The strangest assignment I ever completed as a ghostwriter has me wondering if I worked for aliens, a secret society or maybe agents of a breakaway civilization
Was I once hired as a consultant to complete a project for aliens? After more than 20 years of thinking about it, I am ever more inclined to think that I was.
Maybe it was The Secret Commonwealth?
But wait a minute! The odd individuals I worked for may have been merely humans but members of one of those clandestine societies, you know, like the Freemasons, the Illuminati or even the CIA.
WELL …
Here is my strange but true story. I’ll warn you, what you are about to read will strain your credibility and challenge your belief system. If you don’t believe my story, I’ll understand.
HOW IT ALL STARTED
In the early 2000s, I was hired by a mysterious, shadowy group of people. They were based in Europe. My assignment was to invent a new religion for them. I was to essentially build this new belief system from the ground up by writing the equivalent of what was to be its “sacred text” — as in its “Bible” or maybe “Bhagavat Gita.”
WHY THEY CONTACTED ME?
I speculate that I was hired because, at the time, I was a well-established and connected freelancer ghostwriter of books with a lot of contacts and clients, especially with small but respectable European publishing firms.
For just one of those publishers, as a ghostwriter, I wrote 11 titles on paranormal topics that ranged from UFOs and ghosts to time travel and interdimensional travel. Those books sold well, and most are still available on Amazon today after many years. They were published under pseudonyms.
I also have extensive experience on the science-technical side because I once worked as a writer in the aerospace sector. That came about after I served for a time as the chief staff writer for UND’s Center for Aerospace Sciences (now called the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Science), in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
After leaving UND Aerospace, I networked and fostered some connections. This enabled me to land a lot of freelance assignments writing about space technology issues for a variety of companies. The bulk of those were those involved directly in or that supported satellite remote imaging operators.
I’m not sure if my aerospace connection is relevant to the context of the story I’m telling today–- but I mention it because it might have been a factor. Also, for context: my university educational background is in journalism and sociology. In graduate school, I studied aerospace-infrastructure policy.
SOME IMPORTANT STIPULATIONS
Anyway, I must tell this story with extreme caution because I am bound by a legal confidentiality agreement. Such contracts are typical of any projects that involve ghostwriting a book for another person or some publishing house. In this case, however, my clients insisted that I agree to the further step of signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), which I did.
Even so, I am confident that I can still write about this by sticking to the general story and by not revealing any specific names or identifiable details. I have also changed some minor details so as not to reveal specific incidents or people.
WHY AM I ‘GOING THERE’ AT ALL?
You might be wondering why I am taking a certain risk to write about this at all. Well, I feel an irresistible compulsion to tell this story now. It’s like an itch I have been wanting to scratch for 20 years. For a journalist, an exceptional story is like catnip. If you have a sensational story to tell, tell it you must.
A central element of my story that I will never reveal — and will take to my grave — is the name of the religion I was hired to create.
In observing from afar the new religion I started these past 20 years and unleashed into the world population, I can tell you that it has taken hold and has been moderately successful so far. I don’t know exactly how many “believing members” my invented religion has, but it may be thousands or maybe less. I don’t know if any members of my freshly minted religion are any happier or more fulfilled after they adopted my framework as a belief system, but some probably think they are.
Others, I have no doubt, practiced my Faux Faith for a while before becoming disillusioned and abandoning it.
Personally, I do not practice the precepts of this religion of my own making. That’s because I created it all based largely on bullshit –- albeit harmless bullshit — of the latter, I have no doubt.
Why did I do it? I’ll be blunt: I did it for the money. I must also admit, however, that the nature of the assignment gripped me in an unusual way. This is just something I really wanted to work on.
I don’t apologize for creating this religion for cold hard cash — and an intellectual challenge — because I have nothing to apologize for. I did not create a cult. I created a sort of non-religion religion — either way, it’s a “nice” religion.
