Halloween Special: The Existential Satanic Horror of Deathspell Omega

Lungs filled with embers and regurgitating boiling blood, I say praise the Lord; praise, O servants of the Lord…may scoria bury Eden and blind the light of hope-First Prayer, S.M.R.C.

(Content warning: the following blog post will contain discussions of fascist and antisemitic hate speech, as well as very brief discussions of pedophilia, although that won’t come until later in the article. I will give a second warning later for those who are sensitive to those topics.)

So here’s a question: what kind of music do you like to listen to on Halloween? Maybe it’s the silly novelty songs like “Monster Mash,” “The Purple People Eater,” or “Spooky Scary Skeletons.” Perhaps it’s a spooky classic rock tune like “Season of the Witch” or “Witchy Woman” or “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” Or you might indulge in some supernaturally themed heavy metal and punk music like Helloween’s “Halloween,” Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?”, or anything by King Diamond or Black Sabbath, or anything by Powerwolf or Rob Zombie or the Misfits. Or maybe you like to be hypnotized by the industrial horror of “Frankie Teardrop,” or the stark gothic blues of a spooky Nick Cave or Tom Waits track.

For a voracious music consumer like myself, all of these are equally valid options. However, there is one band over the years that has managed to worm its way into my fear centers like no other for a variety of reasons: their nihilistic lyrics, their theistic Satanist religious outlook, their incredibly harsh and dissonant music, and their extreme reclusiveness, to the point that no one knows who they even are. That band, coming to us from the city of Poitiers in west-central France, is Deathspell Omega.

Backstory

Deathspell Omega, or D.S.O. for short, was founded in 1998 out of the ashes of the black metal project Hirilorn. Its lineup consisted of Frederic “Shaxul” Sescheboeuf on vocals, Christian “Hasjarl” Bouche on guitars, Khaos on bass, and Yohann Pasquier on drums. Pasquier left before the recording of the band’s first album, Infernal Battles, in June of 2000, as the other Hirilorn members were angry at him and second guitarist Sinn for participating in a hardcore recording. The name of the drummer who replaced him is unknown.

Indeed, that’s one of the biggest gimmicks this band has- its complete and total anonymity. They have no official website, no social media accounts, and have never allowed themselves to be photographed. They have never performed live, do not credit themselves in their liner notes, and conducted no interviews between 2004 and 2019. This lack of information certainly plays a large part in the nightmarish mystique of the band.

Even so, several names have been attached to the band over the years. For example, Tobias Forge of Ghost, in a 2018 interview with Loudwire, stated that the band’s producer was Frank Hueso, a fellow Poitiers musician best known for his synthwave project Carpenter Brut. The vocalist who took over after Shaxul’s departure is often suspected to be Finnish musician Mikko Aspa (which has caused no small amount of controversy for the band for reasons I’ll get into later). Another vocalist is suspected of having joined the group sometime around the recording of the 2010 album Paracletus. Most fans suspect him to be Spica, vocalist for fellow French black metallers S.V.E.S.T. (who, incidentally, haven’t put out any new material since recording a split E.P. with D.S.O. in 2008).

In any case, most fans generally agree that the band didn’t become truly great until after Shaxul’s departure following the release of their second album, Inquisitors of Satan, in May of 2002. Shaxul later clarified that he was uncomfortable with the shift in themes that the band was undergoing. The band’s music on the first two albums consisted of orthodox black metal, very similar to pioneering Norwegian bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem. However, starting with their next album, the band would find a new sound that would catapult them into the highest echelons of the French black metal scene, alongside Peste Noire, Blut Aus Nord, and Alcest.

Si Moventum Requires, Circumspice
Stare wide-eyed at this dense pitch boiling by the art divine; Amniotic liquid of another kind, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God- Blessed Are The Dead Which Dye in the Lorde.

The first and most apparent difference one might notice between this album (released in February of 2004) and the previous two is the change in music and vocal style. The music has changed from the orthodox black metal style to a much more avant-garde style, making heavy use of polyrhythms, dissonant and atonal riffs, and weird chord structures. The vocals have changed from the typical black metal shrieks of Shaxul to a deeper, more full-throated growl closer to death metal vocals (or the operatic rasp of Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar).

The album’s title is Latin for “If you seek his monument, look around you,” and is taken from an inscription on the tomb of widely celebrated English architect Sir Christopher Wren. In this context, however, the title is not for the aggrandizement of a single great man. No, here, D.S.O. is inviting us to see the monument to their Lord and Savior, Satan. And that monument is Earth itself.

This concept is further reinforced by the album art, drawn by the late Timo “Davthvs” Ketola, which features a decaying cherub corpse over a globe, its genitals hanging over the Levant in an apparent middle finger to the holy land of all three Abrahamic religions. But that’s not all the symbolism going on here. The cherub as a whole represents all three of the album’s most significant themes: antinatalism, antinomianism, and putrefaction.

Antinatalism is the philosophical belief that procreation is a moral evil, usually borne out of environmentalist concerns or because they think the very act of being born is a violation of consent. This theme appears most clearly in the lyrics from “Blessed are the Dead Which Dye in the Lorde,” which I quoted above. This sentiment is also clearly stated in a Latin phrase that appears in the closing track, “Malign Paradigm,” which translates as “the house and church of our Lord is childless.”

This antinatalist stance is closely tied with the band’s symbolic use of the concept of putrefaction. D.S.O. takes the common Christian concept of original sin and cranks it up to eleven, arguing that a spiritual rot is inherent in every human’s soul, making Heavenly salvation impossible. For the heart of a lost angel is in the Earth, and that heart belongs to Satan. As the lyrics of “Carnal Malefactor” state, “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” The empty throne of Christ that resides on the Earth will forever remain empty because humanity will never be spiritually pure enough to receive His kingdom. Again, in “Carnal Malefactor’s” words, human nature is a “ciborium of shame and waste.”

With that, D.S.O. offers the third theme of the album as a solution; antinomianism. Antinomianism, which Wikipedia defines as “any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious, or social norms,” is often used in Christian contexts in the same vein as “sola fide,” or “by faith alone” in Latin (that is, when it’s not referring to heresy). Several Christian scholars have criticized this notion.

D.S.O. is equally critical of the notion in the context of their metaphysical Satanist perspective. Faith in Satan alone is not going immanentize the eschaton and finally render humanity to the dustbin of history where it belongs. One must commit evil acts in the name of Satan to bring about his will on Earth. Such actions might take the form of the nightmarish avian-assisted abortion portrayed in “Carnal Malefactor”:

A phallic communion that sanctifies interior wastelands,
When a woman is knead by the claws of fowls attracted
By seminal odors no longer hidden by dignity,
And purified by their beaks rummaging her swollen vagina.

The carrion birds extract the woman’s unborn fetus, which is then used as part of a Satanic Eucharist in the following track, “Drink the Devil’s Blood.”

The whole theme of the album is that humans are far more susceptible to Satan and his influence than to that of God or His angels. Thus, in the words of this Pop Matters article, the album is about how “Satan is pervading every aspect of our material and metaphysical realms and how Man’s relationship with him should be one of reverence and devotion.” In short, if you can’t beat him, join him.

The band would take this premise a step further in the 2005 E.P. Kenose, named after the Greek word for “emptiness.” This concept is one method by which Christian scholars have theorized that Jesus’ relationship to God the Father worked while He was performing His miracles on Earth. Upon incarnating as a human child in Bethlehem, He emptied Himself of all divine attributes to live on Earth as an average person. D.S.O. seized on this possibility to argue that Jesus Himself ended up falling prey to the putrefaction inherent in the human soul, and thus His death upon the cross to redeem humanity’s souls from the grip of Satan was all for naught.

S.M.R.C. would only be the first in a trilogy of albums dealing with humanity’s relationship with Satan. The second would be released in July of 2007.

Fas-Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeturnum
God of terror, very low dost thou bring us, very low hast thou brought us- The Shrine of Mad Laughter.

This album gives us what is probably the most chaotic music out of all of D.S.O.’s discography. Featuring riffs that almost sound more like random noises than chord progressions and drumming that is equally breakneck and madcap, the music is surprisingly fitting for the absolutely shattering existential crisis that the main character is going through in this album’s story.

Although the album title (Latin for “Divine Law- Depart From Me, Ye Accursed, Into Everlasting Fire”) and art above may seem to represent Satan’s fall from God’s grace, the lyrics indicate that Satan’s and man’s fall from grace are one and the same. Because, again, the heart of a lost angel is in the Earth, and that heart belongs to Satan.

