In December 1943, the American entertainment magazine Amazing Stories published a completely atypical publication for this edition, devoted to a very complex problem.
The unknown welder Richard Shaver told the world a story that seemed like a mixture of hallucinations and low-quality fiction.
Working in collaboration with Ray Palmer, editor of the aforementioned magazine, Shaver began writing his "true" stories about the supposedly existing deep underground civilizations of genetically degraded and technically advanced troglodytes.
Robot Races
It is noteworthy that the subjects of this new incarnation of "underground inhabitants" possessed not only "death rays" (lasers or electromagnetic weapons), "thought rays" (telepathy), "illusions" (holography) and "mechs" (machines), but also silent flying ships, which Shaver described as "discs" in hangars below the Earth's surface and used regularly.
And this publication appeared five years before American amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold saw the famous nine objects over Mount Rainer in Washington state, which he called "saucer-like", thereby contributing to the birth of the modern concept of "flying saucer".
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In addition, troglodytes were able to create "volumetric illusions" of creatures or objects, including the aforementioned disc-shaped aircraft, which temporarily became physical bodies, and then disappeared or were "turned off".
The underworld of Shaver was inhabited by two ancient races that were originally a single race. He called these races "dero" (from the English detrimental robot - "defective robot") and "thero" (from the integrative energy robot - "integral energy robot").
As the welder-turned-writer claimed, these creatures came into contact with him, and the dero also tortured him with their rays. But the Thero helped him overcome the violence of the Dero and personally visit the world of underground caves.
Population reaction
Readers reacted to Shaver's revelations in two ways. Some denounced the author and mocked him and his "underworld", which in some cases was portrayed as very cruel. Others, on the contrary, wrote letters of approval and support, and even reported similar incidents that happened to themselves.
In the end, the "Shaver mystery," as the story was called, led to Ray Palmer's retirement from Amazing Tales. Together with Shaver, they created a great stir around underground troglodytes and turned the topic into a profitable business, which to some extent remained successful until the mid-1970s, when they both died.
Was Richard Shaver an unbalanced person, obsessed with delusional ideas, or just a talented and scandalous inventor? Or was he telling stories that were half truthful and half fictional?
In his youth, Richard spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, and throughout his subsequent life, this fact became the reason for the contemptuous and derisive attitude towards him from others. But couldn't real, repeated contact with creatures like his dero bring even a strong mind out of its normal state into the sphere of semi-delusional perceptions?
Characteristics of underground inhabitants
Regardless of the balance of fiction and truth in Shaver's narratives, his choice of words to describe his robotic tormentors is quite interesting. Being creatures of the flesh and possessing animal passions, dero and thero are at the same time programmed victims with more or less "harmful" or "de-" (destructive, degenerative, etc. according to Shaver) thinking.
He attributed this degenerative thinking of underground inhabitants to the harmful effects of solar and cosmic radiation (from which they still hide underground), as well as to the harmful radiation of their own "stim-machines" (devices for stimulating mental and physical activity).
They abduct land inhabitants, mainly women, for sexual pleasures (or procreation?), Eat people, and also get great pleasure from mutilation, destruction, confusion and panic, creating terrifying ghosts (holograms) in the world that exists on the surface of the Earth …
Is the Bell Witch one of them?
Departing from the main topic, we can cite numerous mysterious cases, which have not yet found a rational explanation, as a confirmation of the abilities of the dero technique proclaimed by Shaver. One such case is the case of the Bell Witch, an evil creature who terrorized the Bell family in the early 19th century in Robertson County in Tennessee, USA.
This "witch" was given the impression of being an omnipresent and omniscient beast, although in some cases potential victims managed to fool her and escape. Having begun to manifest itself as a poltergeist, this spirit, remaining invisible, then moved on to attacks with physical attacks, and throughout the entire time of the terrible ordeal, which lasted many years, he talked with the members of the Bell family, sang for them and scolded in every possible way. Hundreds of people have witnessed this creature's activities, including Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States.
And the terrain where this creature came from was, as they said, a system of deep, mostly uncharted caves, located on a piece of land owned by the Bell family. The "witch" herself declared that her house was a cave and forbade anyone to enter there.
The locals avoided being near that cave and in the adjacent territory; they considered it cursed and visited by evil spirits long before the first white settlers appeared there.
And to this day, eyewitnesses swear that the cave system, access to which is still open, is still guarded by the same devil.
This horrible story convinces in the best way possible that the short and direct path to some kind of underground dwelling filled with "special effects", equipment or "furs" remains unexplored or blocked … called Bell Witch's Cave.
It seems that the "project" that resulted in the appearance of the aforementioned "witch" eventually achieved its goal: to keep people away from the place of its implementation.
Shaver seeks proof
Confirmation of the desire of Richard Shaver by all means to prove the accuracy of his stories can be the fact that, according to him, he was one of the few contactees who communicated with forces alien to people in order to obtain material evidence.
And he argued that many of the rocks and large boulders in certain areas around the world are in reality huge ruined libraries of ancient crystals containing three-dimensional images or holographic records.
To substantiate this version, Shaver in subsequent years undertook a search for such "picturesque rocks" and opened them with a stone-cutting saw in order to reveal, as he argued, traces of ancient records.
Using special paints, he "highlighted" the detected images, but processed only the edges or surfaces of already existing rock formations.
Some of his "rock paintings" were truly amazing, depicting people or humanoid creatures, human-animal hybrids, giants, and people fighting such creatures.
In 1975, Ray Palmer published character portraits of many of these paintings, along with Shaver's commentary.
Ancient myths testify
… But what if an unknown underground world really exists under our feet - a world that has been exploiting the wealth of the Earth and us, its inhabitants, for billions of years? Or maybe all the facts mentioned are accidental, not worthy of attention?
Perhaps we are talking about a meeting with animals that, for one reason or another, could not be identified, or, say, with some peculiarities of the psyche, when a person interprets what he saw in his own way?
Critics can cite an endless number of examples of hypertrophied imagination, known over the past millennia. However, the evidence recorded over the millennia of human existence and continues to flow up to this day, suggests otherwise.
Reptoid, vampire-like, robotic, demonic - these are the characteristics that have been used for centuries in relation to the inhabitants of the underworld. They have appeared in the human imagination and nightmares since the most distant times.
These images tell us about fears driven into the subconscious. But what if in reality these creatures are real and technically highly evolved?
If this is so, then we would be wise if we paid more attention not only to what is happening on our planet, but also to the content of our mythological and folklore heritage, since it insistently says that there is a mysterious civilization.
Vadim Ilyin
