Tales of Tinfoil: Stories of Paranoia and Conspiracy
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Tales of Tinfoil
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No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright owner listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.
Although loosely inspired by the real world, the contents of this book are pure fiction. Any resemblance to any actual person, place, or event is purely coincidental. Any opinions expressed by the authors are their own and do not reflect those of the editor or publisher.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Tales of Tinfoil copyright © 2015 by David Gatewood.
Foreword copyright © 2015 by Joseph E. Uscinski. Used by permission of the author.
“Under the Grassy Knoll” by Richard Gleaves, copyright © 2015 by Richard Gleaves. Used by permission of the author.
“The Long Slow Burn” by Ernie Lindsey, copyright © 2015 by Ernie Lindsey. Used by permission of the author.
“Day for Night” by Forbes West, copyright © 2015 by Forbes West. Used by permission of the author.
“Chukotka” by Lucas Bale, copyright © 2015 by Lucas Bale. Used by permission of the author.
“That’s a Wrap from The Sea of Tranquility” by Eric Tozzi, copyright © 2015 by Eric Tozzi. Used by permission of the author.
“Disappear” by Wendy Paine Miller, copyright © 2015 by Wendy Paine Miller. Used by permission of the author.
“One Arm of the Octopus” by Michael Bunker, copyright © 2015 by Michael Bunker. Used by permission of the author.
“Heil Hitler!” by Peter Cawdron, copyright © 2015 by Peter Cawdron. Used by permission of the author.
“The French Deception” by Chris Pourteau, copyright © 2015 by Chris Pourteau. Used by permission of the author.
“Manufacturing Elvis” by Jennifer Ellis, copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Ellis. Used by permission of the author.
“The Final Flight of Michael Aoki” by Edward W. Robertson, copyright © 2015 by Edward W. Robertson. Used by permission of the author.
“Fear of the Unknown and Loathing in Hollywood” by Nick Cole, copyright © 2015 by Nick Cole. Used by permission of the author.
All other text copyright © 2015 by David Gatewood.
Edited by David Gatewood (www.lonetrout.com)
Cover art and design by Jason Gurley (www.jasongurley.com)
Print and ebook formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)
STORY SYNOPSES
Under the Grassy Knoll (Richard Gleaves)
Don Petterman sells Kennedy assassination DVDs in Dealey Plaza. He’s spent fifty years hunting for Kennedy’s real killer and has nothing to show for it except unpaid bills and a lonely apartment. But when his new iPad falls through the sewer grate, he climbs down a rabbit hole to get it back, and finds more below the streets of Dallas than he’d ever imagined.
The Long Slow Burn (Ernie Lindsey)
Bo Sheppard is content with being a small-time thief. It’s easy work. Pays well. Keeps the lights on and affords him enviable freedom. It’s never about walking away from it all after one big score. It’s about the challenge. But when he’s approached with an opportunity that could be worth billions, the real challenge lies in uncovering the truth, because he’s about to step into a conspiracy that stretches from a bedside lamp to the towers of Wall Street.
Day for Night (Forbes West)
Key West, 1981. The beers are cold, the nights are hot, and a mind-bending new arcade machine is about to turn the life of one innocent bartender upside down. Reality and illusion mix in this tale of a terror that lurks in the alleys and bars of a quirky beach town after dark.
Chukotka (Lucas Bale)
Two Alaskan cold-water surfers sail the Bering Strait in search of the gnarliest waves. A dying Chukchi hunter leaves his village for the desolate Siberian tundra, seeking to prove his usefulness to the wayward youth of his people. When the perfect man-made storm provokes the towering black waves of the Bering, and surges over the frozen Russian wilderness, it throws together old and young, East and West, forcing them to confront their prejudices in a desperate fight for survival.
That’s a Wrap from the Sea of Tranquility (Eric Tozzi)
Meet Harry Waldo McNixon, film director. He’s a big shot. Worked for all the studios. Got a list of credits a mile long. But his greatest work as a filmmaker—his masterpiece—went uncredited. That’s because in 1969, Harry McNixon helmed the filming of the world’s most famous footage: the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Disappear (Wendy Paine Miller)
The last person on earth Rowan Aduro could stand to lose is her sixteen-year-old daughter, Kiran. She’s too young. Too young to live without her missing father. Too young to lead an uprising. And far too young to be one of the hundreds who’ve been “disappeared.” But with cameras everywhere and the government monitoring every electronic communication, there is nowhere for Rowan to hide. Except in her dreams.
One Arm of the Octopus (Michael Bunker)
When Matthew Luedecke leaves his small town for the university, he’s hoping for a new start and a more exciting life. He’ll get more than he bargained for. Recruited by a shadowy group of Nicaraguan ex-pats, Matt soon discovers how sheltered and blinded most Americans are when it comes to the covert machinations of world powers and the intricacies and danger of international intrigue. From an innocent pool party to a bloody firefight along the Coco River in Nicaragua’s dense jungles, Matt is about to find out that an "exciting life" may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
Heil Hitler! (Peter Cawdron)
What if every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard was true? What if the contradictions between various theories could be explained? What if, like Schrödinger’s cat, every theory was both dead and alive, both true and false at the same time? What would you believe? This is the dilemma faced by Suzie Harmon when her husband greets her one morning, saying, “Heil Hitler!”