This album is where the band really starts to show off the influence of one of their biggest literary idols: the French post-surrealist philosopher Georges Bataille (pronounced buh-tie). His book Inner Experience is quoted extensively in the lyrics, alongside texts like My Mother, Theory of Religion, and The Solar Anus. Bataille’s philosophical writings were obsessed with limit experiences and acts of transgression. The basic thesis of his entire life’s work is probably best summarized by this quote from Inner Experience, which also appears in the track “A Chore for the Lost”:

Every human being not going to the extreme limit is the servent of the enemy of man and the accomplice of a nameless obscurity.

Georges Bataille, Inner Experience

Bataille saw no differences between the emotional states aroused by divine ecstasy and extreme horror and thus came to believe that humanity must seek experiences that drive us to our mental and physical limits to discover the absolute truth that lies within our souls.

In Fas-Ite…, D.S.O. argues that that truth lies in “Oobombration,” derived from the Latin word for “shadow,” which provides the title of the opening and closing tracks of the album. The Oobombrations seem to represent the darkness that comes before birth and after death and demonstrates humanity’s fragility and insignificance compared to their all-powerful, all-knowing God.

The four tracks between them show the stages of the protagonist’s journey after discovering this fact. He starts by going insane with terror in “The Shrine of Mad Laughter:”

A senstion of everlasting rot and those frantic wails!
No, it is not a fall into the abyss,
The defiance of descent,
A coronation beyond liberty and slavery!

The protagonist tries to cling to some semblance of normalcy in “Bread of Bitterness,” even as the truths he built his worldview on crumble around him:

From a suppliction without response,
The essence of man, his ground giving way,
Comes illumination by a sun of great evil that sets aflame the inner core
And enthrones suffocation and the intolerable without respite
As the joyful reward for a million aborted truths.

The protagonist then realizes that all of this was predestined in “The Repellant Scars of Abandon and Election,” and thus decides to follow the left-hand path away from conventional morality:

I was beyond withstanding my own ignominy.
I invoked it and blessed it.
I progressed even further into vileness and degredation.
Am I resurging, intact, out of infamy?

Finally, in “A Chore for the Lost,” we see the protagonist finally embrace the intoxicating transgressions that all men succumb to one way or another, for Satan is the unquestioned Lord of this World. Thus we must “be a blight… on all orchards of this world.”

What pleasure of inconcievable purity there is
In being an object of abhorrance
For the sole being to whom destiny links my life!

Darkness encloses the human soul every step of its journey through life, and one way or another, the darkness always reclaims us.

Paracletus
Raging winds over Babylon like a primal chaos spread. Emaciated beasts howl with angel voices. Thou shalt be desolate forever.- Malconfort

The title for this album comes from a Greek word that literally means “he who was called for/sent for.” It has also been used as “advocate” or “helper,” primarily in Christian contexts where it is used as an epithet for the Holy Spirit. Here, however, D.S.O. seems to be taking inspiration from French writer and Catholic apologist Leon Bloy, who is quoted in Raymond Barbeau’s book Un Prophete Luciferian as arguing that Satan will rise out of Hell at the end of days to become the Paraclete.

D.S.O., of course, spins this idea in a much darker direction, portraying his rise from Hell as being the final battle between God and Satan as depicted in the Book of Revelation. Of course, the shadowy seven-headed dragon illustrated in the album art is a big giveaway in this regard. There are other more subtle hints, however; for instance, the albums runs for just over 42 minutes, which is a reference to Revelation 13:5, which states that “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise its authority over forty-two months.”

Indeed, the lyrics have a very apocalyptic feel to them. The first half of the album seems to show Satan’s followers chanting an epiklesis, or “invocation,” for him to rise out of Hell to claim what is his. He commands his followers to undergo abscission, shedding parts of themselves that they don’t need, much like a maple tree sheds its leaves in autumn (likely shedding all sense of self in the same type of limit experiences Georges Bataille was so fascinated with). Meanwhile, those who still insist on following God are left without any sense of unity in His absence. Any perceived case of Him answering His followers’ prayers is nothing more than the spiritual equivalent of phosphenes, the phenomenon in which the eye perceives light without light actually entering the cornea.

The following five tracks describe the chaos that reigns on Earth as the final battle between Heaven and Hell rages. The rivers and seas boil away into nothing, and sickness and famine spread among the emaciated populace. Perhaps “Devouring Famine” depicts this hellish apocalypse best:

It is senseless to fight against this infinite stream.
Behind this threshold life exhausts itself, loses itself.
Rejoice! For tonight it is an eerie birth that we celebrate!
And with dusk, as shadows slowly recover the land,
The most extreme solitude drapes the shoulders
Of a distant silhouette bearing a glacial emptiness,
Laden like a luminous storm in which sun and lightning are prolonged;
A wound through which, hastening from all points of the universe,
Desolation spreads in chaotic convulsions.

The album, and the trilogy proper, ends with the track “Apokatastasis panton,” meaning “recreation of the universe” in ancient Greek. Usually, the phrase is used in the context of universal salvation, as with the Leon Bloy quote above. But of course, D.S.O. uses it to mean Satan is remaking the world in his image after his victory in the final battle. The track’s stark lyrics seem to represent Satan’s last message to all those poor souls who still cling to a belief in the essential goodness of humanity:

You were seeking strength, justice, splendor!
You were seeking love!
Here is the pit!
Here is your pit!
It's name is Silence!
Drought
A shadow of horror is risen. This will not be redeemed no matter how sincere the genuflection and ardent the confession.- Fiery Serpents

In between the main albums in the trilogy, D.S.O. released several E.P.’s that examined topics adjacent to the themes presented in the albums. Most of them only contained one song, usually running around twenty minutes in length. In order of their release, they are:

Mass Grave Aesthetics: Originally released in 2005 as part of a split L.P. titled From the Entrails to the Dirt, the song was eventually released as its own E.P. in December 2008. Lyrically, the song is based on this quote from the 19th-century French anarchist Laurent Talihade, which was responding to a terrorist attack against the Chamber of Deputies:

What matter the victims, provided the gesture is beautiful? What matters the death of vague human beings, if thereby the individual affirms himself?

Laurent Talihide, December 1893

D.S.O. uses this quote to argue that human self-affirmation is only possible through acts of violence, whether against oneself or others, especially to prove one’s loyalty to certain ideologies. Or, as Georges Bataille argues:

To choose violence is to choose freedom. What evil in essence rejects is a concern with a time to come. It is precisely in this sense that the longing for the summit-that the movement toward evil-constitute all morality within us. Morality has in itself no value (in the strong sense) except inasmuch as it leads to going beyond being-rejecting concerns for a time to come.

Geroges Bataille, On Nietschze

Diabolis Absconditus, meaning “the devil is hiding” in Latin, was also released on a 2005 split L.P., this time titled Crushing the Holy Trinity. It also received its own E.P. in May 2011. Here, the band portrays the traditional patriarchal archetype of God being replaced by a sexually depraved feminine archetype. This concept was heavily inspired by a Georges Bataille short story titled Madame Edwarda, in which the narrator hires the services of a prostitute who claims to be God on Earth.

Veritas Diaboli Manet in Aeturnum: Chaining the Katechon: Released in December of 2008, this track revolves around the concept of the Katechon, a figure from New Testament esoterica who is believed to hinder the rise of the Antichrist as well as the second coming of Jesus. Thus, this Katechon needs to be chained so the apocalypse can proceed as planned. Indeed, one could interpret this as a direct prequel to Paracletus, especially in this repeated verse in which the Satanic cultists summon their Lord from the firey pit and experience an appropriately Lovecraftian response to his appearance:

We went to the trough, Lord!
We went bent and convulsed!
We saw blood, Lord! It was glittering!
You dispensed it and we drank it!
We saw your image!
The gap of your* eyes and mouths is void!
We went bent and convulsed!
It broke us and dissolved us!

*The lyrics in the liner notes read, “The gap of our eyes and mouths is void,” but the singer to me seems like he’s saying “your eyes and mouths.” I don’t know. I kind of think it’s scarier that way.

But by far the most consequential E.P. the band ever recorded was Drought, released in June 2012. It acts as an epilogue to the trilogy, showing the aftermath of the final battle from the point of view of the poor human souls left to rot on a dying planet Earth. God has surrendered to Satan, and, whether because He thinks humans are not worth the trouble anymore or because He has lost any power to save them from their fate, He has abandoned them to Satan to do with them as he pleases. Satan thus leaves Earth as, in the words of the track “Scorpions and Drought,” “a desert with no life but scorpions coming as a swarm, as a flood, with an abundance of deadly stings.” Naturally, D.S.O. views this as a mercy kill, “like the shooting in the head of a horse with a broken leg,” in the words of “Abrasive Swirling Murk.” All is truly lost.

