This one gave me the chills when my uncle told me it. As always, consider donating to a reputable mental health organization. It’s important that we seek out real cures for mental illness as well as help those in need of reintegrating in our society.

Story 8: The Screamer

I’ll be honest, I have a huge heart for the insane but the screaming is what always got on my nerves. When I walked the halls before leaving all you could hear was screaming. People would scream in the day too. There was one guy who we called The Screamer, because he was a special kind of screamer. He scared me because I’m pretty sure he wasn’t mentally ill, I think he was a real honest guy and now he was stuck. I wanted to release him but I couldn’t.

When he first came in everyone noticed because he struggled hard, he wouldn’t go in the room and he flopped everywhere screaming as loud as he could,

“I didn’t kill her! Let me go! I don’t need to be in here!” This wasn’t too uncommon. Sometimes people who had schizophrenia were pretty normal people and would mention how they didn’t do what they were sent here for. Worse yet were the multiple personality people who would say they didn’t the other person did. I wrote it off as just a normal thing.

One night when I was walking the halls I stumbled upon his room. He was laying on his bed mumbling to himself. I looked in the window and saw him knelt down with rosary beads. He was praying. This really tipped me off. Not that insane people can’t pray, but something hit me when I saw it, like God was telling me this poor soul didn’t belong here. When he looked up and saw me he rushed over and started to scream,

“Let me out! Please! I don’t belong here!” I put my finger to my lips but he was in hysteria. I couldn’t reason with him and by now the nurses had rushed in. I walked away and went home. I told your Aunt about it and she felt deep down that I was right. This guy didn’t belong there. I wasn’t sure if I really could go snooping around but I felt like I had to do something for this poor guy.

The next day I walked in early, at four in the morning. I walked in and could hear the screams and moans from the patients who were troubled. I walked to the guys cell and looked everywhere. It’s hard to sneak around these places when there’s noises all around. I grabbed his file and looked at it quickly. He was charged with murder, found with a gun and his dead wife. His arms were cut it said, and he was in hysterics. He was a Vietnam vet. I couldn’t find anymore and I heard a door close I shoved the file back into the file holder and thought for a second. I figured he was a vet who was framed and had a bit of mental issues. In my gut I knew he didn’t kill his wife.

I thought of how in the world I could get in the cell with him and just chat. I went to the kitchen and cooked up food when I heard there was a lock down. It took about twenty minutes, when I went outside to see what it was about after the lock down all I could hear was screaming from that guy. Unintelligible screaming. I ran down to see what he was saying, the man was literally going insane just being here.

“I can’t fucking take it! Kill me you congs! Kill me!” He let out a horrifying ear piercing screech I had never heard from a man. “I left Nam four years ago! Let me go! I’m a vet!” Tears welled up in my eyes. What could I do? I didn’t want to give him false hope by telling him I was his savior here to release him. I couldn’t I’d be fired for sure. I went back to the kitchen to do my work, but all I could think about was him.

That night before I left I went to his cell and looked inside. He wasn’t there. He was in treatments, for the next four months the treatments only made him worse. He started believing he was being tortured. He literally began spouting off codes of something. I think they were classified information. He started begging to be let out, crying and asking why they were doing this to him. I decided to look at his file one night quickly again. They had tried everything for the guy. Everything was marked with a,

“Treatment made patient worse.” Uppers and downers. Shock and Hydro. There was one treatment circled: Lobotomy. My heart sank. I hated Lobotomies. They worked, and they worked too well. Stripping a man of his emotions just so he would be “Cured”. My heart raced, I thought now or never. I fumbled through my keys to the master key we all had in case we witnessed a man freaking out in his room. I stopped myself though.

Was one man worth my job? I struggled for literally five minutes on what to do. I wish I could say I released him right there, that I took him home gave him hot soup and kept him for the next year to help him really recover. I didn’t. I walked away from that cell tears flowing from my eyes knowing that The Screamer wouldn’t scream after tomorrow.

The next day I cut up the food early in the morning. When I got in I heard his screaming. When I left I heard not one peep from his cell. I looked in and he was silent. Sitting on his bed staring. He looked over to me his eyes were lifeless. His bony hand lifted and waved slowly. It was as if I could hear a creaking cog coming from it. He was now a robot. I heard him mumble,

“I’m better now.” He kept saying it over again as he moved his hand. I backed away from the window and walked home. I hit my head over and over on the way out saying,

“Wake up!” It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a fucking dream this was real! I called out the next day and took a day off with your Aunt we all went to the beach. I did that after a traumatic day. This one was too much. That night I had a dream of him. He was screaming at me and pointing saying,

“How could you leave me! I’m trapped inside this body! I can’t escape now!” I woke up feeling guilty, and to this day I still do. It was messed up, I know. It’s not my fault, I know that. I just can’t stop thinking about how that man was innocent! I don’t have proof, but I swear he was innocent.