For example, no one can be coerced or fooled by the ontological framework I cobbled together. No member is required to tithe or give any money to anyone — which is more than you can say for a lot of mainstream religions today. Furthermore, the religion I created does not involve “obeying rules” or answering to authority figures. There is no primary figurehead, such as “a Pope” or “Imperator” in my new religion.
But now I have to dig deeper for some honesty and reveal another key factor: I did not create this religion 100% on my own and from my own knowledge and intellect.
I GOT HELP FROM POWERFUL ASSOCIATES
The truth is that I enlisted the help of several “entities” far wiser than myself. I did this by consulting with nonphysical beings using a Ouija board. Those of you who have read my other stories posted here on Medium know that I am a 50-year practitioner of Ouija. (See OUIJA SECRETS: THE VAULT HAS OPENED).
Over the decades, I have engendered long-term relationships with a variety of entities, such as Mommy in the Nothing Chamber, The Helix Master, Kentu and The Love Beings.
I would not have been able to solve key problems and create a workable, coherent metaphysical cosmology without the help of my nonphysical Ouija board contacts. More on this in a bit, but first …
HOW THIS PLAYED OUT
As I said, it all began with a mysterious phone call from a man who contacted me from Europe. I won’t name the country. He said he had a “rather unique” ghostwriting assignment for me. He said he was convinced that I was just the person he needed to develop “a new kind of religion.” He based this assessment on reading a blog I had been writing for some time. I wrote frequently about metaphysical topics of a wide range. He said he had been reading my blog “for five years.”
But he knew more than that.
Somewhat troubling, the caller, a total stranger, already knew a lot about me. For example, he knew that I had worked in the media, I had once worked for the government as a communication official and, of course, he knew about my work in aerospace.
He said he had read my science fiction novelette, The Man in the Nothing Chamber “three times.” He had also read my other books. He said my profile as a ghostwriter with my other experience convinced him that I was the guy who was a perfect match for what “his associates” wanted to accomplish.
When he told me I would be writing a new kind of “sacred text,” I did not accept his offer right away. I told the caller I would have to meet him in person to discuss the situation in greater detail before I could move forward. He agreed to meet with me, but he was frank about letting me know he would not reveal his real name nor the name of any of his associates.
This should have been a red flag. I found this weird but, more so, ridiculously melodramatic. The thing is, however, that when you are a freelance writer, you never know where your next “meal” is coming from. So, you don’t turn down work easily. Just an hour or two after I hung up, I received an “e-ticket” in my email box for a trip to New York City. (I live in a small town in northern Minnesota).
I was given instructions to meet “Mr. X” and a certain “Ms. T” at the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan. They had made reservations for me and paid for my room. I was instructed to wait there after I arrived. A flew out of Minneapolis for New York. Just hour or less after I checked into my swanky room in Manhattan’s Hudson Hotel, a knock came on the door and in walked the mysterious Mr. X. A woman accompanied him whom I will call Ms. T.
Mr. X was a rather short man, and his female associate, Ms. T, stood at least a foot-and-a-half taller than him. What added to the oddness of the situation is that I discerned that Ms. T had an American Midwest accent in contrast to Mr. X who had a deep accent of a European nation I won’t name.
I would be willing to bet my last dollar that Ms. T was from the middle part of the state of Indiana. The people there enunciate with a distinctive “buzz” in some of their words. For example, when they say “rang” or “bang” or “clang” they make it sound like a blade of a whirling skill saw touching a sheet of tin.
So, here was this diminutive European man accompanied by a tall, almost gawky woman from the Midwest — and they proceeded to tell me that they wanted my help in creating a new religion. This meeting in a New York hotel had an aura of strangeness about it that I find difficult to describe. So, I won’t.
THE CONFERENCE UP ABOVE
Mr. X and Ms. T then invited me to come up to their room which was at or near the top floor of the Hudson — maybe not the penthouse — but it was a spacious, luxurious room. It had a fabulous view of the New York City skyline outside gigantic windows.
This couple reeked of money. Mr. X displayed a tasteful sartorial excellence in what looked like a bespoke Italian suit, although it might have been a top-brand off-the-shelf cut, such as a Sartorio Napoli or Isaia. I would judge his age to be about 50.