The Synarchy of Molten Bones
The Synarchy of Molten Bones shall consist of men of worth and men of ill intent in abandoned yet equal numbers, for their insurgent wills harbor the seed of transgression alike.- The Synarchy of Molten Bones

Despite not being related to the trilogy in any direct fashion, I like to view this and the next album as prequels to the trilogy. Although calling Synarchy an album feels kind of wrong, as it only clocks in at slightly over 29 minutes, seven minutes shorter than the Kenose E.P.

The album art depicts Nimrod, a Biblical king who is often attributed as the man behind the Tower of Babel, thus portraying him as a rebellious and hubristic ruler who tried to usurp the authority of God. Some Jewish and Islamic traditions also describe him as an evil counterpart to Abraham. However, the artwork here is inspired by Book I of La Fin de Satan, which was Les Miserables and Hunchback of Notre Dame author Victor Hugo’s answer to Paradise Lost. Book I depicts Nimrod, who, having conquered and laid waste to the Earth, decides to conquer Heaven. To this end, he constructs a makeshift cage driven by four eagles drawn upward by lion carcasses. After traveling for a whole year and seeing nothing but blue skies, he finally shoots an arrow into the infinite and is thrown back to Earth.

D.S.O. uses this story to portray a group called the “Synarchy of Molten Bones” who take inspiration from the figure of Nimrod and decide to find a way to kill God so that they can become the ultimate power of the universe. For those wondering what a “synarchy” is, Wikipedia offers two definitions. Going by the original Greek, it comes from the words for “joint/harmonious rule.” However, D.S.O. seems to be going for the other definition, which is “rule by a secret elite.” Indeed, this was the definition popularised by French occult philosopher Alexandre Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in the 1880s as a conservative alternative to anarchism that preserved the existing hierarchies rather than abolishing them.

Indeed, the central thesis of this album’s story seems to be that humanity’s boundless ambitions will only end up destroying us in the end, both materially and spiritually. The result of the Synarchy’s meddling, according to the final track, “Internecine Iatrogenesis,” will be “a brazen holocaust, brighter than a hundred suns, that slowly consumes God and man.”

But D.S.O. isn’t content with simply stating that the Synarchy’s reign and their insatiable quest to conquer Heaven and Earth will create a nightmarish hellscape in our world. They want to show us what that world might look like…

The Furnaces of Palingenesia
Hear our voices, all of you men of resentment; whose stomachs and souls are aflame with the poisonous flame of impotence; you who have been wronged again and again; wiping your face clean day after day, from the spit of those sitting unjustifiably above you. We will grant you freedom from freedom!– The Fires of Frustration

This album, released in May 2019, presents possibly the most unambiguous themes in their entire discography. The album is presented as a speech by an authority figure who serves as the spokesperson for a fascist organization called the Order. The lyrics present fascist rhetoric in its purest form, divorced from all the alt-right’s facile promises of a utopia waiting beyond all the bloodshed. The spokesperson admits that the Order is only looking to amass more and more power for itself and those who swear loyalty to it.

Granted, the band does throw some shade at left-wing authoritarian governments as well, as another big theme seems to be that every violent revolution, regardless of its stated goals, contains the seeds of its own destruction. Take this passage from “Ad Arma! Ad Arma!” which quotes Mao Zedong almost verbatim:

Nothing from the world of yore deserves to be preserved;
Every particle is infected and corrupt.
The great cleansing shall take as long as necessary,
For power exclusively stems from the gun barrel.
On a glorious dawn,
The odor of tear gas shall replace the scent of fresh brewed coffee,
The dust of crumbling buildings shall darken the horizon and fill your lungs
As the sun reaches its zenith;
Victorious chants will resonate at dusk
To the rhythm of cracking necks and the gunfire of mass executions.
Behold the glorious beauty of unrestrained fraternal compassion and love!

However, these passages are far outnumbered by others that directly condemn various fascist beliefs, including some that have become mainstream talking points among traditional conservatives (because we live in the worst timeline). Take this quote from “Sacrificial Theopathy,” for instance:

Thou shalt decree that thine enemy comes from shores unknown to the man of virtue,
Strange lands that breed beings devoid of any redeeming qualities.

Anyone else getting major Tucker Carlson/Stephen Miller vibes from this quote? “Absolutist Regeneration” also contains a promise that “we will clean out the marsh at all cost.” In other words, we will drain the swamp. Of course, the Order’s spokesperson has a much less outwardly altruistic motive for doing so than Mango Mussolini, as the preceding sentence states that “We will turn this world into a cemetery rather than not regenerate it in our own way” (which, let’s be honest, is probably what Individual 1 meant anyway).

Several other passages speak to the cutthroat nature of the late-stage capitalist economics that most fascists prefer, especially this one, also from “Absolutist Regeneration/Year Infinity”:

Those who nourish the famished shall be left to starve.
Those who heal the wounded shall be maimed.
Those who console the lamenting souls shall be buried alive,
Thier stomachs filled with ignonimous larvae.
Rats shall feed on the eyes of those guilty of empathy towards their fellow men.
That which is not our credo is not to be.

And now I get major Augusto Pinochet vibes from this passage.

The album goes on like this for ten songs for about forty minutes, the spokesperson ranting like a deranged and murderous psychopath over music that is much more straightforward than the other albums but no less dissonant and discordant (unlike all other D.S.O. albums, this was apparently recorded live in the studio). The final track, titled “You Cannot Even Find the Ruins,” dispenses with this to present much softer (yet still heavy) music, as the narrator describes the end result of the Order’s rapacious power grabs:

You cannot even find the ruins
of the jewels of yesterday
they're ashes gone
memories wiped clean

Indeed, this may reflect how another fictional fascist organization called “the Order” left the Earth after its final victory. The classic white supremacist text The Turner Diaries ends with much of the Earth becoming an irradiated hellscape with 90% of the human population wiped out and the remaining 10% likely soon to follow. But the author wants us to view this as a good thing because at least all the Jews and non-whites are dead, right?

But here is where we address the larger controversy that this album spawned upon its release. While the majority of listeners have (rightly, in my opinion) come away from The Furnaces of Palingenesia seeing it as a double-barrelled dark satire of fascist rhetoric, given the massive amount of self-aware irony present in the lyrics, some are accusing Deathspell Omega as a whole of being an outright National Socialist Black Metal (or N.S.B.M.) band.

Remember that content warning I gave way at the top of this essay about fascist and antisemitic hate speech and pedophilia? Yeah, here’s where I warn you that anyone sensitive to those topics should proceed with caution because here is where we discuss the one person who is the reason why D.S.O. is accused of being fascist sympathizers.

Mikko Aspa (aka The Elephant in the Room)
Mikko Aspa playing in Bar Rock Bear in Helsinki on 6.12.2018, an Independence Day neo-Nazi gig in Finland.

Mikko Reino Juhani Aspa, from the city of Lahti, has long been recognized and decried for being a leader in Finland’s National Socialist music scene. Aside from his suspected involvement in Deathspell Omega, Aspa has racked up a truly massive number of other musical projects over the years, including but not limited to:

  • A one-man black metal project called Clandestine Blaze
  • A Rock Against Communism group called Vapaudenristi
  • A one-man funeral doom metal project called Stabat Mater
  • A pornogrind project called Creamface
  • A noise project called Nicole 12
  • Guest work for bands like Goatmoon, Mgla, and Pagan Skull

Of all the bands listed above, probably Stabat Mater is the only one not embroiled in controversy around white supremacy or Aspa’s somewhat disturbing obsession with taboo/illegal sex acts. For instance, Creamface songs have sported such lovely titles as “Rimjob Teenager” and “Underage Anal Girl,” and Nicole 12 was a project that was apparently centered on the lyrical theme of pedophilia (although Aspa apparently shelved that project after becoming a father in 2011, so… good on him, I guess?).

As for the white supremacy accusations, those most prominently come up in relation to Clandestine Blaze and Vapaudenristi. I won’t go over all the details here since the Finnish Antifa network already went over Aspa’s connections in this beautiful article on their blog. Suffice it to say, though, Aspa’s ties go pretty deep.