I just can’t get that last vision out of my mind. His hand waving slowly and robotically, and him just repeating,

“I’m better now, I’m better now.”

@VincentRustyEye

Short version:

Meade Layne was a respected college professor and part-time parapsychologist out of curiosity, who met and befriended a man named Mark Probert, who was a claimed psychic medium. Based on things Probert reported to Layne from what seems to be alternately described as channeling or seances (often apparently without warning), Layne sent the FBI a memo the very same day the Roswell Crash went national news. The memo describes the scenario with shocking accuracy to modern topics of discussion. Neither had any sorts of military or government connections.

Woo and science

This is, I think, the earliest incarnation of the sorts of 'woo' we see discussed today.

I tried to start at the "top" from his memo in this write up. I have no opinion on the 'woo' but this is an incredibly interesting read. I'm not saying what is or isn't real--I'm normally more on the nuts & bolts side. But this really has the tonal sense of this is the 'Tolkien' of the modern "UFO" theory that's into the spiritual/weird/dimensional side, and it intersects a lot with the technical and scientific. I haven't seen something like this before.

Read through, and then take a minute to look at the Archive.org volume. There's a wild number of connections here to modern topics and theorized ideas, and this goes back to even before the 1940s. I saw links that even go to the late 18th century and ties into concepts like and people like If you're interested at all into the theories the UFOs/UAPs have had a longer historical role (but far after the "aliens were the gods" era) this may fit.

I was following some unrelated rabbit hole around people reported to be involved with the Roswell recovery that were claimed in the (another interesting read about a claimed interview transcript with a NHI exfiltrated from the Roswell event) when I came across this memo.

Dig in, this is a very peculiar and unexpected corner of UFO history that I have not heard of before.

Initial Reading:

• FBI vault, please

• page on Wikipedia, last version

• Additional context on "Kook" science site:

Full text of memo

THIS MEMORANDUM is respectfully addressed to certain scientists of distinction, to important aeronautical and military authorities, to a number of public officials and to a few publications.

The writer has little expectation that anything of import will be accomplished by this gesture. The mere fact that the data herein were obtained by so-called supernormal means is probably sufficient to insure its disregard by nearly all the persons addressed; nevertheless it seems a public duty to make it available. (The present writer has several university degrees and was formerly a university department head).

A very serious situation may develop at any time with regard to the "flying saucers." If one of those should be attacked, the attacking plane will almost certainly be destroyed. In the public mind this might create near panic and international suspicion. The principal data concerning these craft is now at hand and must be offered, no matter how fantastic and unintelligible it may seem to minds not previously instructed in thinking of this type.

1. Part of the disks carry crews, others are under remote control.

2. Their mission is peaceful. The visitors contemplate settling on this plane.

3. These visitors are human-like but much larger in size.

4. They are NOT excarnate earth people, but come from their own world.

5. They do NOT come from any "planet" as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpenetrates with our own and is not perceptible to use.

6. The bodies of the visitors, and the craft also, automatically "materialize" on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter. (Cp. "apports.")

7. The disks possess a type of radiant energy, or a ray, which will easily disintegrate any attacking ship. They reenter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without trace.

8. The region from which they come is NOT the "astral plane", but corresponds to the Lokas or Talas. Students of esoteric matters will understand these terms.

9. They probably cannot be reached by radio, but probably can be by radar, if a signal system can be devised for that apparatus.

We give information and warning, and can do no more. Let the newcomers be treated with every kindness. Unless the disks are withdrawn, a [illegible] [illegible] with which our culture and science are incapable of dealing. A heavy responsibility rests upon the few in authority who are able to understand this matter.

Addendum: The Lokas are oval shape, fluted length in - oval with a heat-resisting metal or alloy not yet known; the front edge contains the controls; the middle portion is a laboratory; the rear contains armament, which consists essentially of a powerful [illegible] energy apparatus, perhaps a ray apparatus [illegible].

Longer version of the memo

This was sent to the President and United States military. There is no date but it explicitly says 'more than five years ago' in '1946' on page six (6), so presumably this was sent in 1951-1952.

If you're still here, you'll want to read this:

Borderland Sciences Research Foundation

Layne was also founder of the "Borderland Sciences Research Foundation".

Organization founded in 1945 by Meade Layne as Borderland Sciences Research Associates, concerned with the "border-land" region between fantasy and reality, fields of parapsychology, the occult, psychic research, hypnosis, dowsing, radiesthesia, radionics, telepathy, and other phenomena. Layne showed a special concern with flying saucers. BSRA published many mimeographed bulletins, including Flying Roll and Meade Lane's Round Robin, now known as the Journal of Borderland Research.