The French Deception (Chris Pourteau)
In the waning days of World War II—just as the Allies liberate Paris—a frail, weathered letter is discovered in France’s Archives diplomatiques. It’s a confession, penned in 1865 by Jean-Pierre Barras, a French Creole. He claims that Abraham Lincoln was murdered in 1862 by the Sûreté—the French intelligence bureau—and that he, Barras, a Southern sympathizer and Lincoln look-alike, has been impersonating the president ever since.
Manufacturing Elvis (Jennifer Ellis)
When Anna Rooney accompanies her grandfather’s new girlfriend, Dolores, to Bermuda in search of Elvis, she doesn’t expect to find much. After all, Elvis is dead, Dolores is crazy, and Anna has her own challenges to deal with. But Elvis turns out to be a substantial ghost, and Anna discovers that perhaps fresh starts are possible, and that there might be as much to be gained from the chase as from crossing the finish line.
The Final Flight of Michael Aoki (Edward W. Robertson)
It’s 1947, and the Soviet Union has nuked the West Coast. Within weeks, the rest of the United States will follow. The government has one hope left to defeat the enemy: the UFO recovered from Roswell. And pilot Michael Aoki.
Fear of the Unknown and Loathing in Hollywood (Nick Cole)
An ex-government insider goes deep into darkest Hollywood, chasing a story. What starts as t
he search for yet more page-turning gossip turns into a gonzo-esque quest up a dark tributary along the river of fame, fortune, and the occult. Is The Fresh Prince of Bel Air really about a dead kid from the projects? Did Walt Disney really make a cartoon that offers an insanity-inspiring glimpse of Hell? And did a TV idol sacrifice his rival for stardom? Doc Midnite is on assignment, and not even his allies are safe.
Table of Contents
Foreword (Joseph E. Uscinski)
Under the Grassy Knoll (Richard Gleaves)
The Long Slow Burn (Ernie Lindsey)
Day for Night (Forbes West)
Chukotka (Lucas Bale)
That’s a Wrap from the Sea of Tranquility (Eric Tozzi)
Disappear (Wendy Paine Miller)
One Arm of the Octopus (Michael Bunker)
Heil Hitler! (Peter Cawdron)
The French Deception (Chris Pourteau)
Manufacturing Elvis (Jennifer Ellis)
The Final Flight of Michael Aoki (Edward W. Robertson)
Fear of the Unknown and Loathing in Hollywood (Nick Cole)
A Note to Readers (David Gatewood)
Foreword
by Joseph E. Uscinski
Since the turn of the century, it seems as if conspiracy theories have dominated the American agenda. The first major terror attack to hit U.S. soil, on September 11, 2001, was quickly met with a deluge of conspiracy theories. Did the George W. Bush administration orchestrate the attacks as part of a false flag operation to start a war in the Middle East? Were the Twin Towers brought down by carefully placed explosives? Were Israel, the oil industry, or the British Royal Family involved? And what about Building 7?
Prominent organizations—as well as a small industry of movies, books, and websites—sprang up to offer competing explanations for the attacks. In 2006, polls showed that more than a third of the country believed that the Bush administration was either complicit, or was an active participant, in the attacks.
As Barack Obama surged to power in 2008, conspiracy theories swirled around the new president’s background, upbringing, beliefs, and policies. Many—almost thirty percent of Americans—believed that the first African-American president was a fraud: a Manchurian candidate brought about by powerful foreign interests to infiltrate the government and instill tyranny. As evidence of this plot, the supposedly missing, or incomplete, birth certificate was pointed to. Even after the birth certificate was presented in a presidential press conference, polls showed that beliefs in the president’s supposed foreign origins did not subside. If anything, discussion moved from the birth certificate to the unavailable college transcripts as evidence of the president’s shadowy and shrouded past.
During the remainder of his presidency, about twenty percent of the U.S. believed that Obama was a secret Muslim intent on hiding his true faith from the public. A similar percentage remains convinced that he is a clandestine communist agent.
The disaster on the Deepwater Horizon in the gulf was blamed on Obama. Some believed that the president blew up the well and purposely leaked oil into the ocean in order to push his “green” agenda. Shortly thereafter, violent tragedies occurred at Aurora, Colorado, Newtown, Connecticut, and the Boston Marathon. The intense national media coverage of these events was peppered with tales of false flag operations intended to increase government power and take away individual rights.
Why did conspiracy theories surround all of these high-profile events? Why did so many people appear to believe the conspiratorial explanations as opposed to the official stories? What drove people to seek alternative explanations, and then to go about compiling evidence to support those explanations? Did the seeming prevalence of conspiracy theories indicate that the country was heading into a paranoid conspiracy theory-induced frenzy unlike anything seen before? Did we have something to worry about?