For instance, in October of 2016, Vapaudenristi participated in a benefit concert for Jesse Eppu Torniainen, a Neo-Nazi activist sent to prison for the murder of an anti-fascist activist named Jimi Karttunen. The band has also gotten flack for anti-Semitic rhetoric in their lyrics, which seems to be true if Google Translate is working correctly.

Anti-Semitic themes are equally present in the Clandestine Blaze song “Tearing Down Jerusalem” from the 1999 E.P. On the Mission:

War! Strike to the holy city!
Crush Jerusalem!
Torture the followers of weakening God!
Let the blood stream through dirty streets!
Zionist cancer faces zero tolerence!
Tearing down Jerusalem!
Crushing Zionist power!
Victory of unholy forces!
Our victory!

Granted, Aspa seems to have toned down the anti-Semitism in more recent albums, although that probably has more to do with not wanting to appear too extreme to the unconverted rather than a genuine heel face turn. Indeed, as recently as a 2020 interview with the WordPress blog Excuse the Blood, Aspa identified Pentti Linkola as an influence, a Finnish ecofascist who once said he preferred dictatorships to democracies.

As for his history with Deathspell Omega, the band released their first two albums on Northern Heritage, a record company founded by Aspa in 1999. Ironically enough, though, all of the albums with Aspa reputedly on vocals were released through D.S.O.’s self-publishing label Norma Evangelium Diaboli. Some have argued that someone other than Mikko Aspa is the vocalist, at least since Synarchy, usually Hasjarl, Spica, or Frank Hueso. However, I took the liberty of listening to “Ad Arma! Ad Arma!” from Furnaces and the title track of the 2018 Clandestine Blaze album Tranquility of Death back-to-back, and I am pretty well convinced that Mikko Aspa is indeed the vocalist.

Personal and Concluding Thoughts

I admit that I was pretty excited to talk about this band back toward the beginning of this month, as the band seemed the perfect scary topic for the month of spooks and specters. However, right after I finished the previous article on paranormal triangles, I decided to read that article I linked above outlining Mikko Aspa’s connection to the Neo-Nazi underground, and subsequently became much more conflicted. Am I indirectly supporting fascist movements in the Baltic region by listening to Deathspell Omega? How much in the way of royalties does Aspa receive via his participation in this band?

D.S.O. themselves have stated that their intention was for Furnaces to be interpreted as anti-fascist in a 2019 interview with Bardo Methodology, in which they said that a minority of their contributors stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum from the core French collective “and are therefore irreconcilable political foes.” They also point to the historical friendship between French communist philosopher Louis Aragon, Gaullist Andre Malraux, and fascist Pierre Drieu La Rochelle as a parallel to their relationship with Aspa. However, they fail to mention that Aragon and La Rochelle became enemies when the latter sided with the Vichy French government after the Nazi takeover of Paris in May of 1940.

A part of me does get a sense of schadenfreude listening to Aspa singing the lyrics to Furnaces as his bandmates take the piss out of an ideology he clearly holds dear. But then I wonder if it’s just slightly hypocritical that the band is working with an avowed fascist while writing lyrics about how fascism is the ultimate expression of human evil.

Then again, I feel that the band has been operating on this mantra that opens the Furnaces track “Absolutist Regeneration” since the beginning of their career: “The only truly malignant evil is hope.” Indeed, just by reading the interviews the band gave around the release of Furnaces, they seem to think that humanity is incapable of finding a way out of their inevitable destruction, that fascism or some version of Stalinist Russia or North Korea is the logical endpoint of human progress. Thus, they probably don’t see collaborating with a known fascist collaborator as really anything worth commenting on.

Indeed, any reader who is aware of my previously stated political beliefs might naturally be wondering why I’m giving this band the time of day in the first place. Well, the answer is probably similar to many other people’s fascination with true crime or with violent gangster rappers: humanity is evolutionarily hard-wired to pay attention to dangerous people who might say or do things that may cause them harm.

Deathspell Omega is truly a one-of-a-kind band, for better or for worse. They took a tried and true black metal tradition, bashing Christianity, and took time to actually engage with the religion they were criticizing rather than attack a caricature of it. And while I disagree with most of their conclusions, especially their view of human nature, their lyrics have given me a possible philosophy for the human villains of The Divine Conspiracy to work off of. So maybe there’s some good one can get out of this band.

So, what are your opinions? Am I a terrible person for profiling this band despite it collaborating with a fascist? Is it possible to separate the art from the artist in this case since Aspa has been confirmed not to contribute songwriting in any way? Or is it best for me to just leave this band behind and focus on less problematic artists? I appreciate any and all comments and responses.

In the meantime, that’s it for this article. Join me next time when I do a P.J.’s Ultimate Playlist Episode on an obscure Scottish progressive rock artist from the 1980s. Until then, have a safe and happy Halloween, and remember: “Judica me… perinde ac cadaver!”

Have you beheld the darkness sitting upon the Earth, overshadowing the wind rose, lost in the smoke?- Phosphene

Ten More Paranormal Triangles (Located Nowhere Near Bermuda)

Guess what, beautiful watchers! It’s October! And you know what that means; it’s time to delve into the spooky side of things.

You may recall last February when I last talked about so-called paranormal hotspots that were labeled “triangles” thanks to the infamy of Bermuda’s supposed vortex. In the spirit of Halloween, I wish to continue that globe-trotting adventure by looking at ten more lesser-known paranormal triangles, both to tell you the stories and to see whether any of them can hold up to scientific scrutiny. Let’s not tarry about and jump right in.

1. Bass Strait Triangle (Australia)
Map of Australia and Tasmania with Bass Strait marked in blue

Author Jack Loney identified this triangle in his 1980 book Mysteries of the Bass Strait Triangle. The strait has long had a reputation for being treacherous for passing ships, but is this because of supernatural goings-on, or do these disappearances have a more earthly origin? Let us examine some individual incidents to find out:

1797: Bass Strait is first discovered by European explorers after the Sydney Cove wrecks on Preservation Island (its namesake, George Bass, becomes the first European to sail through it the following year while circumnavigating Tasmania, then known as Van Dieman’s Land). Things take a turn for the mysterious when one of the salvage ships, a sloop named Eliza, vanishes during a return trip to Sydney.

February 1858: The Royal Navy brig HMS Sappho vanishes while en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Sydney, with a subsequent search turning up no trace of the ship or her crew. Most scholars believe she foundered in the Bass Strait, either holed by rocks or capsized in a gale (she was last seen off Cape Bridgewater on February 18). HMS Sappho is only one of several ships that went missing in the strait in the 1800s; other notable incidents included the Harlech Castle in 1870.

1901: The SS Federal disappears along with its 22 crew members and its cargo of coal. Its wreck was discovered in 2019.

1906: The German cargo ship SS Frederick Fischer vanishes en route to Tasmania.

September 10, 1920: A schooner named the SS Amelia J disappeared shortly after entering Bass Strait. A barquentine named the SS Southern Cross and an Airco DH.9A aircraft also vanished while searching for her. The wreck of the Southern Cross is the only wreck to have been discovered so far. Witnesses reported strange lights in the skies over Bass Strait around the time of the incidents.

October 21, 1934: A de Havilland DH86 airliner named Miss Hobart inexplicably went missing while flying over Bass Strait, despite being in perfect weather. All eleven people on board were lost with it. Only a small amount of wreckage was ever found on the coast of Victoria. Eerily, much like a similar incident 44 years to the day later, the pilots radioed that the passengers witnessed an “aerial machine” approaching the airliner before all contact was lost.

1935: The Loina, a Holyman airliner, vanishes near Flinders Island with five people aboard. Officially, the cause was human error compounded with the poor design of the craft. However, a small piece on the plane’s floor was among the wreckage recovered, which showed a burned patch several centimeters wide, which someone had attempted to stamp out.

World War II (1939-1945): Several strange incidents were reported by pilots flying over the strait during the war. Seventeen military planes vanished during this period, despite no record of enemy combatants ever coming near the region (official sources blame inexperienced crew flying too close to the ocean’s surface). One Bristol Beaufort bomber flying over the strait in 1944 claimed it was followed by a “dark shadow” for 20 minutes until it suddenly shot up into the sky. A fighter pilot claimed he was followed by a bronze disc-shaped craft in 1942 while investigating local reports of strange lights in the area.

April 6, 1966: Children and school staff in Melbourne witness a huge disc-shaped craft lazily drifting over their cricket field, which they follow until it vanishes over the treeline. Other witnesses later come forward to say that they saw five smaller craft trailing behind it.