Around 1960, the organization evolved into Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, Inc. It explores phenomena that orthodox science cannot or will not investigate, and it offers recognition, understanding, and encouragement to individuals who are having unusual experiences of the borderland type or are conducting research in the occult. The foundation maintains a library on occult science and related fields and publishes the many flying saucer contactee writings of Riley Hansard Crabb. The address of the foundation is: P.O. Box 6250, Eureka, CA 95502. Website: .

• Click here for an

• Click here for an

Etherians

This was Layne's theorized identification of the "NHI" or aliens that he learned from Mark Probert.

Etherians is the name used by Meade Layne for the beings he proposed as the explanation for UFOs. Layne speculated that, rather than representing advanced military or extraterrestrial technology, flying saucers were piloted by beings from a parallel dimension, which he called Etheria, and their "ether ships" were usually invisible but could be seen when their atomic motion became slow enough.[1] He further claimed that Etherians could become stranded on the terrestrial plane when their ether ships malfunctioned,[2] and that various governments were aware of these |incidents and had investigated them.[2]

Furthermore, Layne argued that Etherians and their ether ships inspired much of earth's mythology and religion,[1] but that they were truly mortal beings despite having a high level of technological and spiritual advancement.[1] He claimed that their motive in coming to the terrestrial plane of existence was to reveal their accumulated wisdom to humanity.[3] These revelations would be relayed through individuals with sufficiently developed psychic abilities, allowing them to contact the Etherians and communicate with them directly;[2] in particular, he relied extensively on the mediumship of Mark Probert as confirmation of his theories.

Mark Probert

() There's more, but this is a decent starting point before you dive into Google. From there:

On October 14, 1946, The that a number of people in San Diego believed that “a space ship from another planet” had attempted to make contact with Earth during the previous week’s meteor shower, an event caused by the passing of the Giacobini-Zinner comet. Although local authorities received no reports of anything out of the ordinary, at least a dozen people told the paper that on October 9 they had witnessed a “large and weird object” in the sky over the city. One witness was quoted as saying, “It was shaped like a bullet and left this vapor trail behind it.” Another observed that it had “something that looked like wings.” The article curiously went on to say that local occult publisher Meade Layne was “putting a medium to work on the supposed sighting.” That medium was Mark Probert.

According to the brief autobiography published in the 1963 edition of his book The Magic Bag, Mark Probert was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, in 1907. As a teenager he joined the Merchant Marine. But after only two years at sea, he disembarked at San Diego and decided to stay. There he worked briefly as a jockey and a bellhop, before moving into vaudeville as a “song and dance man.” By the 1930s, vaudeville was dying, so in 1939 he took a job as a graphic artist with the Visual Education Department of the San Diego public school system. It was there he met his wife Irene.

Not long after they were married, Irene made a casual remark that would change the course of their lives. She told Mark that he often talked in his sleep. The odd thing was that when this happened, it sounded as if he were speaking a foreign language. Soon the couple met Meade Layne, a former university professor who had left academia to devote his life to the study of psychic phenomena. As Probert put it, “he had considerable interest and knowledge in the fields of metaphysical and occult laws.” It was Layne who convinced Probert that his nocturnal mumblings could be evidence that he was in fact a trance medium.

Straightaway, I found multiple quick references in FBI files to Layne, this Foundation, and Mark Probert. So, the fact that Layne sent such an incredibly accurate memo out of the blue to the FBI got them monitored over all this.

Here is a that discusses studies of Proberts remarks and analysis. It seems to be a reasonable overview of how people in the parapsychology field view this. ()

ChatGPT summary of Mark Probert UFO theory

I just thought to add this after posting, so editing it in. I told ChatGPT:

Explain the UFO related theories by the medium Mark Probert.

It provided:

Mark Probert was a medium who claimed to have communicated with extraterrestrial beings and shared information about UFOs and related phenomena. His UFO-related theories are considered by many to be part of the UFO contactee movement, which gained popularity in the mid-20th century. Probert's claims were not widely accepted within the scientific or mainstream UFO research communities, and they should be viewed as unverified and speculative.

Here are some of the key aspects of Mark Probert's UFO-related theories:

Contact with Extraterrestrial Beings: Probert claimed to have made contact with beings from other planets through psychic or telepathic communication. He asserted that these beings provided him with information about their origins, intentions, and knowledge about advanced technologies.

Messages from Extraterrestrials: Probert alleged that the extraterrestrial beings he communicated with were concerned about the state of the Earth and humanity's future. He claimed that they conveyed messages of peace, spiritual growth, and the need for humans to evolve both morally and technologically.

