Terrors (36 page)

At this point the vocal coherence, such as it is, breaks down. The male voice with its New England twang cracks and rises in tone even as the words are replaced by undecipherable mumbles. Mother Akeley recovers from her trance state, and the séance draws quickly to a close. From the internal evidence
of the contents of the tape, the Radiant Mother had no awareness of the message, or narration, delivered by the male voice speaking through her. This also is regarded, among psychic and spiritualistic circles, as quite the usual state of affairs with trance mediums.

Authorities next became aware of unusual activities through a copy of the
Vermont Unidentified Flying Object Intelligencer
, or
Vufoi
. Using a variety of the customary cover names and addresses for the purpose, such Federal agencies as the FBI, NSA, Department of Defense, NASA, and National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Agency subscribe regularly to publications of organizations like the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau and other self-appointed investigatory bodies.

The President of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau and
editor of its
Intelligencer
was identified as one Ezra Noyes. Noyes was known to reside with his parents (Ezra was nineteen years of age at the time) in the community of Dark Mountain, Windham County. Noyes customarily prepared
Vufoi
issues himself, assembling material both from outside sources and from members of the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau, most of whom were former high school friends
now employed by local merchants or farmers, or attending Windham County Community College in Townshend.

Noyes would assemble his copy, type it onto mimeograph stencils using a portable machine set up on the kitchen table, and run off copies on a superannuated mimeograph kept beside the washer and dryer in the basement. The last two items prepared for each issue were “Vufoi Voice” and “From the
Editor’s Observatory,” commenting in one case flippantly and in the other seriously, on the contents of the issue. “Vufoi Voice” was customarily illustrated with a crude cartoon of a man wearing an astronaut’s headgear, and was signed “Cap’n
Oof-oh.” “From the Editor’s Observatory” was illustrated with a drawing of an astronomical telescope with a tiny figure seated at the eyepiece, and was signed
“Intelligencer.”

It is believed that both “Cap’n Oof- oh” and “Intelligencer” were Ezra Noyes.

The issue of the
Vermont Unidentified Flying Object Intelligencer
for June, 1979 actually appeared early in August of that year. Excerpts from the two noted columns follow:

From the Editor’s Observatory

Of greatest interest since our last issue—and we apologize for missing the March, April and May
editions due to unavoidable circumstances—has been the large number of organic sightings here in the northern Vermont region. We cannot help but draw similes to the infamous Colorado cattle mutilizations of the past year or few years, and the ill-conceived Air Farce coverup efforts
which only draw extra attention to the facts that they can’t hide from us who know the Truth!

Local historians like
Mr. Littleton at the High School remember other incidents and the Brattleboro Reformer and Arkham Advertiser and other Newspapers whose back files constitute an Official Public Record could tell the story of other incidents like this one! It is hard to reconciliate the Windham County sightings and the Colorado Cattle Mutilation Case with others such as the well-known Moth Man sightings in the
Southland and especially the batwing creature sightings of as long as a half of a century ago but with a sufficient ingeniusity it is definitely not a task beyond undertaking and the U.S. Air Farce and other cover-up agencies are hear-bye placed on Official notice that such is our intention and we will not give up until success is ours and the Cover-up is blown as Sky-High as the UFO sightings themselves!

Yours until our July issue
.

Intelligencer
.

Vufoi Voice

Bat-wing and Moth Man indeed! Didn’t I read something like that in Detective Comics back when Steve Englehart was writing for DC? Or was it in Mad? Come to think of it, when it’s hard to tell the parody from the original, things are gettin’ mighty strange
.

And there gettin’ mighty strange around here!

We wonder what the ole Intelligencer’s
been smoking in that smelly
meerschaum he affects around Intelligence Bureau meetings. Could it be something illegal that he grows for himself up on the mountainside?

Or is he just playing Sherlock Holmes?

We ain’t impressed
.

Impressionable, yep! My mom always said I was impressionable as a boy, back on the old asteroid farm in Beta Reticuli, but this is too silly for words
.

Besides, she tuck
me to the eye dock and he fitted us out with a pair of gen-yew-ine X-ray specs, and that not only cured us of Reticule-eye but now we can see right through such silliness as bat-winged moth men carrying silvery canisters around the skies and the hillsides with ’em
.