1972: A vintage de Havilland Tiger Moth owned by Brenda Hean and Max Price vanishes while en route to Canberra to protest the proposed hydroelectric dam on Lake Pedder. Investigators believe the plane crashed somewhere between the East Coast and Flinders Island and may have been sabotaged by pro-development interests.

October-November 1978: A flap of UFO sightings occurs along the coasts of Tasmania and Victoria. A husband and wife pair of motorists describe a bright light coming down from the sky and following their car on October 9. A month later, a taxi driver in Hobart slams on his brakes when he sees a green light on the road in front of him. The light vanishes when he takes his eyes off the road to tend to his radio, which is suddenly on the fritz. On November 25, a woman reports seeing a “doorway of light” appear in her driveway. Some ufologists have suggested a connection with the following incident in this list…

October 21, 1978: When 20-year-old amateur pilot Frederick Valentich set off from Moorabbin Airport that Saturday evening, he likely had no idea he was about to become the subject of one of the most infamous UFO incidents, not just in Australia but in the entire world. He radioed Melbourne air traffic control at 7:06 to inform them of a strange aircraft that seemed to be following him from about a thousand feet overhead. He described the craft as having a shiny metal surface and had green landing lights on it. Over the next six minutes, he described the craft approaching him from the east and “orbiting” over him. He claimed his Cessna 182 was experiencing engine problems and then said these ominous words about the strange craft: “It’s not an aircraft.” When air traffic control asked Valentich to clarify, all they got in response was what they described as a “metallic scraping sound.” When he failed to arrive at his destination at the King Island Airport, the search was on.

Despite the search covering 1,000 square miles, no trace of the aircraft has been found, although an engine cowl flap belonging to a Cessna 182 washed up on Flinders Island five years later. Theories for what happened to Valentich abound. Some say he faked his death and landed the plane elsewhere. Others say the strange lights he saw were because he was flying the plane upside down without realizing and saw his own lights reflected in the water (something that should have been impossible with the Cessna’s gravity feed fuel system). Others speculate that he may have found himself in a graveyard spiral, in which a pilot thinks he is flying level when they are actually in a banking turn, which they didn’t realize until it was too late. The supposed lights on the UFO were actually the planets Venus, Mars, and Mercury and the star Antares.

True, the graveyard spiral theory is probably far more likely than an alien abduction, but there is still one strange aspect of the Valentich incident that I feel I would be remiss not to discuss. On the same evening as the Valentich incident, a plumber named Roy Manifold was photographing the sunset near the Cape Otway Lighthouse (well within Valentich’s flight path) when he and his son, Jason, heard the sound of a plane overhead. Instead of gradually fading off in the distance, however, Jason claims that the engine’s sound cut off entirely at one point, “as if someone had turned a radio off.” Later, when he and his dad developed the photos, one of them came back like this:

Some other anonymous eyewitnesses came forward later to claim that they saw a plane flying down toward the ground at a 45-degree angle while a green light floated 1,000-2,000 feet above it. They never saw the plane crash. None of this necessarily proves that Valentich was killed or abducted by aliens, but you never know…

December 1979: A yacht named Charleston vanishes while en route to Sydney to join the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. Theories for what happened include wind damaging the mast or a loose container damaging the rudder, leaving the boat helplessly adrift. The family of the owner of the yacht even contacted a clairvoyant who told them the vessel had come ashore on an island south of New Zealand. Whatever the case, no trace of the yacht has ever been found.

Admittedly, the Bass Strait has long held a dangerous reputation for things other than UFOs. The prevailing winds and currents breaking up against King’s Island in the east combined with the strait’s shallow depth (160 feet at the deepest) and numerous reefs and submerged rocks can create very rough seas, especially in bad weather. Still, the strait’s history with UFOs is hard to ignore, especially after the strange phenomena was immortalized in the 2016 TV show The Kettering Incident. The series co-creator, Victoria Madden, has explained in interviews that the show was inspired by several odd incidents that occurred around the north coast of Tasmania while she was growing up. These included missing persons, cars suddenly coming to a halt, “dome objects in the Lake Country,” memory loss, etc. Madden herself recalls a childhood memory where she and her friends witnessed lights hovering over the trees, making a weird noise before they suddenly vanished.

Some have even gone as far as to argue that there may be an underwater UFO base in the region. I’m not going to agree or disagree with this argument, even if I’m a bit on the skeptical side here.

Sources:

https://listverse.com/2018/02/11/10-truly-bizarre-incidents-from-the-bass-strait-triangle/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bass_Strait_Triangle

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4385

UFO Disappearance-Unsolved Mysteries

UFOs and Strange Vanishings at Australia’s Mysterious Bass Strait Triangle

2. Little Egypt Triangle (Illinois)
The Illinois counties generally agreed to make up the Little Egypt Triangle

Little Egypt is the colloquial name for the southern third of Illinois, bordered by the Wabash, Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri Rivers. Often divided from the rest of Illinois by Interstate 64, the region is often renowned for having a distinct cultural identity from the rest of the state, principally due to its association with the antebellum South (for better or for worse). However, several paranormal investigators have also argued that the area is a hotbed of paranormal activity, with a high concentration of haunted buildings, UFOs, and cryptid sightings.

For example, in Madison County, Alton has often been described as “the most haunted town in America,” hosting such hotspots as McPike Mansion, the First Unitarian Church, the Mineral Springs Hotel, and the Milton School. Other haunted locations that one can find in the triangle include (but certainly aren’t limited to) Cave-In-Rock State Park (allegedly home to buried treasure and moaning cries), the Crenshaw House in Equality (ironically home to a place where free blacks were sold into slavery in a reverse Underground Railroad situation), the Coate Mental Health Center in Anna (a mental hospital that burned down twice. Need I say more?), and Lebanon Road in Collinsville (a local legend says that if you pass under all seven bridges on the road at midnight, a portal to Hell will open up!).

As for UFOs, St. Clair County hosted one of the most infamous so-called “black triangle” sightings when, for two hours starting at four in the morning on January 5, 2000, several eyewitnesses (including four police officers) saw a triangle-shaped object flying overhead. They described it as having three white lights on the vertices and a red light in the center. One officer even managed to photograph the object. Even though Skeptoid podcast host Brian Dunning has built a rather compelling case that the “UFO” was nothing more than an advertising blimp, the incident has remained a mainstay in Illinois urban legend, even being referenced in Sufjan Stevens’ landmark 2005 concept album Illinois.

As for cryptids, southern Illinois has played host to several sightings of animals that seem out of place. Out of place big cats seem to be very common in Illinois. Champaign County was plagued by a particularly vicious one in 1963 that killed a lot of livestock, including dozens of chickens. Shawnee National Forest has also been a historical hotspot for big cat sightings. One of the more dramatic reports to come out of this region happened to Mike Bubsy on April 10, 1970. He was tending to engine problems outside Olive Branch in Alexander County when a six-foot-tall black feline attacked him. It only stopped when a passing semi-truck startled it and allowed Bubsy to catch a ride to the hospital.

Phantom kangaroos have also been reported in the region, as have several Bigfoot-type creatures. One particularly alarming encounter occurred near Cairo in the evening hours of July 25, 1972, when Leroy Summers reported seeing a 10-foot hairy white creature standing near the Ohio River levee. The area also boasts its fair share of lake monsters, the most famous being Du Quoin’s Stump Pond Monster that was sighted several times between 1879 and 1968 when the lake was partially drained.

But by far the most infamous and strangest cryptid to come out of Little Egypt is probably the Enfield Horror, which stalked White County in April and May of 1973. On the 25th of that month, Henry McDaniel went to his front door to examine a strange scratching sound. He claims to have found the culprit squatting between two rose bushes. “It had three legs on it, a short body, two short little arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish-colored.” McDaniel fired on the creature, but it did not seem to be affected by the bullets. It leaped away, covering a distance of fifty feet in three jumps.

The sighting sparked panic, with the police having their hands full arresting would-be monster hunters for hunting violations. The hysteria quickly vanished as suddenly as it first appeared, and nowadays, several skeptics have argued that the townsfolk mistook an escaped exotic pet like a kangaroo or an ape for “a monster from outer space.”

