened!

IV /TANY things could be obtained of infinite
■\*■ value from these people in the caverns, if all
of our civilization was aware and trying to
salvage even a bit of the mighty wisdom the
Elder race left behind them in their miracles of
machine art. BUT it can't be done as long as
"officialdumb" frowns upon all such efforts as
"superstition," "black art," or "crackpots." It is a
vital and unseen side of our life WHICH MUST
BE OPENED TO THE PUBLIC .GAZE!

The fact is that any honest investigation of
super-normal manifestation always and invariably
turns up mighty important data; which data is
shelved by fearful, ignorant and bigoted people
who are quite sure that the school books are right,
and that they cannot go contrary to opinion or
they will lose their "position."

You see in today's paper: "THREE AIR-
PLANES DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY WITH
FOURTEEN MEN IN THEIR CREWS." You
see, every day, a constant succession of such
Fortean occurrences, such impossible accidents
and wrecks and catastrophes. On our "fool-
proof" railways the signals go awry and one part
of a famous "cross-continent flyer" runs into an-
other part — of the same trainl Over and over
you read of the "impossible" happening!

Yet you are told there are no caverns, there
could not be any "antique miracle machinery,"
AND I MYSELF AM TO BELIEVE THAT I
AM THE VICTIM OF DELUSIONS. EVEN
THOUGH I HAVE FELT THE SEARING
RAYS, BEEN TORMENTED BY INVISIBLE
DEVICES, SEEN IMPOSSIBLE PROJEC-
TIONS OF THINGS THAT DO NOT EXIST
ON EARTH TODAY AND TALKED TO THE
PEOPLE WHO MANIPULATE AND USE
THESE DEVICES EVERY DAY— AND HAVE
BEEN DOWN IN THERE AND SEEN AND
TOUCHED IT ALL WITH MY OWN HANDS.

It would be comforting to feel that I was the
victim of a self-deluding mental quirk, for I
would realize there was no threat hanging over
the heads of the American people; there was no
need to overcome the blindness of these people,
that no deros kill regularly and steadily by such
methods as caused Heirens to kill for George
Murmans. That if I did not try to do what I do,
these killings such as Suzanne Degnan would not
be in part upon my head. For I know that much
could be done to stop such killings if only people
knew what the real cause was. Locking Heirens
up did not stop George Murmans. George Mur-
mans can kill you! It would be smarter to pun-
ish the psychiatrists who deny George Murmans
exist, for they probably know quite well that the
voices have real people behind them, and are not
men enough to admit that all is not understood
about such phenomena. A psychiatrist is a worse
criminal, if he does know, a greater coward than
Heirens seems to be, blaming it on a phantom.

Every experienced psychiatrist has heard hun-
dreds of people confess they "hear voices," and
that some of the "voices" prompt them to crim-
inal acts. Yet how many have the courage to
affirm the voices' real existence. THEY ARE
AFRAID OF YOU, the public! Yes, they fear
the common man's conviction that "all such
phenomena are delusions" and, that fear is justi-
fied! BUT, SOMEONE, SOMETIME, HAS TO
CONQUER THAT BLIND DENIAL OF FACT
AND COME OUT IN THE OPEN WITH THE
TRUTH ABOUT VOICES, ABOUT SUCH
CRIMES AS HEIRENS', AND ABOUT SUCH

PROOFS

143

THINGS AS AVOIDABLE TRAIN WRECKS.

It must be faced. All right, we face It, and
thousands of readers flock to our support with
letters affirming our decision to attempt the here-
tofore impossible!

Here's hoping we succeed. For there art in the
caverns such things as weather machines, set in a
pattern to govern the whole continent, that can
control the precipitation, the winds, the whole
character of the weather. I have seen them oper-
ated, have touched the machines; but how do I
tell itt I have as much trepidation about the
attempt as Heirens. He (can you blame him?)
flunked the test of courage. I face it. (Remember
this is a "hoax" please.)

* "pHESE machines, of infinite variety, are

■\*" culled over by engineers from rival (under-
world) countries such as England (for all we
know) and what is not sold to them Is wrecked
by the destructive nomads of the caves "so some-
one else won't use them."