The tall woman, about 45, was elegant in a Francophile casual business suit of pearl gray. I noticed she had a selected ballerina-style flat for shoes, perhaps self-conscious of her height. She finished her understated yet splendid look with a minimalist set of pearls.
Anyway, it was in this semi-opulent room that my prospective clients laid out their ambitious yet vague ideas for the kind of religion they hoped I could develop for them. When I asked them why they were doing this, they demurred and insisted their motivations were confidential.
After several hours of conversation that encompassed a wide range of issues, I could hardly believe that I was hearing myself when I told them I would accept the assignment. Although they had given me the broad brushstrokes about how to structure the precepts of the new religion, they assured me I would have great latitude in developing the concepts in the way I thought best.
They also told me I would be free to “opt-out” of our agreement at any I would still get paid a significant “kill fee” for my time and that there would be no strings attached. They also agreed immediately without a note of haggling for the fee I named. To my great regret, I did not ask for a much larger sum because, looking back, they may have agreed to almost anything.
THE BANANA CLICKERS OF AMSTERDAM
The next thing my new clients did was hand me a ticket to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. There, it was arranged that I would meet some associates of Mr. X and Ms. T. I was to have “further discussions” with these people.
I headed back home from New York to Minnesota and packed a bag for Amsterdam. I would arrive there a few days later. Mr. X and Ms. T did not meet me in the Kingdom of the Netherlands capital city. Instead, I was met by three men whom I will call Mr. M, Mr. O and Mr. H.
These three rather nondescript and ordinary-looking guys greeted me at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Once again, I was mildly interested to note that Mr. M almost certainly displayed an Indiana accent, like that of Ms. T. The other two men has exotic accents that I could not place, although they spoke English well enough. Their accents were not Dutch.
To be honest — I had an irresistible impression that Mr. O and Mr. H were creating fake accents. Why this might seem so unusually weird and that it sent a shiver of paranoia through my brain is a reaction in myself I did not understand. Normally, I have never experienced a hint of paranoia in any situation in my life.
However, there was something undeniably unnatural about the way Mr. O and Mr. H spoke. They exhibited a soft “clicking” sound behind some of their words, among other lesser peculiarities. However, there was something undeniably unnatural about the way Mr. O and Mr. H spoke. They exhibited a soft “clicking” sound behind some of their words, among other lesser peculiarities.
Get this:
After introducing ourselves and exchanging some pleasantries, we drove from Schiphol in a rented car into the city and found a restaurant where we were to have lunch and a conversation about the project. Mr. M and I ordered some normal, ordinary lunch, but Mr. O and Mr. H each elected to eat only a banana!
That’s right!
And now get this: Every time Mr. O and Mr. H bit into their banana, there came this soft clicking noise again, the same I thought to hear behind some of their speech. At first, I conjectured that they might be wearing dentures that slipped slightly when they bit down on something.
However, these guys appeared to have real teeth as far as I could tell. They were both young men in their 30s. It seemed highly unlikely that both were sporting a set of full or partial dentures.
So, they ate their banana — “click! click! click!” — and maybe you think I’m crazy, but the effect for me was profoundly unnerving. Sometimes, it’s the smallest things that can invoke a sense of the unreal. This was one of those incidents.
The banana-clicking was insect-like.
Furthermore, in one moment, I thought to glimpse some kind of metal or plastic “plate” on the roof of the mouth of Mr. O. I thought I might have espied a similar device in the mouth of Mr. H. Wildly, I speculated that these devices inside their mouths are what caused them to project their phony accents. For a brief moment, my imagination ran amok. I thought:
“Maybe these guys are extraterrestrials disguised as humans, and they use the plates in their mouths as translation devices!”
I quickly got a grip, though, and chased the idea out of my head. After all, I was not completely certain I had actually seen anything unusual inside their mouths. But why the “clicking” sound from eating a banana?