Shades of a Japanese Sci-Fi Flicks! This musta been the stuntman out for lunch!

And that’s where we think the old Intelligencer
is this month:
Out 2 Lunch!

Speaking of which, I haven’t had mine yet this afternoon, and if I don’t hurry up and have it pretty soon it’ll be time for dinner and then I’ll have to eat my lunch for a bedtime snack and that’ll confuse the dickens out of my poor stomach! So I’m off to hit the old fridgidaire (not too hard, I don’t want to spoil the shiny finish on my new spaceman’s gloves!), and
I’ll see you-all nextish!

Whoops, here’s our saucer now! Bye-bye
,

Cap’n Oof-oh
.

Following the extraordinary spiritual message service of June 13, Mother Akeley was driven to her home at 176 Pleasant Street in National City, a residential suburb of San Diego, by her boyfriend, Marc Feinman. Investigation revealed that she had met Feinman casually while sunning herself and watching the surfers
ride the waves in at Black’s Beach, San Diego.

Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth had been invited by a female friend of approximately her own age to attend a concert given by a musical group, a member of which was a friend of Akeley’s friend. Outside of her official duties as Radiant Mother of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, Elizabeth Akeley was known to live quite a normal life for a young woman
of her social and economic class.

She accompanied her friend to the concert, visited the backstage area with her, and was introduced to the musician. He in turn introduced
Elizabeth to other members of the musical group, one of whom Elizabeth recognized as her casual acquaintance of Black’s Beach. A further relationship developed, in which it was known that Akeley and Feinman frequently exchanged
overnight visits. Elizabeth had retained the house on Pleasant Street originally constructed by her grandfather, George Goodenough Akeley, when he had emigrated to San Diego from Vermont in the early 1920s.

Marc had been born and raised in the Bronx, New York, had emigrated to the West Coast following his college years and presently resided in a pleasant apartment on Upas Street near Balboa Park.
From here he commuted daily to his job as a computer systems programmer in downtown San Diego, his work as a musician being more of an avocation than a profession.

On Sunday, June 17, for the morning worship service of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, Radiant Mother Akeley devoted her sermon to the previous Wednesday’s séance, an unusual practice for her. The sexton of the church, a nondescript
looking Negro named Vernon Whiteside, attended the service. Noting the Radiant Mother’s departure from her usual bland themes, Whiteside communicated with the Federal Agency which had infiltrated him into the Church for precisely this purpose. An investigation of Mother Akeley’s background was then initiated.

Within a short time, agent Whiteside was in possession of a preliminary report on Elizabeth
Akeley and her forebears, excerpts from which follow.

AKELEY, ELIZABETH — HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

The Akeley family is traceable to one
Beelzebub Akeley
who traveled from Portsmouth, England, to Kingsport, Massachusetts aboard the sailing caravel
Worthy
in 1607. Beelzebub Akeley married an indentured servant girl, bought out her indenture papers and moved with her to establish the Akeley dynasty
in Townshend, Windham County, Vermont in 1618. The Akeleys persisted in Windham County for more than two centuries, producing numerous clergy, academics, and other genteel professionals in this period.

Abednego Mesach Akeley
, subject’s great-great grandfather, was the last of the Vermont Akeleys to pursue a life of the cloth. Born in 1832, Abednego was raised in the strict puritanical traditions
of the Akeleys and ordained by his father, the Reverend
Samuel Shadrach Solomon
Akeley
upon attaining his maturity. Abednego served as assistant pastor to his father until Samuel’s death in 1868, at which time he succeeded to the pulpit.

Directly following the funeral of Samuel Akeley, Abednego is known to have traveled to more southerly regions of New England including Massachusetts and possibly
Rhode Island. Upon his return to Townshend he led his flock into realms of highly questionable doctrine, and actually transferred the affiliation of his church from its traditional Protestant parent body to that of the new and suspect Starry Wisdom sect.

