This weekend we observed the 40th anniversary of the mass murder/suicide tragedy at Jonestown in Guyana. The utopian cult lead by the the charismatic Jim Jones had its heyday as the People’s Temple, a Christian church in San Francisco known for its outreach to homeless neighbors. In the end it became a madhouse deep in the South American jungle as Jones became increasingly unhinged, and the would-be paradise disintegrated into a living hell. 909 men, women and children died at Jonestown and this weekend I found a great article that focuses on how pop culture shapes what we talk about when we talk about cults…

Originally, the word “cult” simply meant “to worship”. Deriving from the same root as “culture” and “cultivation”, it described rituals and offerings intended to cultivate the favour of gods, saints and other holy figures. The term later took on negative connotations, and by the mid-20th century was mostly associated with charlatans and violent or otherwise bizarre fringe groups.

Today, a cult might loosely be defined as any group exhibiting a combination of qualities including (but not limited to): a charismatic leader, mind-altering practices, sexual and economic control and exploitation of members, us-versus-them attitudes towards outsiders, and an ends-justify-the-means philosophy.

By this definition, it’s difficult to argue that Peoples Temple wasn’t a cult. After all, they had a leader who was notoriously charismatic and who exerted a disproportionate level of control over his congregation. Members were often overworked and overtired, their finances and sex lives regulated by leadership. Relationships with outsiders were generally discouraged, and Jones was known to sexually abuse both male and female followers. Meanwhile, an ends-justify-the-means line of thinking was employed to justify everything from faked healings to the ultimate massacre of more than 900 individuals.

Read more at the link above. Here’s a Real Stories documentary about the tragedy, Jonestown: Paradise Lost…

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This June 29 we will mark 40 years since the murder of Hogan’s Heroes television star, Bob Crane. Crane was a successful leading man on the small screen, and the conservative head of his small town, American family. The only thing that seemed odd about the Crane clan was that dad was famous for making people laugh on television. No harm there.

But Bob Crane lived a double life: TV star/family man in the public eye, and sex addict/amateur pornographer away from the set and his family. I might post more about Crane at the official anniversary of his death this summer, but I’m posting about Crane’s dark life today because his son has just released a new book illuminating his father’s long shadows and attempting to cast some light on Crane’s still-unsolved murder. Here’s the word from the Daily Mail…

‘The red light was always on in my dad’s makeshift film processing lab,’ writes Robert Crane in his riveting account of his father’s very secret and sordid lifestyle in Crane: Sex, Celebrity and My Father’s Unsolved Murder, published by University Press of Kentucky…

He spent his ‘off-duty’ time developing hundreds of photographs of the actresses and Playboy Playmates who were always stopping by the set. Word was out that the Hogan’s set was the place to market your wares if you were young, shapely, and of the female persuasion.

All the kink ended on June 29, 1978, when Victoria Berry, Crane’s co-star on Beginner’s Luck, ran screaming from the TV star’s apartment, unit 132A of the Winfield Apartments in Scottsdale. Crane’s body was found lying on its right side atop a queen-sized bed, clad only in boxer shorts and wearing a wrist watch.

An electrical cord was fastened tightly around his neck and a pillow stood vertically at the top of his head.

Two parallel gashes were above and behind the left side of his head that left a fan of blood across the ceiling, the wall behind the top of the bed and the nightstand lamp. Human tissue was on the wall; the bed sheet and pillowcase were soaked with blood.

Watch the documentary Murder in Scottsdale for a deep dive into Crane’s dark side, and the investigation of his still unsolved murder…

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Last week I re-posted a From the Archives Friday post to my social media sites. That piece was about James Shelby Downard’s “King Kill 33″ theory about the JFK assassination being a Masonic ritual. Today is the anniversary of the assassination and we’re still making discoveries in the newly-released files about that day in Dallas.

Here’s a cool new episode of one of my favorite podcasts, The Higherside Chats. This ‘cast features host Greg Carlwood speaking with Michael Joseph of the Schism 206 YouTube channel discussing the magickal murder of Camelot’s King…

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In 1981, in a small California town, a teenager raped and killed his girlfriend. Afterwards he took his friends to see the body. About a dozen young people had seen the body and known about the murder before the murder was reported two days after the slaying. River’s Edge is based on those events. The film offers an intimate tour of disaffected teen culture in small town California. The movie is memorable for its off-kilter tone which is often funny despite being thoroughly creepy at the same time. It also boasts a great cast with Crispin Glover, Keeanu Reeves, Ione Skye, and Dennis Hopper.

If you’ve seen this film, this making of will lend insights and trigger memories. If you’re new to River’s Edge this is a great introduction to one of the best movies of the 1980′s. Here’s River’s Edge: Across the Edge…

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In Chicago, on December 4, 1969 police murdered Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Here’s The Murder of Fred Hampton…

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June 21 seems a long way off to wait for the premiere of the second season of True Detective. I’m not one to blog about television very often, but, as fans of the show know, True Detective is no regular television show. The first season featured a tour-de-force acting clinic by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson inhabiting a pair of detectives tracking down a murderer in a series of super-creepy Satanic ritual homicides. The show’s atmosphere is pumped-up with literary references that introduce ideas from authors like William S. Burroughs, Robert Chambers and H.P. Lovecraft, and Rust Cohle’s references to existential philosophers seem cherry-picked to reinforce the stereotypical bleakness that’s popularly associated with that school of thought. It all adds up to chilling, riveting television, but what if it was true?