NOW ON TO LONDON
Anyway, the gist of my meeting in Amsterdam was to deliver a briefing about how I planned to develop the philosophy and structure of the new religion. My new associates were pleased with my initial concepts. After some further discussion, they handed me a ticket to Heathrow Airport in London. There I was to be met again by Mr. X.
Upon arriving at Heathrow, I found Mr. X waiting for me there. Ms. T did not accompany him this time. We walked out to the parking lot, and I followed Mr. X to his car — it was a vintage brick red 1960s-era Renault Dauphine — which somewhat surprised me. (I can say that Mr. X was not French).
Even though this car was something of a well-preserved vintage model, upon taking a seat I noticed that in the dashboard had been fitted with a jarringly out of place sleek and modern radio-stereo with LED digital display and chrome fixtures. But what struck me as truly odd was that above the radio was stuck one of those plastic sticky labels made with those old DYMO label makers. Here is what it looked like and said:
What I deduced from this was that Mr. X may have had teenage children, and that this was a preemptive admonishment for the youths to not crank car’s powerful music system with loud music. In a way, this made me a tad more comfortable because this little vignette sort of humanized Mr. X for me — my thinking was that maybe he was a regular family man with normal challenges, such as coping with frisky teens.
Whatever the case, Mr. X drove me in about a three-hour drive to a bucolic area in the south of England where I was boarded in a quaint and charming inn. I later learned this establishment had originated as an ale house in the early 17th Century.
My length of stay here was to be about three to four weeks. I settled in, cracked open my laptop computer and plunged right into the task of writing the text of the document that would become “the sacred text” of the new religion I was assigned to develop.
During these weeks, I was able to produce about 150 pages of the “Bible” that would contain the central belief system of a new religion. I was left alone for days on end, without even a phone call, although on two occasions Mr. X and Mr. O showed up briefly to check on my progress.
In reviewing just a few pages of my first draft, they were pleased with what I was writing. They maintained their hands-off approach, giving me free rein and “creative space” to bring in this project in the way I saw fit.
HELP FROM A POLISH MAID
Now, as I said, my own skills and talents, such as they are, were not equal to cobbling together a profound religious system that would resonate sufficiently to attract ordinary people into adopting it as their own. Thus, I brought in some heavy-hitter consultants. These were the various transcendent entities I had met over the previous decades of Ouija board practice. Wisely, I packed a Ouija board for my trip across The Pond.
The problem was that I needed a partner to work share the Ouija board sessions. Fortunately, one of life’s synchronistic moments came to my aid. As it happens, one of the maids at the inn was a Polish immigrant to the U.K. One day, she approached me in the hallway outside my door. Reading her worksheet of daily tasks, she recognized my surname — Korczak — as a common Polish name.
Perhaps homesick, she asked me if I was Polish. I told her I was born in the United States and that I am an American, but that both my maternal and paternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Poland between 1915 and 1920 — so I am of 100% Polish extraction, so to speak.
I told her I spoke a small amount of Polish but that I understood a lot more when just listening to others speak the language. That’s because my parents and all my aunts and uncles routinely spoke Polish around the house when I was growing up. Polish was the first language of both my mother and father.
Thus, it was easy to strike up a friendship with the Polish maid. Her English was not the best, but between my broken Polish and her broken English, we could communicate well enough. To make a long story short, I asked the Polish maid if she would be willing to help me with some Ouija board sessions. If she thought this was odd or weird in any way, she said nothing about it. She agreed to come by when she was off duty.
Fortunately, she lived right at the inn where she worked.
So now, whenever I “got stuck” in creating my document, I called upon the Polish maid and consulted with my Ouija entity associates to help. For the record, the Ouija personalities that assisted me the most were Mommy in the Nothing Chamber, Kentu, The Helix Master and The Love Beings. (Note: If you wish, go to these links to meet these entities in stories posted here on Medium).
By the way, The Love Beings contributed some unique insights into the nature of love and how it might fit into my new religion, but mostly, they wasted my time with shimmering.