Interdimensional Travel: Probert suggested that UFOs were not necessarily spacecraft in the traditional sense but rather vehicles that could traverse dimensions or exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously. This concept aligns with some fringe theories about UFO propulsion and the nature of extraterrestrial visitors.

Reincarnation and Cosmic Evolution: Probert's theories often delved into metaphysical and spiritual topics. He believed in the concept of reincarnation and suggested that humans were part of a cosmic evolution, guided by extraterrestrial beings who were more spiritually advanced.

Limited Evidence: Like many UFO contactees, Mark Probert did not provide concrete evidence to support his claims. His communications with extraterrestrial beings were largely personal experiences and were not subject to scientific scrutiny or verification.

Further reading

Deep dive with LOTS of material from the 1940s-1950s:

'Full text of "Ether Ship Mystery Meade Layne"':

Full PDF of Layne's volume book "The Coming of the Guardians":

An Interpretation of the "Flying Saucers"

As Given From The Other Side of Life

Compiled by Meade Layne, M. A., National Director, the Borderland Sciences Research Associates, Third Edition, 1957

"All material here quoted as coming from the Mark Probert Controls, is printed by permission of Mark Probert."

My only $0.02 on this

I'm an engineer, especially around diagnostics sorts of work and testing. I find stuff in noise professionally a decent number of days. I started noticing a bunch of curious connections reading about Roswell (I never had really before with any depth) and I quickly ended up on this memo. I credit the Spencer Alien Interview book with drawing my attention that way, via the claims in that volume from the "Airl" NHI/alien. This caught me off guard as it seems to be a cornerstone of a lot of what we are all discussing today.

Unless the "Military Industrial Complex" had a "psy op" running with these random two guys to have this data ready to go the day after Roswell and to have it buried in the cobwebs of libraries and the cobwebs of the Internet for generations... these guys with this memo and Proberts sourcing nailed a lot of things reported today with some prescient accuracy. It's eerie.

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Every Tuesday I’m going to try and post a Criterion movie on here to discuss. I am going to go in order of spine release and would love to hear from people who have already seen it or are curious to see it.

This week is Spine #140, . As of July 20th, 2024 it is available to stream on the Channel with supplements, has a DVD and a Blu-ray, and was laserdisc #71.

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Directed by: Federico Fellini
Written by: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
TSPDT: 7

138 minutes. Watching this is a warm blanket for me, a spicy soup when I’m sick. I love it, and I seem to like it more on each viewing.

It is called 8 ½ for the simple reason that Fellini had directed 8 features and one short, or ½ a movie, before this one. He was looking back on his career to this point and simply announing that this was his 9th film. Most directors would probably not think to do this, and certainly someone could be accused of being self important for even thinking this way. But I want to stay on this point for a moment, because something else hit me as I was watching the movie for the nth time today.

He never made a movie called 20 ¾, or 15 ⅞. This trend did not continue, it was a once in a lifetime moment for Federico. In this moment he was moving from a studio director just pumping out films that were jobs, to an international creative force that would make some of the most memorable pieces of surrealstic art in motion pictures. But before he went there, I believe he also recapped his career up to this point. I’m not sure if it was intentional or subconscious, but 8 ½ carried themes from all of his previous work.

We see the conflicted womanizer from Variety Lights, the facade of filmmaking from White Sheik. There is a need to escape from life he covered in I Vitelloni and depictions of marriage from Love in the City. 8 ½ has strong women, and some of them are met with a tragic indifference. It seems that his conflicted view of women carries through from movies like La Strada and Nights of Cabiria. And underneath it all there is a sense of mischief that could easily be plucked from Il Bidone. The comparisons to La Dolce Vita are obvious, this could even be an unofficial sequal to that masterpiece. My point is that I believe Fellini used this movie as a way of saying the way he made movies before was not enough.

Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido, a famous writer and filmmaker who is crippled with writers block. He hates the expectations and the pressure, and is constantly hounded by people that need something from him. He is talented, at the top of his game, and surrounded by parasites. It’s a symbiotic relationship, of course, and so he suffers them all, but he’s not happy. He is being drug through life until he announces triumphantly that he will make the movie he wants to make and anyone is welcome to follow him.

It is this change, this proclamation, that I adore so much about 8 ½. He took a chance creatively, and has consistently been rewarded by critics and fans that have this as the seventh best movie of all time. Of course something like that is subjective, but my point is I believe the message in this movie speaks to creatives on a deep level. It is a moment in time where Fellini, and those looking to make their mark, can rally behind Guido and cheer him on in his new endeavors.

For me this is the enduring message of Fellini, and of 8 ½. A movie I will most likely always claim as my favorite simply on the strength of the freedom it demands.