Gypsies "know" about the underworld. Spiritu-
alists insist on the reality of their "spirits." I
know the gypsies are making better sense about
the voices than the Spiritualists. They tell for-
tunes by allowing the secret rays to read their
customers' mind — and make money. So do the
spiritualists, but they say it is spirits. The gypsies
say it is a "gift." It is I From "gypsies" under
the earth. BUT NOT DEAD!

DID YOU EVER ASK THE WEATHER
MAN WHAT BECAME OF THE RAIN THAT
STARTED RAINING AND SUDDENLY QUIT,
AGAINST ALL PROBABILITY? DID YOU
EVER ASK A PRISON GUARD HOW COME
CERTAIN GUARDS SHOT AND KILLED
OTHER GUARDS? DID YOU EVER ASK
THE MISSING PERSONS BUREAU WHERE
ALL THE MISSING PEOPLE WENT? PER-
SONALLY (not by listening to the radio — but
personally looked at the files comprehensively)?
Did you ever talk to insurance investigators who
ascertain the cause of fires, the nature of the
mechanical failures in train wrecks, all the many
things that go unaccountably wrong?

NO, YOU DID NOT! You assume there was
nothing mysterious or frighteningly weird about
any of it. YOU ASSUME THAT IT IS ALL
PERFECTLY UNDERSTOOD BECAUSE OF
THE NATURE OF YOUR EDUCATION.

Fact is, a black witch doctor in Africa does
know more about such things than you do. They
don't close their eyes to all the unseeable things
in life. But a "modern professor" does so close
his eyes, and succeeds in closing most of his
students' eyes.

All of which wouldn't matter, if most of our
heritage in the caverns wasn't being destroyed and
wasted and broken by idiotic handling by crea-
tures with no wits or education whatever. It
matters because our civilization could receive
from just one piece of that "mech" a bigger boost
than from many generations of genius. BE-

CAUSE THAT MECH IS THE PRODUCT OF
AGES OF INTENSELY CIVILIZED DEVEL-
OPMENT BY A BIGGER, GREATER RACE,
A RACE WHO HAD CONTACT WITH
SPACE I

How to tell the American government there is
something to learn about the rocks of mother
Earth that can't be learned in a College ef Geol-
ogy, in an "Institute of Mining Techniques"?
How to tell a modern over-educated bigot that
our school text-books left out the biggest page—
the history of the Elder race? HOW?

It can't be done! That answer tells me to
give up, to write stories about anything else, to
quit making dangerous statements about a people
who might take umbrage and bump me with some
of that wonder-weapon-mech.

Then a voice says: "Tell 'em, but right! Be a
man!" (Now remember, bigot— this is a hoax,
I confess.)

And I do. There are no voices is not true!
Everyone can hear them and does at one time or
another. Some of us hear them every day be-
cause we have interesting minds, and there is
fascination in exchanging mental contact with
our minds.

The trouble is I know better than to accept the
general blindness about the invisible. They have
not seen the bodies behind these invisible phe-
nomena. I have ! They have only deductive abil-
ities which have no data to operate on that they
can consider infallible. And they are lied to by
fearful gentlemen who fear to state the truth, for
reasons you must understand. If you don't un-
derstand why these gentlemen who know do not
speak — just picture yourself doing it! (Uh huh!)

I should not worry, if I were them. For do
not astrologists state regularly that the motion of
the stars affects human events? Do not the spirit-
ualists baldly state that the dead come back regu-
larly? It must be all right to print anything in
this United States. Maybe it is a Constitutional
right? I hope so! For I have plenty to say that
is apt to be misunderstood both above the sur-
face and beneath. Of the two I fear the under-
world the least! Above all the things that terrify
me, I fear the bigoted psychiatrist, the worldly
materialist, the know-it-all scientist.