It was these questions that drove me and my coauthor, Joseph Parent, to begin a four-year search for insight into conspiracy theories and the conspiratorial mindset. Our final product, American Conspiracy Theories—the first large-scale study of conspiracy theories in the United States—was published in the fall of 2014.
One thing I first noticed when beginning my research was that very little data existed on conspiracy theories. We all know they exist. But we didn’t have good measures on how many there were, how many people believed them, why, and to what end. Over the years, a few surveys had been taken about high-profile conspiracy theories like those surrounding the Kennedy assassination. But such polls were sporadic, and they didn’t tell us much about who believed the conspiracy theories and how that might have changed over time. For example, some polls taken in 2012 showed that about six percent of the U.S. believed that the moon landings were faked, and four percent believed that we are ruled by shape-shifting lizard people. One national poll in the late 1990s purported to show that almost eighty percent of respondents believed that aliens had landed at Roswell and that the government was keeping the truth from them.
To put this in context, hundreds of polls were taken every year during the last half of the last century (thousands are taken each year now). Scientists had strong data on attitudes toward the president, Congress, the political parties, the issues facing the nation, and political candidates, but very little on conspiratorial attitudes. I found this somewhat odd, given both the cultural and political importance of conspiracy theories.
Because of the lack of data, social scientists had a lack of answers. This allowed journalists and commentators to parade out many unchecked claims about conspiracy theories as if they were accepted wisdom. Conspiracy theories were often discussed as pathological, some sort of mental aberration that had befallen a poor victim. Were people who believed in conspiracy theories mentally ill? In popular culture, conspiracy theories seemed to be espoused over and over again by a specific caricature: a paranoid middle-aged white man living in his mother’s basement wearing a tinfoil hat and tapping into the cosmic rays on his ham radio. Was this caricature correct? Were conspiracy theories largely confined to people resembling Mel Gibson in the movie Conspiracy Theory, or Dan Aykroyd in Sneakers?
Another popular media trope was that conspiracy theories were disruptive to orderly society and could potentially lead to violence. This is an idea that continues to this day. Some in government have recently suggested taking action to rid the populace of their conspiracy beliefs by sending covert government agents into chat rooms to plant government-approved information. Do conspiracy theories present a danger to society? Are those who believe in conspiracy theories likely to commit violence? Are we in danger?
Questions such as these can be answered with data and analysis by social scientists like myself. In pursuing these questions, my coauthor and I conducted national surveys and also “went back in time” to track conspiracy beliefs by looking at more than one hundred thousand letters written to the editors of the New York Times from the 1890s to 2010.
Here is what we found.
First—and perhaps most comforting to those of you who have gravitated to a volume of short stories on conspiracies—everyone believes in one conspiracy theory or another, and most people believe in several. By definition, then, conspiratorial beliefs cannot be confined to the crazy, pathological, or mentally aberrant. (Unless of course you make the argument that everyone in the U.S. is crazy, pathological, or mentally aberrant.)
Just as a thought exercise, consider that if about a third of the country believes in Truther theories (that there was a conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks) and an equal proportion believes in Birther theories (that President Obama is hiding his true place of origin), and that these two groups overlap little, then we have about sixty percent of the country believing in only these two conspiracy theories. On top of that, polls show that between sixty and eighty percent of Americans believe in some form of Kennedy assassination theory.
In short, if you believe in a conspiracy theory or theories, then you are certainly not alone. If you don’t believe in any, you are like
ly the odd one out.
Second, since conspiracy theories are so ubiquitous, it stands to reason that they cut across all demographics. Conspiracy theories are espoused by people belonging to every race, gender, age group, and religion. The caricature that conspiracy theories find a home exclusively with white middle-aged men just doesn’t hold up against examination. Consider for example the popular daytime television program The View. Of the several rotating hosts the show has featured, many have publicly espoused conspiracy theories. Whoopi Goldberg proclaimed a belief in faked moon landing conspiracy theories. Jenny McCarthy has suggested that pharmaceutical companies are hiding information about the harmful effects of vaccines. And Rosie O’Donnell is an avid Truther. Conspiracy theories are most certainly not just for lonely middle-aged men.
Our third major finding was that, while we are all familiar with the popular and enduring conspiracy theories, there are thousands that fly under the radar. How many of us are familiar with the theory that Congress secretly wanted to kill off all of our pet dogs? Or that lesbianism was a clandestine plot hatched by the CIA? Or that Jimmy Carter was a surreptitious Soviet agent? Or that Obama’s secret service protectors are of super-human reptilian descent? Or that the producers of The Dark Knight Rising are responsible for the shootings in Aurora and Sandy Hook? Many conspiracy theories come and go in the night—they gain few supporters and are left to wither. Few survive to gain a sizable following. And of those, even fewer will go on to become un-killable zombies, left to wander the earth potentially forever (think Freemason, Catholic Church, or Kennedy conspiracy theories).