Mystery Death: Mac Tonnies, 34

Why do some people die so young, and all we hear is that they passed away of "natural causes"? The two pieces of information do not compute.

Mac Tonnies, 34, a rising intellectual presence in Fortean thought, the "Posthuman Blues" blogger, and the author of the forthcoming book, The Cryptoterrestrials (Anomalist Books, tentatively 2010), has departed this plane. He was found dead in his apartment on Thursday afternoon, October 22, 2009. Reports indicate that there was no foul play or suicide involved, and "natural causes" are being blamed for his sudden and unexpected death. There is some indication that he may have been feeling "faint" in the days leading up to his death.

I never met Mac, but he did correspond a few times with me. In April 2008, he was curious about a mysterious graffiti artist that had popped up in his town, who was leaving iconic Nessie stencils around and about. He wrote me and asked if I'd heard about any other incidents like it happening around the country. I posted a brief note on CryptoZooNews about the cryptoart.

The title of Mac's forthcoming book, The Cryptoterrestrials, also, of course, interested me. In talks I had with his publisher, Patrick Huyghe, I understood it would be a book that extended the thoughts of John Keel's ultraterrestrials. I looked forward to seeing what new take Tonnies had on it all, and was open to hearing if cryptozoology played into his intellectual ponderings.

Mac Tonnies had the potential to ask some challenging questions. That seemed to have scared some people.

Strangely, Mac's name appeared at the end of the "death list" of people that a group of extremely youthful ufologists placed in their infamous posting of March 22, 2008, 19 months or so, before the day of Tonnies' death. The so-called "RRRGroup," in their "UFO PROVOCATEUR(S)" blog entry entitled "Death(s) will clean the UFO palate," listed the names of people whom they almost seemed to be wishing would die more quickly so the "future" of the field could dawn more quickly.

They wrote:

When ufology’s old-guard passes on – Dick Hall, Stan Friedman, Kevin Randall, John Schuessler, and even the 60ish Jerry Clark to name a few – taking hangers-on and sycophants with them (and you know who they are), the UFO palate will be cleansed.

That is, the mummified concepts of ufology will be washed away, and new paradigms will be allowed to flourish.

Standing in the wings already is a group of middle-agers who, while not particularly astute about the UFO history and inclined to be cavalier with their observations and characterizations of ufology and UFOs themselves, think they are the news faces of ufology, which is a mantle they hope to change.

Those people include Paul Kimball, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and Mac Tonnies.

...Once the old-guard is gone, and the mid-lifers dismissed because of their foolishness, the young crop of UFO mavens’ newer ideas will hold sway with the public and media....

Blood mixed with ink.

I wrote in their comment section at the time:

It seems incredible to really read these words: "...the young crop of UFO mavens’ newer ideas will hold sway with the public and media, because this new generation isn’t conscripted by former old-think about UFOs, presenting instead original thought and pursuit of the UFO mystery..."
Being a radical Fortean observer watching the coming and going of all matter of writers, researchers, and theorists in the last four decades, you have given me a good chuckle.

Every "new" generation sees themselves as having the "real" solutions or the next best outside-the-box suggestions. Of course, it will only be something you will reflect upon when the next generation after you, the new group of "Young Ones" start nibbling at your aging heels, [and] says something similar to you.

It's always been that way, and it will continue so into the future.

Besides being intellectually dishonest, such a critique as the one from the RRR group has no sense of history or reality. But in terms of karma, frankly, I think it is bad form to put names out there of people you almost seem to be wishing were dead. I am shocked, therefore, to see that Mac Tonnies, the last name on the RRR list, along with Dick Hall, the first one, both now have died. Sad indeed.

The tributes for Tonnies, as often happens in a surprising death like this are pouring in from his deep friends. I recommend those of Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, and many other of his true friends.

Mac's last tweet was on October 18th, 2009, and he pointed to "sculptural manifestations of audio footage."

I want to leave you with Mac's own words, as he has summed up his own life, here below, from his self-authored biography. Good-bye, Mac:

I'm a Kansas City, Missouri-based author and essayist. I blog daily at Posthuman Blues and tweet religiously. My latest book is After the Martian Apocalypse (Paraview Pocket Books, 2004), a speculative and generally well-received examination of extraterrestrial intelligence on the Red Planet. I'm presently at work on a new non-fiction book titled The Cryptoterrestrials: Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us, excerpts of which I've posted on my blog. If you're in the mood for a multiplex Fortean anthology, my essay "The Ancients Are Watching" is included in 2008's Darklore Vol. II. (My first book, Illumined Black, is a collection of naively "Blade Runner"-ish science fiction short-stories. It can still be found in used-book stores and on Amazon.com.)