The underworld is quite willing to let super-
stition be a veil for them. No income tax, do
what they please with everyone, and a police force
who call the mention of them superstition. Per-
fect! BUT there are plenty of them are smarting
under terrible oppressions, sweat shop condi-
tions, murderous arena battles for those out of
favor, a lack of any justice of any kind from over-
head. Those are our friends, they want a sane and
normal life and justice. Truth is, even the prof-
iteers who boost for the secrecy wish for the
good old American army to man their ray guns
when the wild dero attack from some "uncivil-
ized" frontier of the vast cavern world. They find
the weapons they had considered invincible are
outranged by weapons of the dero (wild and ig-

144

AMAZIN© STORIES

oorant and murderous, yet who inherited from
their ancestors the knowledge of how to handle
them well in battle). These battle weapons are
handed down among them just as the muskets of
the camel-riding Arabs are handed down from
father to son.

But if they live through such an attack, they
call it "over," and go back to ducking the income
tax.

HpHERE are good and bad rulers in the caves,
good and bad factory owners down there.
Some would like the restrictions that hamper
their trade with the surface removed; some want
the system that assures them cheap labor kept.

I often feel I shouldn't exert myself to expose
the Elder world in the face of the egregious in-
credulity of the average man — I just shouldn't
bother. Let the monopoly roll on over all possible
future development for the human race. It will
anyway.

I know the work is vitally necessary, but it
seems so impossible in the face of "offidaldumbV
attitude in the face of revelations like George
Murmans. I know that all criminal investigators
are not so blind as not to know there are in-
fluences that are real behind such tales. Of course
they know; there is so very much of it going on.
They don't know how to face the neighbor's as-
sumption they have gone "nuts," and they don't
dart open their mouths! BUT THEY KNOW,
and they know plenty.

This work is necessary to prevent such crimes
as those dictated by "voices." If Heirens had
known what such phenomena indicated, that he
had acquired an underworld dero who would get
him in trouble, he could have avoided it, would
have had some chance of mentally fighting off the
criminal suggestions of the degenerate mind that
at last managed to gain control of his actions.
Heirens was under this influence for years before
he murdered. The truth about Heirens is that he
showed remarkable resistance to these controlling
telaug suggestions. I wish there were some way
to show what it really was that caused his down-
fall. I am trying, here.

npO RESUME with the "fish-bones" and
•\*• "proofs" in the form of words and snatches of
conversations heard over just such rays as drive
people to murder, except that they are in the
hands of sane members of the cavern's society:

"IN HOT COUNTRIES THEY BURST
BREASTS."

The sentence means that in South America,
Africa and other jungled countrys there are cavern
wild dero who use force rays up through the
rocks to the surface people to burst maidens'
breasts and cause their death. I wonder how one
of our "explainers" of Fortean and Shaver phe-
nomena would explain this occurrence.

"BOSS RAISES HELL WHEN WE'RE
SEEN."

Means when they go out to gather firewood or

get groceries, to milk the unsuspecting farmer's
cows, or similar clandestine excursions, they get
plenty hell if they let anyone see them !

"ARE ALL GYPSIES, GYPSIES?"

The voice suggests that long excursions are
sometimes made by cavern people masquerading
as gypsies. Not a difficult masquerade, it is?

The firewood practice suggests a method of
proof — for yourself, though don't expect any
"normal" person to believe you. Watch the broken
dead branches in the woods near a cavern sus-
pected entrance. Note missing branches — see if
you can find who collected them? Listen with
hidden sound devices from a distance. When you
try a few things like this you will run into dis-
couraging or encouraging phenomena immedi-
ately. You will learn, in a hurry.

More:

"Last light is gone. Car ahead I 'Fraid to go
after wood now, someone might see us."

"Sticks are cheapest fuel. Boss's fuel costs
money. It is hard to get money."

"Found an ice-skating robot! Beats all what
you run into."

"If he had the money to be ruined. ..."

"You know, we've got to double-seal all these
entrances."

"Last census was 58,900 inhabitants known and
under control by . . ." (Tampered out the rest.
Most of these informative sentences are through
tamper and are incomplete.)

"Lady Estelle put together. You'd swear she
was human." (Words about another robot, which
I saw in projection, which was very human in
appearance. From my daily notes on "voices.")

"Centenarian devils filled with pep and pride."

"The fire is of books of magic, and on the fire
cooks human flesh."

