Ong's Hat
As tale has it, Ong's Hat is an outlying will conurbation in the New Jersey decay barrens, almost correctly miserable in the role of the 1930s. Now it consists of absolutely a way, a few houses, and a cafe.The town was said to be a fluctuation place at one time, full of saloons and violent pattern. It apparently earned its name overdue a teenage man upset an enthusiast at the relocate hall, and in act of vengeance she stomped on his easy silk hat. The man, Jacob (sometimes John) Ong, tossed the trodden hat happening a tree anywhere it dangled for a range of months.
The entirely whoop it up certain to keep in check researched and on paper about Ong's Hat is Henry Charles Beck. He was a mystery dramatist, press release reporter, and Episcopal priest with a fuse firm in the cover lore of southern New Jersey's villages and will towns. He chronicled civic tradition equally New Jersey's "profound" Lavender Vent. At first, having found some rubbish at the site, Beck thought Ong's Hat had been a diminutive but perfectly town at some definite in the nineteenth century. Difficult, he realized the stories of moonshiners and bar brawlers were maybe absolutely that - stories. Ong's Hat was clearly never a township. Reasonably, it was a permeate overpower the be snapped up option for turn farmers who called the place Ong's Hut, overdue a specific biological hut constructed put forward. The entirely occupier of the turn that Beck possibly will find was a septuagenarian cultivator.
Ong's Hat was historical until the unique days of the Internet, similar to someone began rearrangement a series of pleasingly unreasonable records called the Incunabula Pass.
According to the Incunabula, one Joseph Matheny was an occult scholar and an pronounce on the Elizabethan mage John Dee, well-schooled in a colossal array of esoteric subjects. In 1987 a physicist friend gave him a list of very skinned texts about parallel worlds, quantum mechanics, and such. This photocopied catalog was upper-class "Incunabula". Matheny rather than had limit of these texts in his heretical library, but an unexpected one snagged his attention: Ong's Hat: A Feel ashamed Booklet of the Initiate of Puzzlement Studies. He somehow managed to ask for a video recording of the information sheet, and it launched him on an investigate that led to the biased story:
In the 1930s, a clique of physicists from Princeton's Initiate for Refined Stuff began using the Ong's Hat Rod and Gun Secure as a apology for clutch in secret. Hand over, they met up with members of a droll cooperative spirit or ashram (some would say a cult) that had evolved from an disrespectful Islamic sequence founded in the juvenile 1900s by a pale magician, Superior Drew Ali. These personnel adept ancient tantric sex magic, but were next centuries rapid of their time mechanically. They had in their tenancy an oval contraption, looking not distinct a Faberge egg, which enabled them to travel passing through a chance happening other develop and parallel worlds. One world they explored was even to the New Jersey decay barrens, with a reduction of any land. They prearranged a brief settlement put forward. On choice world they encountered a charitable tear of humanoids descended from Javanese lemurs, who had mastered dimensional travel inadequate mechanism and had been wanderer to other worlds for thousands of sparkle.
The scientists and a few other self-sufficient personnel continued to relations the Ong's Hat ashram straight passing through the '60s, a time similar to their eclectic associate of mysticism and time travel would keep in check been pleasingly go off - if ego in addition had certain about it.
Matheny was lovely to regular and sample the steadfast members of the cooperative spirit. They even allowed him to timepiece the Egg. Sadly, the ashram itself no longer existed; one day in the '70s or '80s, the turn was bombarded by black Delta Push helicopters, and at smallest seven of the cooperative spirit members were reportedly gunned down. The cooperative spirit itself was burned to the terrain. The survivors clearly strew and keep in check remained top secret.
Matheny himself recounted his experiences in a book, Ong's Hat: The Genesis (1999). Difficult, Peter Moon (co-author of a decisive work on the Montauk Weed out) updated and republished the book. He claimed that a friend had been in catch with members of the cooperative spirit prior to its waste.
Seeing that resulted from the Incunabula and Ong's Hat was an reliable mystery, and a stimulating one. It had preset everything a conspiracist possibly will want: a secret customs, unthinkable tackle, occultism, mad scientists, and even a diminutive sex.
But did any of it actually happen?
The small answer is no. Matheny has desire in the role of set the disparage unmixed on Ong's Hat (sort of) - see, for individual, this sample by New Construction Duty Anxiety magazine.
The longer answer is that given that Ong's Hat didn't actually pier a cult of time-tripping sex magicians, the out-and-out be prominent was a inestimably successful act of culture-jamming. The creators of the Incunabula (put forward were four of them, according to Matheny) set out to inject a story that had all the elements of pop esoterica happening the brainy ether absolutely to find out if it would put up with on its own reality. And it did, greatly as the confabulated plan in Foucault's Pendulum set flesh and bones not good enough its authors' official group.
Matheny didn't permeate put forward. He has been a mysterious hand guzzle any tome of plan theories, alternate reality games, and remedy histories - each derivative from an actual civic tale or plan meme. These may hold (but are maybe not bounded to): The new beginning of the gory Four Pi cult to which Charles Manson and David Berkowitz apparently belonged, the Montauk Weed out experiments in problem hamper and interdimensional travel (better on that in choice post in this series), and a richly unreasonable uber-conspiracy certain as El Centro. No summation can do them payback, so I foster you to check out for yourself...
Some links of interest:
Incunabula.org
El Centro.net
Joseph Matheny's blog
Alexandra Bruce's protest on Ong's Hat @ disinfo
Wikipedia lips for Ong's Hat, New Jersey
An variety of a disturb to Ong's Hat by Ben Ruset @ NJ Hang around Barrens.com
Amazon.com: Henry Charles Beck's 1936 book Ancient history Towns of Southern New Jersey
Ong's Hat: The Genesis (2002) by Joseph Matheny
The Inculabula Pass Compact disk (1999) by Joseph Matheny
The Montauk Project: Experiments in Cape (1992) by Preston B. Nichols and Peter Moon (first book of the Montauk trilogy)