I've been a guest panelist at ConQuest, Kansas City's premiere science fiction convention. More recently, I've lectured in the United States and Canada on subjects ranging from exoarchaeology to transhumanism and have appeared on programs such as Coast to Coast AM, Strange Days . . . Indeed, 21st Century Radio, The Paracast, Binnall of America, and Radio Misterioso. My first play, produced and directed by Paul Kimball, debuted in Halifax, Nova Scotia in late 2007. In early 2009 I appeared as the "investigator" in an episode of "Supernatural Investigator," a Canadian program covering fringe beliefs and esoteric science. I also make an appearance in "Best Evidence," an award-winning UFO documentary.

I spend an inordinately large portion of my time pursuing unpopular ideas and esoteric theories with what I sincerely hope is balanced skepticism. I'm a member of the Society for Planetary SETI Research, a group that seeks to use scientific methodology to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial artifacts in our solar system. I read voraciously; preoccupations include cosmology, nonhuman intelligence, UFOs, consciousness studies, and futurism. Writers I admire include William Gibson, Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs.

I tend to think in the future-tense. I'm a skeptic, agnostic and existentialist; I perceive reality as a kind of consensual hallucination that forces us to define our sense of identity without recourse to faith or superstition. I have a deep affinity for 80s pop music; some of my favorite bands are The Cure, R.E.M., Portishead, Talking Heads, and The Smiths. Favorite film-makers include David Cronenberg and David Lynch. I can regularly be found haunting the Country Club Plaza, taking pictures, reading cyberpunk novels, and marinating my synapses in espresso. And I'm a voracious doodler.

Statement:

Consciousness is a potential technology; we are exquisite machines, nothing less than sentient patterns. As such, there's no convincing technical reason we can't eventually upload ourselves into matrices of our design and choosing. It's likely the phenomenon we casually call "intelligence" will cease to be strictly biological as we begin to merge with our machines more meaningfully and intimately. (Philip K. Dick once wrote that "living and nonliving things are exchanging properties." I suspect that in a few hundred years, barring disaster, separating the animate from the inanimate will probably be an exercise in futility.) Ultimately, we have two options: self-mutate by venturing off-planet in minds and bodies of our own design, or succumb to extinction.

Heenes Are UFO Family

It is not a coincidence that the balloon that supposedly abducted Falcon Heene to nowhere looks like a flying saucer. Now it turns out, the Heenes are a media-aware family that allegedly may be obsessed with UFOs and ETs.



Yes, there is a happy ending. He was hiding in a box in the attic of the family's garage. But the chasing of the balloon dominated the news all afternoon and early evening.

The six-year-old boy who was thought to be in a mylar balloon speeding high across Colorado on Thursday, October 15, 2009, was on the ABC series "Wife Swap."

Falcon Heene, 6, is the son of Richard and Mayumi Heene of Ft. Collins, Colorado. His parents are stormchasers, and their "chaotic parenting style" was criticized by their "Wife Swap" swap family, according to Fox News.

Richard and Mayumi Heene of Ft. Collins, Colorado have two other sons, Bradford and Royo.

Richard Heene created his own indie video series, and sells the DVDs online as "The Psyience Detectives." Episodes have included "ROTATING STORMS AND MAGNETISM," "DUST DEVIL CHASING," and "TORNADO SEEKING ROCKET." The program is described as "The Psyience Detectives, a new documentary series investigating the mysteries of science and psychic phenomena."

The family was invited back by ABC to appear on the 100th episode of "Wife Swap," where Mayumi Heene switched places with Sheree Silver, a psychic.

A Los Angeles Times story documented the "Wife Swap" show by saying "The Heene family, with its three rowdy boys, is anchored by father Richard, whose anger arrives in sudden bolts between his fringe science projects."

The description of the episode from ABC that appears on their website said "[The swapped wife] is shocked as the Heene kids jump off banisters and run wild, and appalled by Richard's attitude to women."

The Heenes reportedly allowed their children to accompany them as they tracked Hurricane Gustav.



According to the ABC "Wife Swap" website, the family sleeps in their clothes so they can leap from bed and run after a storm at any given moment. The site also describes a "flying saucer" that sounds like the one that ultimately came back to earth Thursday.

"When the Heene family aren't chasing storms, they devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm," says the site.