"We get little meat, some of it is human flesh;
sometimes sold in a market; no one inquires whose
flesh."

"Stockholm, Sweden, best place to go for good
white ray, and good treatment from them for per-
secuted surface men." (I wish I could go.)

"I don't have to wear anything ? Or have any-
thing to wear!" (Cavern girl's voice.)

"Granny got Ladies' Home Journal years ago.
Now they don't get it here anywhere. Verboten,
subscriptions. (No address.)

"A sin and dance place."

"The Satanic government was very strict about
virtue." (Figure that out.)

"The boss is very large. Grab hold and lift any-
thing, he can. But a sourpuss by the look of
him." (Effects of long ben-ray on boss.)

"I couldn't even outen' my cigarette. Now
dripping, now shaking. Sorrow, pain, splendor,
foolishly intermingled." (Account of stim ex-
perience on forcing table, idiotic intermingling of
all sensual sensations from crazy operator.)

"Some tried to sell some caves to some na-
tion's governments. They were too "modern" to
believe us. Scared to talk to us, or meet us any-
where." (Meant: long ago, other countries tried

PROOFS

145

to get some cash out of selling the "secret.")

"Only one little table left. Had to sell the rest.
They take everything." (Not fully understood
whether she means they are removing all the
antique furniture and apparatus or whether she
means she had to sell her own possessions to get
food.)

"Place your thumb toward dagger and twist.
It's an idol and he uses it for a suitcase."

"Three fourths of the looting was carried on
under our supervision." (Not fully understood.)

"The temp, is always 53%."

"New captives are always cold. Fire is a
luxury. You get used to it, or you die."

"Feed the fire with Elder books." (Coal is in
six inch lumps. Burned on open grate.)

"Many songs are attempts to get messages to
you that you cannot help seeing — like : 'Midnight
beaming, moonlight meaning.' but it doesn't ever
work. Men are denser than dense. Tamper
always blocks a person trying to get something
across."

"They sold me! Brrrr. No fatigue, wonderful
place to live. I believed them, went along in. It
is! Wonderful! But the toilet doesn't work, and
I'm starving and freezing."

"The reason people hear things more often in
darkness, because when turn a telaug penetray on
a house with a light burning, the light is carried
down here to this end of ray — then they see it and
stop us with tamper. Lying in the dark, you hear
more, no one notices."

"A six-handed fiddle. I'd like to of seen the
critter that played that thing. Must of looked
like a grasshopper."

"The micro-show mech is great. It makes
images of tiny races of people, only they are metal
or glass or minerals — all different and they seem
alive. A toy, I suppose, but they must have been
popular, there are a lot of them." (A device I
have seen operated — it takes the [for instance]
chess-men idea, builds a living race of people in
moving, three dimensional pictures; like seeing a
new world.)

"She had faceted mirrors or jewels sewn on her
ankles above her insteps with surgical thread — to
make her feet twinkle when she walked. She had
places to go worth going to." (Picture of beauty
of the Elder race.)

"We saw a metal glider full of men frozen in
ice ! Not modern men, some ancient race — had
gliders. What you call "latter gods," I suppose."
(Means with penetray in the deep ice of a glacier,
or ice cave, she saw deep in the ice a glider of
metal with crew all frozen since God knows
when.)

"The buyer is not well in the head. He forgets
to get things — and we starve. So many are cut
in the head; can't function properly." (Cut is an
x-ray needle that is used for less-open arguments.
A man with many enemies soon becomes absent-
. minded to the point of becoming unable to carry
on his work.)

"We have had a warning, they come, not men I

They are terrible." (Means, I think, they have
been warned of impending invasion of creatures
that are not men. Whether from space or from
some unexplored part of the endless cavern
labyrinths, I don't know. I thought they meant
space invasion.)

"A new ray phenomena to me, the image in
the mind is consumed by flames right in the mind.
Appears to be a heat ray super-imposed upon the
neural penetrative of the telaug beam."

"Evil ruled so long— stock him no good. Now
have no children."

"A have-a-look shop."

"The neat and scarlet women."

