Saturday, April 02, 2016

Love Me Like a Reptile: Kyle Odom vs. the Sex-Crazed Martians


This story made the news on March 9th:
Idaho pastor shooting suspect arrested, expresses 'space alien' concerns 
An ex-Marine accused of shooting a prominent Idaho minister outside his church was arrested after he threw objects over the fence of the White House. police said. The U.S. Secret Service confirmed Kyle Andrew Odom's arrest to NBC News late Tuesday night. 

 

Tim Remington, senior pastor of The Altar Church in Coeur d'Alene, was shot six times and critically wounded in the church's parking lot Sunday. His condition has since been upgraded to fair, and he was described as stable. 
Odom, 30, was arrested without incident at 8:27 p.m. ET at the South Fence of the White House, Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said. He was apprehended while throwing objects, including documents and a computer flash drive, over the fence, White said. 
White said the package included a "manifesto" mentioning numerous U.S. House members and senators and Israeli government officials by name. He wouldn't give any further details other than to say it didn't include specific threats. 
"It's an interesting read," he said. 
Oh, it certainly is. Strangely enough, the pastor in question had made the news the day before he was shot: 
Remington, 55, was shot a day after he delivered the invocation at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. No connection has officially been made between the shooting and Remington's attendance at the rally.
Odom released his manifesto and an FAQ to local media, offering up a defense of his actions in which he claimed that the planet was under the secret control of a race of amphibious Martians who possess human beings. 

Odom claimed he shot Remington in response to a campaign of harassment and sexual abuse he received at the hands of the pastor and members of his congregation who were all secret alien shapeshifters:
According to Coeur d’Alene police, Odom has a history of mental illness. In his manifesto, he outlined his path to Sunday’s shooting in clear but increasingly paranoid prose. 
“Born and raised in North Idaho,” Odom wrote. “Grew up in a loving family. Joined the Marine Corps after high school. Developed an interest in science. Went to school for a degree in Biochemistry. Won numerous scholarships and awards. Graduated Magna Cum Laude then got invited to prestigious university to work on genetics. 
“Check my personal documents,” Odom continued. “As you can see, I’m pretty smart. I’m also 100% sane, 0% crazy.” 
But the documents Odom sent to local media reveal an intense and dangerous paranoia, as well as an obsession over “hypersexual,” mind-controlling Martians. 
“Things are not what they appear to be. The world is ruled by ancient civilization from Mars. Pastor Tim was one of them, and he was the reason my life was ruined. I will be sharing my story with as many people as possible. I don’t have time right now, they are chasing me. 
I shot Pastor Tim 12 times, there is no way any human could have survived that event."
Odom might be a little fuzzy on the details here - it seems that he shot Remington six eight times*, including in the head and the lung. But strangely enough he does have a point; that's an awful lot of punishment for a human body to survive.

 And this may be just encouraging words from loved ones, but it sounds like Remington was doing almost shockingly well shortly after the shooting.
Remington is in stable condition despite being shot as many as six times, his son told local television station KREM. 
John Padula, the second Altar Church pastor threatened in Odom’s letter, said Remington regained consciousness Monday. 
“He’s whispering and talking to his family a little bit,” Padula told the Associated Press. “He’s doing absolutely amazing. He gave me a thumbs-up last night when I went in.”
That seemed a bit off but nothing worth calling in the Feds over. What did bother me was reading Odom's manifesto and FAQ. They seemed entirely too cogent and well-ordered, all the more so given the incredibly bizarre information they were conveying. 

They came across more like material for a particularly excruciating corporate sales presentation than the rantings of a paranoid schizophrenic.

What's more, Odom seemed entirely aware that the experiences he was writing did sound completely insane and irrational- he says as much on several different occasions throughout the texts.

This seemed off to me; having read more paranoid rants than I care to admit to (going back well pre-Internet) I've come to recognize a certain cadence to schizophrenia, a certain lilt. The rhythms are always off. Sometimes it takes a while to hear it, but eventually it always burns through. 