Sources:

Alton, Illinois-The Most Haunted Small Town in America: Mysterious Universe

The 15 Most Haunted Places in Illinois-Haunted Rooms America

Loren Coleman, Mysterious America (NY, Paraview, 2001)

Skeptoid Episode #435: The St. Clair Triangle UFO

https://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2015/08/10Triangles.html

W. Haden Blackman, The Field Guide to North American Monsters (NY, Three Rivers Press, 1998)

3. Ossipee Triangle (New Hampshire)

This one covers a vast swath of the Granite State if this map is to be believed, with the vertices being in Franconia in Grafton County, Ossipee in Carroll County, and Salem in Rockingham County. The whole area is centered on Lake Ossipee and was a sacred area to the indigenous Abenaki tribes. The lake was surrounded by a 100 million-year-old volcano and several glacier-carved kettle lakes. One of these, Snake Pond (formerly known as Mystery Pond), is reputed in local legend to be bottomless. UFOs have been reported diving into it and other deep ponds in the region, which has led some to argue that underwater tunnels connect the ponds.

Indeed, one of the most famous alien abduction incidents in UFO history occurred around the north edge of the triangle in 1961. Portsmouth residents Betty and Barney Hill were returning from a vacation in Canada on September 19 when they spotted a strange light just outside Lancaster around 10:30 in the evening. The craft, which they later described as “pancake-shaped” and covered in red lights, followed them until it caught up with them around Indian Head, near Franconia, and hovered about a hundred feet above them. They observed several humanoid figures in the craft’s windows.

Suddenly, the Hills realized they had lost two hours and were driving near Ashland, about thirty-five miles south. They later recalled that the aliens had taken them on board their ship and physically examined them. When Betty asked the beings where they came from, they showed her a map that astronomers later identified as being near the Zeta Reticuli constellation. Some astronomers have argued that the Hills inadvertently discovered a new star system in the process, although some skeptics, most notably Carl Sagan, disagreed. Indeed, a fair number of skeptics have argued that the whole incident was a hallucination triggered by the stress of being an interracial couple in the early 1960s (Barney was black, Betty was white).

Another notable UFO sighting occurred near Exeter on September 3, 1965, when a hitchhiker named Norman Muscarello witnessed a large red glowing object descending upon two houses. When Muscarello persuaded a police officer to follow him back to the site, they saw the same UFO hovering about a hundred feet off the ground. The incident inspired the “Exeter UFO Festival,” which started as a fundraiser to benefit children’s charities in 2010. New Hampshire was also the site of what is often considered the very first photo ever taken of a UFO, which was taken over Mount Washington in 1870.

Finally, there is the mystery of America’s Stonehenge in North Salem, a thirty-acre archeological site whose origins are hotly debated. It is reputed in local lore to have a pre-Columbian origin and to have been created either by local indigenous tribes or by monks of the Irish Culdee order or even ancient Minoan or Phoenician explorers. However, most archaeologists disagree, as no artifacts from pre-Columbian times have been found in the area. They conclude that the site was built by white settlers in the 18th/19th centuries for farming purposes and that William Goodwin, who purchased the land in 1937, started the fantastical stories to drum up business. Either way, it certainly seemed to attract the attention of horror literature icon H.P. Lovecraft, who may have based his story “The Dunwich Horror” on the megalith.

Sources:

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2015/08/10Triangles.html

Dennis William Hauck, Haunted Places: A National Directory

4. Aroostook Triangle (Maine)

This tiny sliver of Aroostook County, Maine, which occupies a 10x25x25 mile sliver of wilderness south of Presque Isle, occupies a rather prominent spot in the work of local folklorist Michelle Souliere. Aroostook is the largest county in New England, which, in Souliere’s eyes, makes it a perfect spot for a colony of Bigfoot to hide. Indeed, the area which she and fellow Mainer cryptozoologist Loren Coleman have dubbed “the Aroostook Triangle” has long been a hotspot of activity commonly associated with Bigfoot lore: wood knocks, snapped trees, large rocks being thrown about, unidentifiable roars, etc.

What follows are a sampling of alleged Sasquatch encounters in Aroostook County collected by Souliere in her book Bigfoot in Maine, presented in chronological order:

c. 1983, E Plantation: An anonymous John Doe claims that he was camping out in his cousin’s backyard when they were woken up by what sounded like rocks being banged together. They went back to sleep, thinking it was a horse in a nearby barn. But when they checked the barn the next morning, the horse wasn’t there.

They had more sleepovers that summer and more weird encounters. Something followed them while they were walking in the woods and growled and ran off when they tried to get a closer look. They later saw a long, humanoid arm reaching over their tent one night after they were woken up by something brushing up against it.

Later in life, John Doe would learn that his sister had once seen an ape-like face peering through her bedroom window, that his brother had seen what he thought was a rock stand up on two legs and walk away, and that one incident in which his mother had ordered him and his siblings back into the house, shotgun in hand, was because she had seen a black shape lurking around the bushes.

May 1990, near Island Falls on Mattawamkeag River: Mike Dunphy Sr. was out on a Memorial Day fishing trip with his son Mike Jr. when a creature walking on two legs and covered in dark brown hair emerged from the woods and crossed an old logging road. They immediately packed up and left and didn’t speak about the incident for years afterward.

May 2007, Moro Plantation: Jeff Kaine was fishing in Green Pond when the peaceful silence was broken by two loud knocks, followed by what sounded like a small tree being snapped in half. Around 7 p.m., Kaine was getting ready to pack it in when a monstrous roar ripped through the evening air. Scared out of his wits, he immediately made a break for his truck and tore out of there. Kaine would later learn that a friend had had large rocks thrown at him during another fishing trip to Green Pond.

Of course, there are probably others, but that’s all I could find from Souliere’s book. Maybe you have your own. Let me know in the comments!

Sources:

http://copycateffect.blogspot.com/2019/07/Aroostook-Triangle.html

Michelle Souliere and Loren Coleman, Bigfoot in Maine (SC, Charleston, The History Press, 2021)

5. Pag Triangle (Croatia)

This location is a rarity in that it is one of the only paranormal triangles that is an actual, physical triangle. The triangle takes its name from the island that houses it, Pag, and can be found just outside of the small town of Novalja. It was discovered by geologist Zlatko Grabovac in 1999 while surveying the region around Velo Tusto Celo Hill (which means “Big Fat Forehead” in English).

The triangle itself, officially known as the Pag Venture Star, is unusual in several ways. It seems to form a perfect isosceles shape, with two sides measuring 72 feet and another measuring 105 feet. It also consists of rocks of a different structure than those surrounding it, being of a much lighter color. Since science still has yet to explain how the triangle came into existence, many fringe theorists have come up with their own answers.

Some, like Stjepan Zvonaric, have noted that Pag Island seems to be a UFO hotspot and has accordingly suggested that the rocks within the triangle were superheated when an extraterrestrial spacecraft landed on the spot 12,000 years ago, which is the scientists’ best guess on when the triangle was first formed. Some have pointed out the fact that one of the angles of the triangle seems to point to the star Sirius as further proof of this theory.

Others, pointing to a local legend stating that Jesus Himself visited the island after His resurrection, argue that it is a sign from God and that the three vertices symbolize the Holy Trinity. Father Zlatko Sudac, a famous priest with stigmata, even claims that he received his wounds while conversing with a friend about the triangle.

Whatever you believe about the triangle, there is no denying that it is a fairly popular tourist destination, with half a million people having visited in the two decades since its discovery. Several of them have claimed to have experienced unusual activity inside the triangle, including GPS’ turning off or connecting with six satellites at once, batteries on electronic devices spontaneously draining, and overall eerie feelings.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pag_Triangle

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pag-triangle

https://croatiaundiscovered.info/en/blog/pag-triangle/

https://unexplainedfile.blogspot.com/2014/01/pag-triangle-ufo-landed-site.html

6. Broad Haven Triangle (Wales)

This UFO hotspot, also known as the Welsh Triangle and the Dyfed Triangle, centers on St. Brides’ Bay in the province of Pembrokeshire, located on the tip of Wales’ southern peninsula. Although it was the wave of sightings that occurred in this region in 1977 that really put this area on the ufology radar, at least one prior sighting has also been recorded.

Taking place near the town of Castlemartin in 1952, it involved a Mr. Thomas who was taking a lunchtime stroll on the sand dunes when he noticed something unusual. A group of men was standing over a metallic object that was partially buried in the sand. When Mr. Thomas approached the men, they warned him not to approach any closer, as he was not adequately protected from the deadly rays that the object was giving off. After warning him that Earth was on a self-destructive path and that they had been monitoring the planet for hundreds of years, they told Mr. Thomas the name of the planet they came from, a detail that Thomas had forgotten by the time he finally came forward with his story.