This piece from VICE explores the ritual child abuse case at a Louisiana church that series creator Nic Pizzolatto has cited as one real-life inspiration for the events in the first season of True Detective. The video is definitely NSFW and is full of real life monsters that even the King in Yellow might cower from. I often devote these posts to looking-back a the Satanic Panic of a few decades ago, pointing at the wrongheadedness of religious fundamentalists and advocating for the wrongly-convicted “satanists” the scares uncovered. But this story and the True Detective television show remind us that sometimes the Devil really is in the details…

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Here at Insomnia, we love the strange crossroads of hardscrabble blues and high weirdness that come together in the life of legendary singer/songwriter/guitarist Robert Johnson. The story of the blues pioneer finds the gifted musician rejected by his family, living the reckless, itinerant life of a musician, drinking heavily, womanizing, dying mysteriously and infamously associating himself with Southern blues mythology and creating the legend that he’d sold his soul to the Devil himself in order to become one of the greatest guitar players of all time.

It’s all here, sex, intoxication, knife sharp music, dangerous living, murder and more than a whiff of pitch black occultism, all culminating in some of the best music and one of the most-storied lives in the many-storied lives that populate the history of the blues.

In this BBC film, John Hammond Jr. goes to Mississippi in an effort to get to the man behind the legend. Here is The Search for Robert Johnson.

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Was casting about for some weirdness to post here when I got into a quick chat with Chris Charbonneau on Facebook. A few quick clicks around on his page uncovered a paranormal phenomenon that I wasn’t familiar with: It’s a story about America’s haunted history of racism and violence that may have resulted in an actual haunting at an abandoned bridge in Texas involving a mysterious tragedy that took place one dark night back in 1967.

Here’s the back story from the Goatman’s Bridge site…

Goatman’s Bridge Hunting the Goat Man
November 15th 1967: police discover an abandoned car beside Old Alton Bridge, five miles south of Denton, Texas. A rash of mysterious disappearances are becoming alarmingly routine on a chilling stretch of road that is known by locals as “the Goatman’s bridge.”

Constructed in 1884, the bridge connected Lewisville to Alton. The turn of the century brought a black goat farmer and his family to a residence just North of the bridge, and a few short years later, Oscar Washburn was known as a dependable, honest businessman. North Texans endearingly began to call him the Goat man. But the success of a black man was still unwelcome, and Klansmen in the local government turned to violence after he displayed a sign on Alton Bridge: “this way to the Goat man’s”

One night in August 1938, with their headlights off, Klansmen crossed the bridge, dragged the Goat man from his family, and lynched him over the side. Peering over into the water, his murderers saw a rope, but not his body. In a panic, the Klansman returned to the Washburn residence, and killed his family in cold blood.

Since the disappearance of the Goat man there have been many strange sightings on and near Old Alton Bridge. Some say his spirit still haunts these woods. Locals tell the story and follow it with a warning: those who cross the bridge with no headlights will be met on the other side by the Goat man.

Here’s a short documentary about the Old Alton Bridge and the spirit of the centaur that guards it…

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There’s a fine line between the truth and a good story when it comes to celebrities. And when it comes to the death of a celebrity like Kurt Cobain, there is a fine line between the findings of the police investigation that ruled his demise a suicide and the conspiracy theories that insist the singer was the victim of a murder.

This week that line got even thinner as stories about police in Seattle re-opening their investigation into Cobain’s death began to appear and new, never-before-seen photographs of the scene where the singer’s body was discovered hit the internet. Here’s the story via COS…

Now, 20 years later, Seattle police have found new evidence, prompting them to re-open the case. Reportedly, four rolls of 35 mm film had been sitting for years in the department’s evidence vault. Last month, the film was processed by King County Sheriff’s Office photo lab “under high security”. Police told KIRO that the film more clearly shows Cobain’s death scene than earlier photos taken by investigators. Why the photographs are only being developed now is unclear.

KIRO has reportedly obtained one of these photographs, which it will show during its broadcast tonight. Additional details regarding the investigation are also expected to be shared during the telecast.

Police plan to release the photographs and will answer questions on the anniversary of Cobain’s death next month.

Technically speaking, the new photos constitute a re-examining of the case, but not an official re-opening. Here are two of the newly-discovered photos…

Kurt Cobain’s heroin kit

Cobain’s belongings at the scene of his death

It’s unlikely that questions about Cobain’s death will really ever abate, after all, folks are still claiming that Elvis is alive and well. For me, the circumstances of the singer’s death aren’t as interesting as the culture surrounding those who continue to question the findings of police and coroners. Conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily as interesting in and of themselves as they are as part of a storytelling, myth-making culture that insists that things simply aren’t as they may so plainly seem.

When it comes to Cobain’s death, the queen mother conspiracy theory is supplied by Nick Broomfield’s documentary Kurt and Courtney. Watch it for yourself and see what all the fuss is about.

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