And when it does you can't hear anything else.


Instead, Odom's prose is dry, sober, even dull. He makes all of this madness sound prosaic, ordinary, boring. I'd read journalists refer to the manifesto as "rambling" and "incoherent" and all the rest of it but that merely shows how many of them function in autopilot. That's what they're supposed to say. It doesn't ramble at all.

I didn't need to re-read all of this to figure out what Odom was talking about. There weren't endless sidebars and detours and stuck-on-repeats, like you see all too often when it comes to this kind of material. It all came through loud and clear.

Don't ask me why but I found that troubling. I began wondering if someone was fucking with this kid's head and wondering how exactly they'd be doing it. The Ted "World Domination" Cruz connection wasn't exactly discouraging me from that kind of speculation. Nor did the culty-sounding church ("The Altar").

It could simply be this is just an atypical schizophrenia, which in truth would be my working opinion here. But sprinkled throughout this story are a few discordant notes, weird little atonal bursts beneath the depressing old tune of another mentally ill guy with a gun. And it seems like there's a deeper current to all of this. 

It goes like this...

As American society continues to disintegrate and people continue to lose faith in its institutions, I think you're going to see ideas that were once completely marginal not only become more mainstream but actually begin to force older, more established beliefs out of circulation.

This is already happening with the New Age movement, which was considered a joke just a few years ago but is now putting its old Evangelical tormentors on the back foot.



And it was through New Age practices that Kyle Odom's story began, or at least the story he is telling in his manifesto:
Everything started while I was at university of Idaho, Spring 2014 was my final semester and I was taking a heavy course load.  I was very stressed due to the intensity of my schedule, so I searched for a way to cope. I discovered meditation, which seemed to help, so it became part of my daily routine.... This continued until I encountered another being through meditation. 
It happened one night in February 2014 and it was the most profound experience I've ever had. I was lying in bed meditating then suddenly left my physical body. I entered a space that was completely dark and had no awareness of my physical boundaries/orientation. 
I felt very peaceful there until a blue light began to approach me. As the blue light got closer, I realized it was another being. Once I was in the being's presence, I felt an immediate sense of wrongdoing. It felt like I was being told "YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE!"

I instantly conceded and felt guilty, then I began to distance myself from the being. This had an impact on them and seemed to change their mind about me. The moment I began to distance myself from the being, I became overwhelmed by a feeling I can only describe as unconditional love.  During this part of the experience, our minds became connected and I saw that the being was female.
The connection was cut and Odom felt a profound sense of loss. He decided to stop meditating and instead concentrate on his schoolwork. And is so often the case following these mystical kinds of encounters, Odom felt like he had been granted greater powers:
The remainder of the semester became exceedingly easy for me. It felt like I had tapped into some kind of power. I was exerting no mental effort even though the classes had been extremely difficult before. 
I also began to have complex thoughts and a depth of understanding I had never reached before.
Odom began experiencing problems with classmates and then claimed he began receiving text messages from members of a local church.

He believed that they were coded threats but unfortunately doesn't cite them. It was at the church that he claims he became aware of the extraterrestrial conspiracy:
When I went to The Altar for the first time, the people acted very strange. It was unhuman (sic). As I walked into the sermon room, everyone stared at me and began sniffing emphatically... 
When the service began, a man came and sat down next to me. After he sat down, I began smelling something. It was a smell I had never smelt before...When the service ended, they said: “You can leave now”. 
After that, I knew I wasn’t dealing with the government anymore. I realized that whoever I was dealing with was extraterrestrial, so I became very scared. 
It was soonafter that Odom began to hallucinate and also began to experience what he claims were some kind of telepathic sexual harrassment. The text becomes increasingly explicit, as he claims that the Martians were aggressively sex-obsessed:
I received no further instructions from them after that, so I began applying for jobs again. Even though I had done exactly as I was told, they still followed me everywhere I went. 
As time went on, they started harassing me day and night. I began to hear voices more often and I began to hallucinate things that I knew weren’t real. They also started playing with me sexually. 
Both the males and the females would play out their sexual fantasies in my mind. This came with random and uncontrollable erections as well as extreme anal stimulation.  
Yeah. I know.

