The Department of the Ulterior

The Department of the Ulterior was established by Thomas Jefferson during his presidency. Although a lifelong rationalist and deist, Jefferson also recognized the existence of the paranormal; he was never entirely satisfied with the outcome of the debunking of Anton Mesmer that Benjamin Franklin participated in, and he had had encounters with Amerind ghosts and Norembegans during and after his archeological excavation of an Indian mound. These spurred him to investigate such phenomena as native holy men, voodoo witches among the slaves, the Tillinghast vampires in New England, and other American paranormalities. He did not see a great deal of weirdness himself, but he still felt it worthwhile to set up this secret department and appoint a Secretary of the Ulterior to run it. He also sent an Ulterior operative on the Lewis and Clark expedition, though nothing resulted except some notes of an anthropological character.

The modern Ulterior department is staffed by the Secretary and a small number of agents. The agents are salted among other intelligence agencies as ordinary agents in slightly anomalous corners of the bureaucracy. The Secretary him- or herself (the first female Ulterior Secretary was Madeline Littlejohn, appointed by Calvin Coolidge in 1924) reports to the president only at need. Whole administrations have gone by without the president even learning of the existence of this part of his own cabinet. The Secretary is replaced only on retirement, and usually recommends a successor to the president, who usually accedes.

The Department of the Ulterior is charged with defending the federal government against paranormal dangers ~ dangers no other security agency would believe in. They monitor paranormal activity as well as they can, liaise with the esoteric groups that they know about and consider benign, and, most importantly but most rarely, act as monster-hunters and ghostbusters where the operation of the federal government is concerned. (One of the few permanent posts in the Department, besides Secretary, is the Lincoln Liaison, held by a Secret Service mole on regular duty in the White House. Their Ulterior duty is to be "available" to the sixteenth president as necessary.)

The Department of the Ulterior has tagged the Dare Lodge as "generally benign" and ignores them, for the most part. Both are enemies of the Knights of Palmito Hill, Ophel, and Marie's Horses, but the Ulterior regards the Lodge as foolishly amateurish, and seldom helps them, though they are happy to follow up on tips. Often, the two simply don't overlap: the Dare Lodge doesn't *care* about cattle mutilations and the apparent "black helicopters" (or what look like black helicopters after they hatch out of the cattle), because they're not evil. The Ulterior doesn't care much about the ghost trade, within limits, and doesn't quite believe the Tech Barons are a real threat anyway.

If the Dare Lodge wishes the Department of the Ulterior would be more helpful, the Grandmother Spider Society often wishes they would simply butt out and leave the experts to handle relations with animal spirits, Norembegans, and Puckwudgies.

The current Secretary is Laurel Heller, a Carter appointee. She and her small troop of agents are an angsty bunch.