Controversy and scandal followed at once, and upon the death of Abednego early in 1871 at the age of thirty-nine, the remnants of his congregation
moved as a body to Providence, Rhode Island. One female congregant, however, was excommunicated by unanimous vote of the other members of the congregation, and forced to remain behind in Townshend. This female was
Sarah Elizabeth Phillips
, a servant girl in the now defunct Akeley household.

Shortly following the departure of the remnants of Abednego Akeley’s flock from Vermont, Sarah Phillips
gave birth to a son. She claimed that the child had been fathered by Abednego mere hours before his death. She named the child
Henry Wentworth Akeley
. As the Akeley clan was otherwise extinct at this point, no one challenged Sarah’s right to identify her son as an Akeley, and in fact in later years she sometimes used the name Akeley herself.

Henry Akeley overcame his somewhat shadowed origins
and built for himself a successful academic career, returning to Windham County in his retirement, and remaining there until the time of his mysterious disappearance and presumed demise in the year 1928.

Henry had married some years earlier, and his wife had given birth to a single child,
George Goodenough Akeley
, in the year 1901, succumbing two days later to childbed fever. Henry Akeley raised
his son with the assistance of a series of nursemaids and housekeepers. At the time of Henry Akeley’s retirement and his return to Townshend, George Akeley emigrated to San Diego, California, building there a modest but comfortable house at 176 Pleasant Street.

George Akeley married a local woman suspected of harboring a strain of Indian blood; the George Akeleys were the parents of a set of
quadruplets born in 1930. This was the first quadruple birth on record in San Diego County. There were three boys and a girl. The boys seemed, at birth, to be of relatively robust constitution,
although naturally small. The girl was still smaller, and seemed extremely feeble at birth so that her survival appeared unlikely.

However, with each passing hour the boys seemed to fade while the tiny
girl grew stronger. All four infants clung tenaciously to life, the boys more and more weakly and the girl more strongly, until finally the three male infants—apparently at the same hour—succumbed. The girl took nourishment with enthusiasm, growing pink and active. Her spindly limbs rounded into healthy baby arms and legs, and in due course she was carried from the hospital by her father.

In
honor of a leading evangelist of the era, and of a crusader for spiritualistic causes, the girl was named
Aimee Semple Conan Doyle Akeley
.

Aimee traveled between San Diego and the spiritualist center of Noblesville, Indiana, with her parents. The George Akeleys spent their winters in San Diego, where George Goodenough Akeley served as Radiant Father of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood, which he
founded in a burst of religious fervor after meeting Aimee Semple McPherson, the evangelist whose name his daughter bore; each summer they would make a spiritualistic pilgrimage to Noblesville, where George Akeley became fast friends with the spiritualist leader and sometime American fascist,
William Dudley Pelley
.

Aimee Doyle Akeley married William Pelley’s nephew
Hiram Wesley Pelley
in 1959.
In that same year Aimee’s mother died and was buried in Noblesville. Her father continued his ministry in San Diego.

In 1961, two years after her marriage to young Pelley, Aimee Doyle Akeley Pelley gave birth to a daughter who was named
Elizabeth Maude Pelley
, after two right-wing political leaders, Elizabeth Dilling of Illinois and Maude Howe of England. Elizabeth Maude Pelley was raised alternately
by her parents in Indiana and her grandfather in San Diego.

In San Diego her life was relatively normal, centering on her schooling, her home, and to a lesser extent on her grandfather’s church, the Spiritual Light Brotherhood. In Indiana she was exposed to a good deal of political activity of a right-wing extremist nature. Hiram Wesley Pelley had followed in his uncle’s footsteps in this regard,
and Aimee Semple Conan Doyle Akeley Pelley took her lead from her husband and his family. A number of violent scenes are reported to have transpired between young Elizabeth Pelley and the elder Pelleys.

Elizabeth Pelley broke with her parents over political disagreements in 1976, and returned permanently to San Diego where she took up
residence with her grandfather. At this time she abandoned
her mother’s married name and took the family name as her own, henceforth being known as
Elizabeth Akeley
. Upon the death of George Goodenough Akeley, Elizabeth succeeded to the title of Radiant Mother of the Spiritual Light Brotherhood and the pastorhood of the Church, as well as the property on Pleasant Street and a small income from inherited securities.