Odom claimed that the harassment and sexual abuse got so bad that he attempted suicide. But the Martians intervened and he then checked himself into the hospital for treatment. He increasingly felt as if the goal here was to drive him insane. 

Again, note the prose here. Relatively calm, ordered, dry, sober:
I knew I couldn’t take any more, so I attempted suicide. I filled a charcoal grill with lit coals, put it in my car and rolled up the windows. I reclined my seat, laid there calmly, then fell asleep. I should have died but they woke me up in an extreme panic, which caused me to get out of the car. 
As I slowly regained consciousness, I felt very upset to still be alive. I had no clue where to go at that point, so I decided to check myself into the VA. They shipped me straight to the mental ward and I was admitted. 
Nothing improved while I was there... I knew their goal was to ruin my life by making me into a crazy person. I became determined not to let that happen and I started fighting back.

Finally, he took action, shooting Remington, flying to Washington and attempting to reach President Obama with information about the alien conspiracy. 

However, one of the individuals cited by Odom as a Martian claimed Odom was in fact a meth addict who apparently sought counseling from the church. That could very well be, but I found this quote to feel a bit off, given the events and the claims made in Odom's manifesto.
Officials at Remington's Altar Church indicated that Remington and Padula had earlier contacts with Odom, described as a former methamphetamine addict. Padula, himself a former addict, had known Odom for years. 
"When I was struggling," the associate pastor told KHQ-TV of Spokane, "when I was using drugs still, he just loved the daylights out of me."
"Loved the daylights out of me?"

FANBOYS GONE WILD?

What is so unusual about the Odom situation is that we are seeing a theme here that has been simmering for quite some time in the more esoteric corners of the conspiracy community suddenly explode into the mainstream news media. 

What else struck me were the X-Files connections, all the more salient given the fact that all this went down the week following the season finale. 

• The basic story here is straight out of the penultimate episode of the fifth season, "Folie a Deux", in which a gunman believes his office is being taken over by a shapeshifter (an insectoid, in this case) who turns his employees into zombies. 

 The Martian walk-in idea goes all the back to "Space," the unjustly maligned first-season episode.

• But we had another shapeshifting story in "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", in this case a shapeshifting reptilian. 

 The story of the whistleblower trying to reach the President with information about the alien infiltration comes straight out of "Three Words," the eighth-season thriller. 

 And the ex-soldier trying to die but being prevented from doing so is straight out "The Walk," in the third season.


The connection with the church and the shapeshifting demon aliens is straight out of The Outer Limits, in this case the episode "Corner of the Eye": 
Father Anton Jonascu (Len Cariou) begins to have strange hallucinations — one moment he sees perfectly ordinary-looking people, the next they have changed into terrifying demon creatures. He visits Dr. Pallas (Chris Sarandon), and a medical scan reveals an inoperable brain-tumour that seems to be the cause of his hallucinations. 
Jonascu continues to see the creatures, and finally collapses during a sermon. He returns to the doctor and explains his predicament further. Dr. Pallas injects him with a drug that causes temporary paralysis and explains that he wants to introduce Jonascu to some friends. Pallas opens a door and two of the demon creatures enter... and Pallas also reveals himself as one of them. 
After Jonascu has calmed down, Pallas and his associates explain that they are not demons, but alien creatures and that all Earth religions are actually based on teachings from their world. 
They are here to give the power of healing to humanity, but are unable to reveal themselves because their appearance would terrify humans. One of the aliens gives her life to pass on the gift of healing to Jonascu — however Jonascu is asked not to reveal the aliens' presence or the origin of his gift.
These are just a few examples: you could go back to the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Puppet Masters for the basic paranoid narrative of alien infiltration. 