They're also apparently shooting music videos. An amateur rock/rap video called "Not Pussified" starring the three boys was posted on Youtube, showing the brothers shooting off rockets, throwing rocks at stuffed animals, and riding some sort of hovercraft that looks eerily like the saucer thought to be carrying Falcon on Thursday.



As far as the name game, the history of "Heene" originates from an unknown background.

MLB Suicide: Brian Powell

Brian Powell, a former major league baseball pitcher, has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a sheriff's official in Georgia has reported. He was 35.



Captain Liz Crowley of the Decatur County Sheriff's Office said Powell died Monday, October 5, 2009, at a hospital in Tallahassee, Florida. Powell was from Bainbridge, Georgia.

The Bainbridge native was a three-year letterman for the Bulldogs from 1993-95, going 19-14 with a 3.80 ERA. He ranks second in school history with 17 complete games, 352 strikeouts and five shutouts. In 1995, he led the Southeastern Conference in strikeouts (138); innings pitched (147) and was second in complete games (seven).

Powell was a second-round pick, the 41st overall selection, of the Detroit Tigers in the 1995 MLB draft and reached the majors in 1998.

Powell was 7-18 with a 5.94 ERA in 59 games for Detroit, Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. He last pitched in the majors with the Phillies in 2004, and spent 2005 in Triple-A for Washington.

Funeral services were held at 11 a.m. Thursday, October 8, 2009, in Bainbridge, Georgia.

Powell is survived by his wife and three children. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and former teammates.



The timing of Powell's suicide, at the end of the regular season of 162 games (despite the one tie-breaker that was played on Tuesday, October 6, 2009), does not appear to be a coincidence.

I wrote the following concerning what my study of such suicides revealed about their timing:

Baseball players were most likely to die by suicide during the off-season, if the individual was a recent player, within three years of an active involvement in the majors, or after age 65, after a "retirement" from a post-baseball career. For some former players, the end of March to the April opening days seemed to be a specific temporal black hole.

That a suicide should occur so close to the end of the regular season should not be a surprise.

Chapters on my findings regarding baseball players' suicides are to be found in Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond (2003) by Edward J. Rielly, in my own book The Copycat Effect (2004), and in other sources now quoting those books.

This year, 2009, is the 20th anniversary of my research and call for suicide prevention efforts among Major League Baseball players. There was a cluster of baseball suicides in 1989, which I had predicted. Donnie Moore was the individual MLB player who died of suicide receiving the most publicity, but there, sadly, were others.

Enigmas of Ansbach

A Bavarian town famous for its werewolf and site of the death of the mysterious Kaspar Hauser has been hit by a school attack.


Kaspar Hauser

An 18-year-old student armed with an ax, knives and Molotov cocktails wounded eight fellow students and a teacher at his high school in the Bavarian town of Ansbach on Thursday, September 17, 2009, the German police said. The police arrived at the scene minutes after the rampage began, opening fire on the attacker, who was not identified, and arresting him.

Two children were seriously wounded, as was the 18-year-old attacker. Seven other children were slightly wounded.

Ralf Koch, a spokesman for the Bavarian police, said between 600 and 700 students attend the school, which includes grades seven through 13. The attacker was in the 13th grade.

Police said they received an emergency call at 8:35 a.m. (2:35 a.m. ET). When they got to the school, they immediately smelled smoke in the building, and they then encountered the attacker in a hallway.

The teenager had lobbed two Molotov cocktails into classrooms, one of which caused a fire, said Udo Dreher of the local police. He had also attacked several students with the ax and knives.

Police shot the teenager several times because he threatened the police officers, said Joachim Herrmann, the minister of the interior for the state of Bavaria, where Ansbach is located. The siege ended at 8:46 a.m.

The attacker suffered life-threatening wounds and is now being treated at a hospital.

(See here for Todd Campbell's straightforward take on this event.)

Apocalypse Today

Ansbach State Prosecutor Juergen Krach said the attacker remained hospitalized after he was shot by police during his arrest. Doctors plan to bring him out of a medically induced coma on Friday, September 18, 2009.

Krach said a search of the student's home turned up the calendar on which he had marked September 17, 2009, with the words "apocalypse today," and a handwritten will.

State Prosecutor Gudrun Lehnberger said the will was dated September 11, 2009. She added that the search turned up no threats against specific students or people. The attacker's motive remains unclear.

"I can confirm that the perpetrator was undergoing psychotherapeutic treatment," Lehnberger said. The teenager's name has not been released because of German privacy laws. Krach said police have questioned the student's parents.

The episode was the second attack at a German school in less than a year.