As for the 1977 wave of sightings, as usual, here’s the most notable incidents recorded in chronological order:

February 4: A group of fourteen schoolchildren are playing football outside of Broad Haven Primary School when a yellow cigar-shaped craft lands in a nearby field. Six of them also see a humanoid figure with long ears and a silver suit emerged from the craft. When the headmaster asks the witnesses to draw what they saw, he is struck by the similarity of their drawings. A teacher later comes forward to say she saw a shiny oval-shaped object with a slight dome departing from the same field, making a humming noise as it did so. The same craft allegedly made a repeat appearance at the school on February 17, witnessed by three teachers.

March 13: 13-year-old Steven Taylor sees a domed object land in the field near his house. When he goes outside to investigate, he is approached by a tall humanoid wearing a shiny one piece suit. After he punches at the figure, it vanishes. That same evening, a 17-year-old Milford Haven resident claims she was menaced by a three-foot-tall humanoid standing on her windowsill.

April 7: 64-year-old Cyril John, another Milford Haven resident, is woken up at 5 a.m. by a light shining through his window. He looks out to see an egg-shaped object about four feet wide floating above a nearby field, colored silver-grey with a reddish-orange light on top. Floating beside it is a faceless humanoid wearing what looks like a silver-grey boiler suit. The being and the object hovered like that for 25 minutes before slowly moving off.

April 19: One of the more infamous sightings to occur during this flap happens to Rosa Granville, owner of the Haven Fort Hotel in Little Haven. She was woken by a light shining through her window around 2:30 in the morning. She looked out her window to see a craft shaped like an upside down saucer in a nearby field, spouting flames of all different colors from its underside. The heat was so intense that Granville claims her face felt burnt afterward. She also sees two faceless humanoids with pointed heads next to the craft. The saucer disappears in the time it takes her to gather other witnesses. She investigates the site the following day and discovers that the grass has been compressed and scorched.

April onward: Whatever was behind these incidents seems to have held a grudge against the Coombs family, the owners of Ripperston Farm. The family consisted of Billy, his wife Pauline, and their three children. They experienced numerous incidents throughout 1977 that some paranormal enthusiasts have compared to Utah’s infamous Skinwalker Ranch. These include lights that chased Pauline as she drove the nearby country lanes, whole herds of cattle being transported to different fields in the time it took Billy to brew a cup of tea, electrical items in the house constantly going haywire, and perhaps most disturbingly, a seven-foot faceless humanoid staring through their living room window.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, as there were also several cases of people claiming to have been abducted by the aliens that were haunting the region at the time. The reports were compelling enough that the British Ministry of Defense sent an investigator to see what he could find. He became convinced that the sightings were all the work of a practical joker, something that seems to be backed up by local businessman Glyn Edwards coming forward in 1996 claiming that he was the silver-suited spaceman.

Even so, sightings of cigar-shaped UFOs have continued to trickle out of the region sporadically, and several witnesses have continued to stick by their stories, including the boys from the primary school incident and Rosa Granville.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Haven

BROAD HAVEN-THE WELSH TRIANGLE: sjhstrangetales

https://www.specialaccesspodcast.co.uk/post/broad-haven-the-welsh-triangle

https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/close-encounters/broad-haven-school-ufo-incident

7. Falkirk Triangle (Scotland)

This sliver of the Scottish lowlands covers the area between the towns of Falkirk, Stirling, and Bonnybridge and lies rather close to the capital at Edinburgh. It has been described as the UFO capital of the world, with 300 sightings being recorded every year!

The sightings in the area seem to date back as far as 1979 in the nearby town of Livingston, when a forestry worker named Robert Taylor was chased by a metallic black flying dome in Dechmont Wood and may have been the victim of alien abduction (he reported being grabbed by metal rods around his hips that pulled him toward the ship before he blacked out). The sightings in the triangle itself would begin in earnest about ten years later:

1989: A firefighting crew is battling a blaze in Gradrum Moss when a red object approaches them. It hovers over them for several minutes before speeding away. Suddenly, a second object approaches them, this time glowing white before it too hovers and then speeds off.

November 12, 1991: Two photographers at the Polmont Reservoir see two flashing lights over Kincardine Bridge. Despite thinking it was a helicopter at first, the pair noticed that it made no sound. The craft approached them, and the pair reported hearing a quiet, pulsing hum.

1992: Local businessman James Walker becomes the subject of the most famous encounter to come out of the triangle. On his way home from work, he encounters a star-shaped UFO that starts following him and eventually cuts him off. As he gets out of his car to take a closer look, the UFO shoots off at blinding speed. It never makes a sound at any point during the encounter.

March 1992: The Sloggett family is out on an early morning walk outside Bonnybridge when they spot a ring of strange lights over a nearby moor. When the family books it back toward their house, a blue football-shaped craft lands in front of them and opens a door, out of which a howling roar bellows.

August 1992: Gary Wood and Colin Wright are driving along the A70 highway through West Lothian near the Harperring Reservoir when a UFO intercepts their car. They suddenly experience a case of missing time lasting two hours. Under hypnosis, they claim to have been taken to an underground base, where they were experimented upon and saw walls lined with people frozen in glass jars.

January 19, 1994: A motorist in the town of Larbert is chased by a white light, which a bystander manages to capture on tape in an 18-second film.

September 1996: An airforce family reports a truly bizarre encounter in Falkland when they claim to have seen a field swarming with ant-like beings seemingly being commanded by taller white entities to make nests out of saliva and hay. They also claim these beings were being teleported out of a black triangle the size of a stadium via an array of bizarre lights.

1999: The town of Gorebridge is claimed to have been placed under siege by UFOs. Reports range from a 737 jet being buzzed by three glowing objects while approaching Edinburgh Airport to two men being chased by a “floating green eye” while looking for Christmas trees near Blinkbonny Mine to an apparent alien being who was photographed standing on someone’s roof.

Again, those are just some of the more infamous sightings. As the 300-a-year figure noted above indicates, there are far more sightings where those came from. There are, of course, many theories as to why this area is such a significant hotspot.

Some have seized upon the Wood-Wright account to posit that there is indeed an underground base in the region out of which the UFOs are operating. Others argue that the area’s rich history has something to do with the sightings. For example, not only did the celebrated Battle of Bannockburn occur within the confines of the triangle, but some legends state that the town of Camelon was the site of the Battle of Camlann, in which King Arthur fought his battle to the death with his bastard half-son Mordred. Not only that, but Midlothian also houses Rosslyn Chapel, which is popularly believed to hide the Holy Grail, among other holy artifacts, within its walls. This legend was popularized by Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, although most scholars agree the story has no basis in fact.

Many ufologists have noted the similarities between alien abduction stories and old legends of encounters with fairies and elves, suggesting that the fair folk were just how people in the Middle Ages and before conceptualized extraterrestrial beings. Indeed, Scotland and other Celtic countries have a long history of fair folk traditions.

Then again, many local residents have accused local leaders of making it all up to turn Bonnybridge and other towns into tourist traps, arguing that the strange craft are just experimental military technology being tested on one of several military bases in the region. That is, admittedly, the most plausible explanation, but one can never really know for sure…

Sources:

https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/close-encounters/falkirk-triangle-rosslyn-chapel

http://www.andrewhennessey.co.uk/STA1/falkirktriangle.html

UFO’s and High Strangeness at Scotland’s Falkirk Triangle- Mysterious Universe

https://www.parkdeanresorts.co.uk/discover-more/places/the-falkirk-triangle/

8. Molyobka Triangle (Russia)
The village of Molyobka: population 374

This town is nestled within the southern reaches of the Ural Mountains in the Kishertsky District of Perm Krai. The town is located on ground that was sacred to the indigenous Mansi people, who believed it was a gathering place for gods and spirits. Maybe that explains the wealth of paranormal phenomena that has been recorded in this triangle, also often known as the Perm Anomalous Zone or the M-Zone.

The M-Zone first gained international attention from ufologists in 1983, when Russian UFO enthusiast Emil Bachurin led an expedition into the village’s thick forests. Not only did he witness a purple light rising out of the trees that left behind a patch of melted snow 206 feet across, the team was also chased by orbs of light that burned them with rays and even knocked one of them unconscious.

Over the years, various people have reported mysterious lights in the sky, luminous translucent beings stalking through the trees, sightings of Chuchunya (Russia’s answer to Bigfoot or the Yeti), weather anomalies like strange-colored lightning, disembodied singing voices, malfunctioning compasses and electronics, and watches stopping or even ticking backwards.