But The X-Files plot points are certainly more specific and case-relevant and remarkable in terms of the timing. What effect the series had on Odom is unclear. Was this a case of a hardcore X-Files fanboy gone off the rails? Stranger things have happened.

I'd say his experience in Iraq, his possible meth abuse and the inclination towards paranoid schizophrenia we unfortunately tend to find in the academically-advanced (see A Beautiful Mind) probably had a lot more to do with any break from reality he may have experienced.

If that is in fact what he did experience. While looking at this story I kept wondering what it would take to induce this kind of behavior in a subject, whether through drugs, electronics or microwave technology. 

I have no evidence that's what happened with this guy, just that troublesome coherency and those jarring off-beats.

But only a fool pretends that such technologies don't exist- there's a significant paper trail on them- and only a bigger fool assumes that a church is some kind of safe harbor against some kind of creepie-crawlie malfeasance. 


It makes me wonder given that Odom was doing genetic research into aging, a condition that a lot of powerful people are very interested in. And which is yet another X-Files tie-in (see "Young at Heart"). 

Scientists and doctors seem to be experiencing their own set of occupational hazards lately, as anyone who monitors alt.media (or even mainstream media) is well aware.

THE REPTILIANS AGAIN....


Although the Odom story seems to already have been flushed from the news cycle (and will probably remain so, unless something spectacular emerges during the trial), his manifesto and the links to Presidential politics were godsends to the our increasingly shallow and senationalist media, always looking for fresh freak shows to exploit.

And the parallels between Odom's Martian amphibians and the more prominent Reptilians did not escape the notice of more insightful reporters. David Icke - a favorite whipping boy for the British media - was inevitably linked to the story, given his two-decades long association with the Reptilian conspiracy theory.



To his credit, this reporter (for The Boise Weekly) noted that as ridiculous as it may sound to many (OK, most) people, Icke's neo-Gnostic cosmogony enjoys a surprisingly wide global audience, thanks to Icke's tireless proselytizing:
While Odom’s writings are bizarre, and he has been said to have suffered mental health problems, they tap into a rich vein of conspiracy thinking that is shared—to varying extents—by perhaps millions of people around the world. 
A race of reptilian creatures secretly controlling all aspects of society is an idea that has been widely circulated since at least the early 1990s and popularized by British New Age figure David Icke. 
It is unclear whether Odom was directly influenced by Icke’s ideas, but the similarities between what Odom described and what Icke promotes via well-attended public speaking events are unmistakable. 
...Icke suggests inter-dimensional beings have for millennia altered humans’ perception of reality by first manipulating energy frequencies coming from space, then human genetics.  
These beings—who Icke claims are the true forces behind all religious deities—use reptilian-human hybrids to do their bidding, using everything from psychic manipulation to the banking industry to turn humanity into a collection of slaves.
And it's not just Icke working this beat; plenty of lesser-known researchers have picked the theme and worked up their own variations. YouTube is full of digital exegetes, poring through endless hours of footage searching for evidence of 'Reptilian shapeshifting'.
 

Films such as the classic exercise in working class paranoia They Live and the Reagan-era anti-globalist allegory V seem to be the major touchstones in the popularity of the shapeshifting motif, which also makes for an effective metaphor for a kicked-to-the-curb Middle America's perception of its ruling class.