In March 2009, 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer fatally shot 12 people (mostly females) at his former school in the southwestern town of Winnenden, a town near Stuttgart, Germany. He fled the building and killed three more people before turning the gun on himself.

Ansbach: A place of strange wonders

The Wolf of Ansbach was a man-eating wolf that attacked and killed an unknown number of people in the Principality of Ansbach in 1685, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Initially a nuisance preying on livestock, the wolf soon began attacking women and children.



The citizens of Ansbach believed the animal to be a werewolf. After it was killed, a human mask was placed on the carcass. The wolf's body was then hanged from a gibbet for all to see until it underwent preservation for permanent display at a local museum.

Kaspar Hauser (30 April 1812? – 17 December 1833) was a mysterious "lost child" found in 19th century Germany famous for his claim to have grown up in the total isolation of a darkened cell, raised like a half-wild human, in the tradition of feral or wolf children. Hauser's stories, and his likewise mysterious death by stabbing, sparked much debate and controversy. Hauser lived in Ansbach from 1830 to 1833. He was murdered in the palace gardens there.



Hauser was buried in a country graveyard; his headstone reads, in Latin, "Here lies Kaspar Hauser, riddle of his time. His birth was unknown, his death mysterious." A monument to him was later erected in the Court Garden which reads Hic occultus occulto occisus est: "Here a mysterious one was killed in a mysterious manner."

Forteans have been interested in the mystery of Kaspar Hauser for some time. Fortean Society member and famed science fiction author Eric Frank Russell, in his 1943 novel Sinister Barrier, described Kaspar Hauser as a person who originated from a non-human laboratory. Robert A. Heinlein, in his 1963 Glory Road, referred to "Kaspar Hausers" as an analogue to persons popping in and out of metaphysical planes.

In the 1966 film Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist Guy Montag discreetly puts a copy of a book entitled Gaspard Hauser into his bag before the rest of the books in that residence are torched.

In the American TV series "Smallville," (2001) Clark Kent finds a boy who does not to remember who he was or where he came from, except his name. Chloe refers to the boy as a "modern day Kasper Hauser."

In the Japanese horror movie Marebito (2004), the lead character Masuoka refers to a girl he found chained up underground as his "little Kaspar Hauser."

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser



In 1974, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog made Hauser's story into the film, Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Every Man for Himself and God Against All). In English the film has become known by that translation, or by the title The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

The bizarre nature of the movie is a metaphor for the human condition, the mystery of the Hauser melodrama, and, as it turns out, the strange things that still happen in Ansbach.

9/9/9 Hijacking

Aeromexico Flight 576, which is 5+7+6 = 18, thus 1+8 = 9, was hijacked on 9/9/9.

Breaking news is that the plane hijacking in Mexico is over after special forces stormed the jet.

The aircraft was hijacked as it landed in the capital Mexico City from the resort of Cancun. Mexican online media reports said Aeromexico Flight 576 had 104 people on board when it left Bolivia, and made a stopover in Cancun en route to Mexico City.

+++
Update: Mark Baard at Timenauts.com points out, from CNN:

A 44-year-old Bolivian drug addict and alcoholic who describes himself as a church minister was the sole person responsible for the brief hijacking Wednesday of a commercial jetliner....The suspect — Jose Mar Flores — told authorities he hijacked the Boeing 737 jet because the date — September 9, 2009, or 9/9/9, and 666 reversed — held some significance for him, said Genaro Garcia Luna, the secretary for public safety.

++++

Intriguingly, earlier reports said up to five men were taken off the jet in handcuffs after it was stormed.

The alleged hijackers reportedly had explosives strapped to their legs and were demanding to talk to Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

They released all the passengers soon after the plane landed in Mexico City.

The passengers left with their hand luggage. They appeared calm and boarded nearby buses.

But the plane's crew were still being held hostage before special forces moved in and made the arrests.

Nobody was hurt and no shots were fired, it is understood.

Transportation and Communications Secretary Juan Molinar said all passengers and crew were safe.

But he would not say how many alleged hijackers were detained or give details of their motivation.

"Various people who participated in the act have been detained and we are investigating," he said.

He said there was no bomb on the airplane, although some passengers said one of the hijackers held a package that resembled an explosive device.

Aeromexico Flight 576 has been on the runway at the capital's international airport after the hijacking.

One of the passengers, Adriana Romero, told Mexican TV she had not realized the flight had been hijacked until the plane landed at Mexico City.

"We realized it was a hijack when we saw the police trucks," she said.

El Universal daily said the men had not been able to get inside the plane's cockpit.

The last hijacking in the region was in April in Jamaica, when an armed man took over a CanJet Boeing 737 due to fly from Montego Bay to Cuba.