Another ufologist expedition in 2005 reported seeing a giant glowing ball above the trees. Chillingly, one of the team members went missing afterwards, and the last photograph taken of him allegedly shows a beam shining on the man from the UFO.

The American TV series Sightings also filmed a segment on the Perm anomalies in the early 90’s, and allegedly had their camp surrounded by orbs of light later that evening. Not only did locals confirm that the mysterious phenomena had long since been accepted as a fact of life among them, but the TV crew was also warned beforehand by government officials that staying more than 24 hours in the M-Zone might be hazardous.

Despite this, there are also several people who believe that the region has healing properties. Sure, ill health effects like headaches, nosebleeds, muscle aches, nausea, and dizziness have been reported. But others have claimed that the unique energies have a refreshing and enlightening effect and can even cure various ailments.

Perhaps the most famous case of the M-Zone’s alleged healing abilities comes from journalist and cosmonaut Pavel Mukhortov. After being turned away from the cosmonaut program due to physical disabilities, Mukhortov traveled to the M-Zone to do a possible story on it. While he didn’t see any UFOs, he and his traveling companions did fall ill. But soon after, they became filled with “an intense sense of well-being,” and claimed to have suddenly had their heads filled with visions and knowledge that seemingly came from nowhere. Mukhortov claims that these effects allowed him to pass the Soviet Space Program with flying colors when he reapplied, and thus finally fulfilled his dream of becoming a cosmonaut.

Whether or not this is because UFOs are drawn to the strange electromagnetic forces endemic to the region, or it’s the electromagnetism combined with infrasound that is causing hallucinations of UFOs, one cannot deny that there is something weird going on in the woods around Molyobka. However, if you want to check it out for yourself, be forewarned; the area is apparently overcrowded with other “pilgrims” seeking answers to the phenomena. Just make sure you’re not placing too much strain on the locals.

Sources:

Molebka’s triangle- MYSTICAL RUSSIA

A Bizarre Anomalous Zone in the Wilds of Russia- Mysterious Universe

9. Great River Triangle (New York)

This is certainly the smallest triangle I’ve covered in either triangle list in terms of the total area it covers. It spans only a tiny 4 1/2 square mile area of Suffolk County on Long Island, New York, between the towns of Islip and Oakdale and Heckscher State Park. What sets this area apart, according to local urban legend, is its history of UFO sightings. Indeed, with 554 sightings recorded between 2001 and 2015 alone, Suffolk County has been described as the UFO capital of New York. Some notable sightings include:

May 1908: Several residents witness what they describe as “a string of lighted beads” flying across the sky. At one point, the lead UFO stops, causing the others to merge with it and “spin like a Fourth of July pinwheel” before taking off at great speed.

July 1954: An Oakdale resident calls his wife and son, named Tom, out to the yard. They witness three glowing objects in a V formation up in the night sky. Tom remembers seeing a discharge that reminded him of Christmas tinsel pouring out of the back of the objects before they disappeared behind the trees.

May 1997: A female motorist, as well as several police officers and many persons in a nearby building, witness six golden-colored lights hovering in the sky. Oddly enough, several other people in the area later claim they saw nothing unusual.

July 2014: Several Islip residents report seeing a bright orange fireball traveling east-southeast around 10:30 in the evening.

According to ufologist Cheryl Costa, there have been 40 sightings of UFOs within the perimeter of the Great River Triangle between 1918 and 2014. What attracts them to the region is unknown.

Sources:

Syracuse New Times- The Great River Triangle UFOS

NBC New York- Suffolk County Leads NY State in UFO Reports

UFO Digest- Long Island’s Great River Triangle UFOs

10. Romblon Triangle (Philipinnes)

This one comes to us from the Philippines. With its three points resting on the Conception municipality in the north, Sibuyan in the southeast, and Dos Hermanos in the southwest, the triangle encompasses the entirety of the Romblon island archipelago, hence the name. The Sibuyan Sea that surrounds the archipelago has gained a nasty reputation over the years for being involved in several of the worst maritime disasters in history, wartime or peacetime. For example:

October 24, 1944: The Battle of the Sibuyan Sea was part of the larger Battle of Leyte Gulf, which is often considered not just the largest naval battle during World War II but the largest battle in the entire history of naval warfare. Out of the 200,000 naval personnel involved in the battle, 15,500 died, all but three thousand on the Japanese side. The Allied Forces’ victory in this battle allowed them to take the Philipinnes back from the Japanese and left the Japanese navy as but a shell of its former glory.

One big reason for this was the loss of the Musashi in the Sibuyan Sea, the first of four major engagements in the Leyte Gulf affair. The Musashi, alongside her sister ship Yamato, was the largest battleship ever constructed, displacing 72,000 tons. Not that it did her much good in the end, as she was sunk by 19 torpedos and 17 bombs in 4430 feet of water with the loss of 1376 of her 2399 man crew. The Yamato would suffer a much worse fate off Okinawa on April 7, 1945: struck by 11 torpedos and six bombs, she capsized and exploded with the loss of 3055 of her 3332 crew.

April 22, 1980: A ferry called the MV Don Juan, belonging to the Neros Navigation shipping company, collides with the oil tanker MT Tacloban City at 1 p.m. between Dos Hermanos and Conception islands. The Don Juan sank with the loss of only 18 lives, although 115 were reported missing. Still, 745 survivors were recorded, which is far more than I can say for the next shipping disaster on this list…

December 20, 1987: The severely overcrowded ferry MV Dona Paz sets out from Tacloban on Leyte en route to Manila. Around 10:30 that evening, the ferry collided with the oil tanker MT Vector in the Tablas Strait off the island of Marinduque and subsequently burst into flames. The ships sank within two hours and four hours, respectively. Although the ferry’s official capacity was 1424 passengers, survivor testimony places the actual number of people aboard closer to 4000. Indeed, out of the only 24 passengers who survived (plus one crew member), only five were recorded in the ship’s manifest. Current estimates place the death toll over 4300, making the Dona Paz incident the worst peacetime shipping disaster in history.

June 21, 2008: The Romblon archipelago suffers another deadly ferry disaster, this time thanks to Typhoon Fengshen. The MV Princess of the Stars was on a voyage from Manila to Cebu City when the typhoon, then a Category Two storm, unexpectedly changed course. The ferry was caught in the middle of it, and after being battered by the stormy seas for twelve hours, it capsized around one p.m. off the municipality of San Fernando on Sibuyan Island. The heavy seas prevented any rescue ships from reaching the foundering vessel for another twelve hours. By the time help finally came, only 56 of the 870 people on board were left alive.

So far, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly mysterious about this triangle. Indeed, as the Philippine Coast Guard has pointed out, there hasn’t been much we’ve talked about in this entry that couldn’t have been caused by typhoons, high tides, hidden rocks or reefs, or navigational errors. That is unless you think Lolo Amang is somehow involved.

Lolo Amang can be described as the Philippines’ answer to the Flying Dutchman. He reportedly sails the waters around Romblon in a golden ship so shiny that it can be seen from a mile away. Those who approach close enough have reported seeing a massive party on the decks, full of food, music, and fair-skinned dancing women. Indeed, if we believe some eyewitness accounts from the MV Don Juan incident, the ships collided because the Don Juan’s captain was steering to avoid colliding with Lolo Amang’s ship.

Of course, many are inclined to believe that the Lolo Amang legend is nothing more than a sailor’s fairy tale born either from booze or an attempt to escape liability for a shipping accident. Still, legends of strange incidents in the region seem to date back to the Spanish colonies in the 16th century, with many galleons plying the Manila-Acapulco route leaving offerings to the spirits and mermaids living in the cursed seas around Sibuyan.

Who knows? Maybe the age of myths from the indigenous tribes of the Philippines is still alive and well in the seas around Romblon.

Sources:

https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/features/romblon-triangle-a00289-20210104

https://www.wattpad.com/18533801-urban-legends-romblon-triangle

https://statusbookph.blogspot.com/2012/03/romblon-triangle.html

https://manilastandard.net/news/-provinces/139634/the-curse-of-the-romblon-triangle.html


And there you have it; ten more paranormal triangles profiled and examined! I will most definitely be returning to this subject again at a later date. I’d like to determine whether the Vile Vortices are really that vile and to examine some famous incidents in the Bermuda Triangle to see if they really are all that strange. But for this Halloween, be prepared for me to introduce you to one of the most mysterious and terrifying Satanic black metal bands ever to exist.

Until then, stay spooky, you beautiful watchers!