Oddly enough, the Reptilian theory has even insinuated itself into otherwise more serene corners of the New Age homestead, in this case a Barbara Hand Clow book on past lives: 
With a background in Jungian psychology, author Barbara Hand Clow excels in shamanic cosmology, an intuitive storytelling technique that integrates history, legend and myth using her own internal guidance. 
In the third volume of her “Mind Chronicles Trilogy” called Signet of Atlantis, she also tackles the problem of the “lizard race” from her own perspective. 
Clow refers to the physical incarnation of this race on Earth. 
“They [the Anunnaki] nevertheless have received a measure of control over the planet’s surface,” she writes. “Most notably they have achieved the ability to incarnate. No longer will they have to persuade the people to build temples in order to link up to their own control centres; no longer will they require a channel to enter Earth; now they can become humans themselves.” 
“The various non-physical lizards creeping around the canals of Baalbek are considerably attracted to the idea of taking human form through incarnation,” she continues. 
“They look forward to creating fear more directly. These monsters are not content to lumber around as fourth dimensional reptiles, occasionally eating someone up. 
- taken from "New (Reptilian) World Order: Complete History of Reptilian Control" By Uri Dowbenko, New Dawn Magazine, special issue #7
Hand Clow considers herself a Jungian and Jung himself was immersed in snake and serpent symbolism. But before we start getting all psychologic and metaphoric about all of this it should be noted that classic Reptilians -- humanoids with serpent or reptilian heads or facial features -- make an appearance in the so-called Mithraic Liturgy, the ancient text that had such a life-changing effect on Jung himself (and also a text that no less an occult authority than Kenneth Grant labels a bonafide UFO contact account) that it could be credited with ultimately giving birth to the New Age Movement as we understand it today:
After saying this, you will see the doors thrown open, and seven virgins coming from deep within, dressed in linen garments, and with the faces of asps. 
They are called the Fates of heaven, and wield golden wands. When you see them, greet them in this manner: "Hail, O seven Fates of heaven, O noble and good virgins, O sacred ones and companions of MINIMIRROPHOR, O most holy guardians of the four pillars!


Given the prominence of the Reptilians in our modern mythology I was surprised how thin on the ground they are in ancient myth, and how few of those are the V-type Reptoids.

True to form, it seems the archetype fed into the culture by way of the pulps.


Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard had another barbarian hero, Kull (of Atlantis, significantly) whose enemies were an entire race of serpent men. And inevitably it appears that Howard lifted the idea from Madame Blavatsky, who wrote (in The Secret Doctrine) of a race of "Dragon Kings" who ruled ancient Lemuria.

So again we see ideas emerging from the high occult (Blavatsky and whomever she was plagiarizing), trickling down into pop culture (the pulps, sci-fi film), seeping into low occultism (alien conspiracy theory) and finally into the parade of travesties our modern news media has become.

How much of an influence it all had on Odom is unclear, though. If this is simple schizophrenia all of it could be the result of his own misfiring synapses. Certainly all the business about the Martian satyriasis seems unique to his case. And he doesn't cite any particular body of theory in his manifesto, which is actually surprising. 

Often individuals like this will cite this researcher or that book or video to bolster their claims. Odom does not.

Very curious indeed.


BACK TO BABYLON

The Watchers, those demonized folk spirits from Syro-Phoenician religion, were said to be reptilian in appearance. Ultimately they take us back to Babylon, birthplace of the angels. And all kinds of reptilian motifs (many dating back to Sumer).

One AAT researcher, a former NSA cryptographer named R.A Boulay, cites the ancient Jewish text the Haggadah and claims that Adam and Eve, the prototype humanoids actually had scaly skin (described as "horny skin" in the text).

Boulay goes so far to claim that “The reptilian appearance of the Biblical gods was a well-kept secret and only occasionally is it perceptible in the Old Testament.”

This sounds like a bit of a stretch until you look at 
the Seraphim, the angels of the heavenly host. They may be commonly portrayed as winged humanoids but the word itself definitively indicates they were originally serpents and scholars believe that they were originally of Babylonian origin (as were the Cherubim).


Speaking of Babylon, we also have an amphibian figure of some renown, one well familiar to Secret Sun readers.
 