All 182 people on board were rescued unharmed when Jamaican police stormed the airliner and captured the mentally troubled gunman without firing a shot.

Fayette Cannonball

Police said a man in Georges Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, fired a metal cannon that sent a two-pound lead ball into his neighbor's house, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

William Edward Maser, 54, fired the cannon in his yard on Tent Church Road Wednesday evening, September 2, 2009, said Trooper Brian Burden of the Pennsylvania State Police. He said he was not sure how regularly Maser fired his cannon.

The cannon shot a lead ball through the side of his neighbor's house, breaking a window and traveling through a wall before landing in a clothes closet. No one was injured.

The cannon is an 80-pound homemade replica of cannons used during the French and Indian War. It has been impounded as evidence.

Maser regularly participates in battle re-enactments, Trooper Burden said.

He has been charged with reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and disorderly conflict.

VA Tech Students Slain ~ Again

A new tragedy has hit Virginia Tech.

Authorities are stepping up patrols near an area of Jefferson National Forest where two VA Tech students were found slain, during this first week of school.

A man walking his dog in the forest's parking lot section of the Caldwell Fields area, Blacksburg, Virginia, early Thursday, August 27, 2009, found the bodies. They were 19-year-old David Lee Metzler of Lynchburg and his girlfriend 18-year-old Heidi Lynn Childs of Forest.

When deputies arrived they found Metzler's body sitting in his car (a 1992 blue Toyota Camry), while Childs's body was on the ground nearby. The gravel parking lot of the campground and wildlife viewing area is popular among Virginia Tech students.

A suspect has not been identified.

Metzler was a sophomore industrial and systems engineering major and Childs, a sophomore biochemistry major.

Caldwell Fields is a peaceful area away from the hustle and bustle of campus life, a hangout site for students, especially on the weekends. Caldwell Fields is 15 miles west of Mason Cove and Hanging Rock, which are on Catawba Valley Drive, and five miles NW of Lafayette, which is on Interstate 81. The area where the students were killed is about 15 miles from the VA Tech campus.

The forest is technically named the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, consisting of two U.S. National Forests that combine to form one of the largest areas of public land in the Eastern United States. They cover 1.8 million acres (7,300 km²) of land in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

One victim's name Metzler has origins in German (Middle Rhineland), as an occupational name for a butcher, Middle High German metzeler, from Latin macellarius "dealer in meat," from macellum "stall (at a market)," "meat market."

In a statement released from the Virginia State Police, it has been learned that Childs is the daughter of a state police sergeant.

It reads in part… "Tonight, the Virginia State Police grieves with Sgt. Donald Childs and his family during this deeply difficult and painful time."

Childs, home-schooled in Abingdon, moved to Forest, Virginia, with her family about four years ago. Her father, Sgt. Donald Childs, has been a helicopter pilot with the Virginia State Police for 20 years. She had seven siblings, and fell somewhere in the middle.

Childs had met Metzler at Heritage Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Autopsies were being performed, but Montgomery County Sheriff Lt. Brian Wright said both students appear to have been shot sometime late Wednesday night (August 26) or early Thursday morning (August 27).

Heritage Baptist Church pastor Gerald Kroll said Friday, August 28, 2009, both had been active in the church for a long time and were members of Campus Crusade for Christ.

Two years ago, on April 16, 2007, a student gunman killed 32 others and then himself. On January 21, 2009, a doctoral student beheaded a fellow student in a campus cafe in the Graduate Life Center.

As blogger Thuth has previously pointed out in his research:

The northwestern corner of Virginia Tech is located upon an old historic site called Draper’s Meadow - bordered on the south by Stroubles (Troubles?) Creek...On July 8, 1755 a group of Shawnee Indians entered the sparsely populated settlement and brutally killed five of the settlers that lived there in what eventually came to be known as the Draper’s Meadow Massacre. Draper’s Meadow became the town of Blacksburg. The incredible synch here is that one of the settlers that was killed – the oldest of the five, one Philip Barger, was decapitated by the Shawnee. They put his head in a bag and sent it to a neighbor, telling them a friend had come to visit.

Today, few at Blacksburg, Virginia's well-known university are aware of this history. The community members have their hands full dealing with current unfortunate traumatic events, of course. Nevertheless, the past is prologue to the future.


"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George Santayana.


"I shall be accused of having assembled lies, yarns, hoaxes, and superstitions. To some degree I think so, myself. To some degree I do not. I offer the data." ~ Charles Fort.



Credit: Gary Varvel