Two other beings I have not yet introduced here on my site — a literary-oriented entity called Ventu, and an extraterrestrial plant-based lifeform who identified himself via the Ouija board as !QXAXIQ! Both Ventu and !QXAXIQ! were of significant help in fleshing out innovative ideas for my project.
As for the kindly Polish maid, she could not make a lick of sense out of what the Ouija entities were talking about. She proclaimed a complete state of bafflement about the meanings behind the arcane kinds of questions I was asking. This was the perfect situation, I thought. It would leave her out of the loop and unknowing about the super secretive nature of my project. Indeed, I don’t believe she even knew what a Ouija board was. I was unable to explain it to her clearly with my poor command of Polish.
It was all for the best. I think she thought I was just some “eccentric American” playing some kind of game. In reality, that assessment may not have been far from the truth. There was one instance when I attempted to explain to the Polish maid the concept of the Ouija board in my crummy Polish which caused her to laugh so hard that she brushed tears from her eyes. She kept saying things like:
“Oh that’s bad!” or “Your Polish stinks!” or “You must be crazy!” or “Oh, no no, no, that can’t be!” and “Ha, ha! Shut-up!”
In retrospect, however, it occurred to me that there was something just a little too convenient about the timely assistance I received from the Polish maid, right? I mean, think about it:
I just happened to meet a Polish maid who just happened to easily agree to help a total stranger perform strange rituals with a tool of the occult. It just so happened that I speak some Polish and held a command of English in the exact asymptote to balance the Polish maid’s perfect command of Polish and dodgy facility with English.
The more I thought about months after I completed the job, the more I could not resist the idea that the Polish maid was a plant placed by my employers to spy on my progress — and then sometimes I really devolved into the more paranoic thought that maybe the Polish maid had been a spy planted by my employer’s competitors — or their enemies!
But then I just push all this out of my mind. After all, the whole situation was extraordinary. In a job like this, it’s sometimes hard to “get a grip” and not veer off into wild conjecture. You just have to stay frosty.
THE KEY CONCEPT THAT CRYSTALIZED MY NEW RELIGION
Now I want to tell you something about my new religion that I created with the help of a panel of Ouija entity consultants. I’m going to relate this information mostly to add weight to the fact that my story is true. I know I can parse this information in such a way that it will keep all readers completely off track as to the name of my new religion and who is practicing it today.
Again, I remind you of what my new religion does NOT have:
- A God concept
- A leader or figurehead or group who must be obeyed
- A money or wealth generation system
- It does not glorify the human race
- It is neither theistic nor deistic
- It does not leverage Nature, the sky or astronomy for objects of worship
- It does not venerate aliens or extraterrestrials
- It does not borrow or leverage concepts of Eastern philosophies, such as Zen Buddhism or any other.
- It is not a philosophy
The religious framework I created is 100% novel, I believe. Thus, keep in mind that my use of the terms “religion,” “religious” and “belief system” are relative descriptions that I have adopted for convenience. The central tenant or “function” of my new religion is based on two certain universal concepts that all human beings would instantly recognize.
Let’s call one of these universal concepts “Principle A” and the other universally recognizable concept “Principle B.” But in this case, the combination of the harmony or disharmony in a dynamic action between Principle A and Principle B will always produce a wholly original effect which I will call “The C Effect.”
The C Effect can reasonably be described as a “psychological catalyst.” I hasten to add that to call The C Effect a “catalyst” is 100% illusionary because it is not real. It is a self-vanishing artifact of the mind only.
At the same time, it does not matter one iota if the C Effect is an illusion because it is leveraged as something “real” — much the same way that mathematicians leverage “imaginary numbers” to solve equations and perform the ciphering of calculous and other math systems.
The inspiration that produced this idea is what physicists called “the Coriolis Effect.”
The Coriolis Effect is the apparent deflection of moving objects from a straight path when those objects are viewed from a rotating frame of reference. The Coriolis Effect creates a “force” that can be said NOT to be fictional or imaginary just because it does not appear when the motion is expressed in an inertial frame of reference.
Do you follow me?