Oannes, the renowned instructor-god of ancient Mesopotamia, was not only amphibious, he wasn't exactly idolized by the people he tutored:
Berossus, the Babylonian priest writing in 3rd century BCE Athens, claimed that man’s ancestry and origin can be traced to “Oannes,” an amphibious creature that came out of the Persian Gulf to teach the arts of civilisation to man. 
“Berossus called them ‘annedoti’ which translate as the ‘repulsive ones’ in Greek. He also refers to them as ‘musarus,’ an abomination,” writes Boulay. 
Indeed, Boulay makes a very important argument as to the reality of the Oannes figure, given the unflattering nicknames he was given by his beneficiaries.
“If the tradition had been invented, a more normal attitude would have been to glorify these creatures as splendid gods or heroes, yet the fact that they chose to describe their ancestors this way argues for the authenticity of the account.”
Here's where the story gets even stranger. Kyle Odom served as a US Marine in Iraq, receiving a Campaign Medal for his service. Secret Sun readers know all about the looting of the Iraqi National Museum and the untold treasures lost there, not to mention the looting and destruction of ancient sites unleashed by Islamic militants.


What you might not know is that there was a nonsdescript little mound in Iraq that helped rewrite human history, opening our eyes to the so-called Ubaid Period. That prehistoric culture has helped shed light on the mystery of the Sumerian culture by pushing the clock back on organized settlement in the area:
(A prehistoric period of Mesopotamia), (t)he Ubaid Culture is characterized by large village settlements, with the construction of mud-brick houses with elaborate design, and the appearance of the first temples of public architecture.

But the Ubaid culture has done something else: it's given us History's earliest depictions of classic Reptoids, depictions that wouldn't look out of place in any modern sci-fi movie or TV show.
At the Archaeological site for Al-Ubaid, researchers have found numerous pre-Sumerian artifacts dating back at least 7,000 years, between these items strange looking figurines have been discovered with a very strange look: a combination of human and lizard-like features combined.  
Archaeologists have been stunned by these discoveries and no explanation has been given as to why the Ubaid culture made these strange looking figurines worshiping lizard-like creatures. Were they merely decorative items? The result of imagination? Or did the Ubaid culture really see lizard-like beings walking among them?
Maybe the answer lies in one of those tens of thousands of long-pilfered Sumerian texts, now sitting in some Raiders of the Lost Ark-type warehouse, waiting to be deciphered using the very latest optical technology.

Many would argue that our history has not only been stolen, it's deliberately being hidden away from us. Probably not something Kyle Odom needs to hear.



CODA: THE KARDASHIAN OCCUPATION

Kyle Odom's saga caught my attention for obvious reasons, but also the less obvious reason of his surname. His meltdown was preceded by another Odom's, in this case NBA player Lamar Odom, who married into the Kardashian clan.

Just as Kyle Odom blamed his troubles on Martian walk-ins, Lamar's defenders blamed his woes on the Kardashians, adding them to a list of casualties blamed on the unavoidable avatars of American collapse.

Lamar Odom's father unleashed on the brood, blaming them for his son's travails in no uncertain terms: 

•   The Kardashians have cursed his boy and ruined his basketball career;
•  The reality show put too much pressure on Lamar, forcing him to turn to drugs;
•   Kris Jenner is an “an evil bitch” and dismisses Kim as a “porn star”.
 
Speaking from his home in Marina Del Rey, Calif., Joe reckons his NBA star son has been “cursed: ever since he became a member of the Kardashian clan when he married Khloe, 29, in 2009.
It's just one of those strange twists of fate that the Kardashians remind every Star Trek fan in the world of another evil Reptilian alien race:
There are numerous similarities between Cardassians and reptiles. For example, while their skin is closer to that of Humans than reptiles, their neck ridges bear a resemblance to scales. Additionally, they prefer relatively dark rooms, enjoy the heat, are intolerant to cold (reptiles are cold-blooded), and are frequently portrayed as aggressors, an attribute often associated with reptiles.
Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

POSTSCRIPT: There's something still bugging me about this story. Something I can't quite put my finger on yet. It may be a topic I'll be returning to. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

SYNC LOG: This story, about another White House fence jumper, goes up shortly after I posted this.

* The story keeps changing, which is another strange detail about this case. But being surviving eight hits by hollow point .45 slugs is nearly unheard of. One of the bullets "ricocheted" near his brain, which must be a first for a hollow point.