\X7ELL, there you are. A sample of voices
*heard and written down in the night. It is*
not a proof, except you have a mind to see that it
could not be imagined, that it had to happen
that way. The official dumb attitude we know
already : "The man is deluded." But they're the
same type of men who close our burlesque shows
and go to honky-tonks or smokers in their clubs
and holler "take-it-off" and get it taken off for
them. Who squalk about juvenile deliquency and
contribute to it themselves if they get a chance,
and they get it. The same men who never give a
sucker a break, and everyone is a sucker, poten-
tially. The men who ban good books from pub-
lication on moral grounds and themselves do not
understand morality or give a damn. But they
have to look virtuous to sucker public, etc.

You can listen to the same old lies and believe
there is nothing going on in the world that you
are not fully informed of in the daily newspaper.
Or you can think for yourself and find an amaz-
ing new world where things are happening — and
a lot of it shouldn't happen. There is an in to be
had, an in to "Forbidden Fruit," and many of
these men who deny these things get plenty of
that Forbidden Fruit. But it all costs us too much
to ignore. We are losing lives of mighty develop-
ment and god-like pleasure because we listen to
fools who do not understand that themselves are
greatest ofVll suckers for a lie.

Well, IH^quit now. These words are not a
proof, and no set of words can be a proof to a
mind that refuses them.

BUT I WARN YOU— IF THE ELDER
MECH WAS GOTTEN INTO THE HANDS OF
OUR GREAT TECHNICAL SCIENTISTS
OPENLY AND WITH PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
OUR CIVILIZATION WOULD BECOME A
HEAVEN. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN IF WE
ALL CLOSE OUR EYES AND SAY IT DOES
NOT EXIST.

This Christmas millions of toys were dug out of
storehouses in the caverns, each of them worth a
fortune to a surface manufacturer. "Ren-schur"
(sure to run) toys, the finest of the elder race —
and played with by ignorant grown people and
wantonly destroyed. Such toys as no one but
Aladdin or a modern cavern dweller knows exist.
Each of them was based on some application of

146

AMAZING STORIES

physics, on some wrinkle of a knowledge of energy
denied to us. Each of them a great invention on
the surface and worthless down there because
they are ignorant and we do not know they exist.
Some of these things could be gotten off those
people if we knew and tried. We do not 1 I try,
but I am only one of a few people, the ones who
understand that Shaver has something more than
a fertile imagination and a yen to get into print,
no matter how.

There are more kinds of blindness than the loss
of eyes. Men lost their mental eyes when they
decided to deny all the truth behind such phe-
nomena as witchcraft.
Note for Shaver Opponents:

The incredulous attitude, historically speaking,
has always been in the majority, and it HAS
ALWAYS BEEN WRONG. This is not only
true of such impossible gadgets as the telephone
and radio, it has been true of every new dis-
covery of every kind. It has always been true
of visitors to the underworld and their tales upon
returning. Strangely enough, it HAS NOT AL-
WAYS BEEN TRUE OF WITCHCRAFT. The
credulous, in various times and places, far out-
numbered the incredulous, where witchcraft was
concerned. They KNEW, they said; THEY
FELT AND SAW AND HEARD THE TRUTH.

To be incredulous of witchcraft, witches and
related forms of superstition is comparatively a

modern attitude.

To be incredulous of Shaver's statements, which
do explain these once generally believed in and
accepted phenomena, explains them logically and
sanely — supported by endless references in antique
writings; supported by countless letters from
present-day people who have experienced these
phenomena in the present day; supported by
other eye-witness accounts of the antique mecha-
nisms; supported by countless occurrences in our
daily papers explained in no other way (explain-
able in no other way) than by acceptance of
Shaver's "theories."
Note for all psychiatrists:

I, Shaver, solemnly swear I have never heard
a voice. They do not exist except in deranged
minds.

Note for all who even partially agree with Shaver:
I solemnly swear I hear voices every night.

Note for all opponents of Shaver:
Above you can find two confessions. Take

your choice.

Note to all psychiatrists and other repressors of
truth:

I do solemnly swear and affirm I have never
had a dream I consider irregular or out of the
way — in any way. Just the ordinary type of
dream.

Note to proponents of Shaver:
Oh My! How's yours?