Thus — just as the Coriolis Effect seems real but is not “real” in a similar fashion to imaginary numbers — then the “C Effect” of my new religion is not “real” yet it can seem to be “real” when it is convenient to do so. What I did was to create a kind of psychological Coriolis Force as an important article or tool for those who practice my invented religion. The members of my new religion use Universal Principle A combined with Universal Principle B to innovate the C Effect.
I repeat, all of the above is harmless, and yet, it provides a handy “lever” to drive the principles of a new religion.
I’m just using that term here to give you some very general notion about what kinds of concepts I adopted to manufacture a new belief system.
I wanted to create a system that would be highly functional — one that could even be diagramed –- while at the same time carrying the emotional impact of a pseudo-religious experience. I believe I accomplished that — with immense help from Ouija beings far wiser than myself.
ENGLAND OVER AND OUT
At the end of three weeks, I had completed the first draft of the manuscript. I met once again with Mr. X and Ms. T who read the pages — and they were pleased to such an extent that I almost felt as if I was a “mark” being tricked on that old Candid Camera TV show.
I mean, it was ridiculous!
After reading my draft, Mr. X and Ms. T acted like they had just won the lottery or hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs in the World Series! Mr. X pumped my hand and clapped me on the back. Beaming, he said: “I knew you could do it!”
Now here is an incident that I find to be the strangest event of this entire bizarre saga:
After Mr. X finished shaking my hands and profusely thanking me — all this was happening in the inn’s lobby along with four tired-looking German airline stewardesses looking on with wry grins of bemusement — the tall and lanky Ms. T drew me aside and embraced me with a long warm hug.
She put her face next to mine and in a breathy whisper into my ear she said: “Thank you!”
Then she quickly released me and practically ran off down a long hallway deeper into the environs of the inn! Man I’m telling you; it was one odd scene.
I felt incredibly relieved when a car pulled up in front of the inn — it was my driver hired by Mr. X to take me back to London and Heathrow. Suddenly, I was beyond eager to just get the hell out of there. I got into the car and just as we were pulling away, I looked out the back window and saw that the Polish maid had come out onto the circular driveway in front of the inn to wave goodbye.
This imbued me with a tinge of melancholy.
I returned home to my beloved Minnesota, and for about two more years, I continued to flesh out and crystallize the practices and concepts of the new religion I and my Ouija friends had created. After finally completing the project, I never heard from Mr. X or Ms. T again, nor did I hear from Mr. M or the banana clickers, Mr. O and Mr. H.
Now, it would be up to the new religion that I unleashed upon the world to take hold and survive or crumble and vanish of its own accord. I sometimes wonder if, say, 100 years from now the belief system — that’s not really a belief system — I created will evolve to be accepted as a mainstream religion. I doubt it, but one never knows. Stranger and less practical and more flimsy religions have millions of followers around the world today — and tax-exempt status.
And yet, I can’t help but wonder: What was the point of it all?
Was this some kind of experimental mass mind-control project implemented by a shadowy cable of powerful people — or perhaps a psyops operation by a rogue CIA-like government group of a foreign nation? Was it the CIA testing mass mind manipulation methods to see how injecting certain ideas into the public arena could spread and manifest on an international scale?
Or was it just a gaggle of bored, super-rich people inventing “funny games,” perhaps similar to a Dungeons & Dragons role-playing scenario but played out on a global stage? For several years, I believed the role-playing game scenario was the most likely option. (And sometimes I still do).
As I look back on it today, however, I find myself becoming more convinced that my clients were either aliens, ultraterrestrials, an Illuminati-like group— or maybe members of a breakaway civilization birthed by The Singularity that is going to happen one to two decades from now.
I keep thinking about the “banana-clicking” guys and the fact they “clicked” sometimes when they spoke or bit soft food, and their odd-ball accents.
The bottom line is that I’ll never know for sure. But I did my job.
I created a new religion. I did it for the money — but also for the challenge.
NOTE: For more stories about UFOs, the paranormal, and all things strange, please visit: KEN-ON-MEDIUM