When I think about my life as a reader and everything that I have read in the past which lead me up to the material I read today, the one book which fueled my interest early as a child was a hardcover from a series of books put out by Time Life called Mysteries of the Unknown. It was while I was on summer vacation from elementary school visiting relatives in Ohio that I had found this tome at a family friend’s house. Now I don’t remember whether I was allowed to borrow this book or if I chose to just take it without asking, all I remember is that I stayed up very late that night glued between the book covers by intrigue and fascination.

It was during Christmas later that year or possibly even the year after that I was given one of the greatest presents of all time. My aunt, who has a gift for giving great gifts, presented me with four books of which included Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I read through them all before the winter break was over. I remember thinking “Wow! These are such awesome books”. My favor for them still holds strong today, all except for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I never really enjoyed that one in the first place. Dracula had always been my favorite of the four, Frankenstein being the second.

Another source of reading material, or rather magazine that influenced my early life is embarrassingly something which anyone who has ever stepped into a grocery store within the United States should be familiar with. This infamous publication which I am speaking of is of course, The Weekly World News.

It started when I was around 9 years old. My family and I were on a vacation to our cabin in northern
Minnesota. Part of our ritual and survival would involve a stop at the last grocery store for food and last chance supplies before setting off to the hinterland. I had always been intrigued by the outlandish headlines regarding alien babies, bat-boys and end of the world prophecy which eagerly greeted me each time at the check out counter. It was on this trip my father first purchased for me such a publication.

Although The Weekly World News will always be a cherished part of my childhood, my obsession for them was short-lived, perhaps less than a year, though in actuality I suspect probably longer. 1993 had come and pass with the world still turning. The world did not end as I read it would earlier that year. I had yet to see an alien baby or even a glimpse of a sasquatch. My fascination with The Weekly World News was not that I believed what was being printed but rather the hard time I had believing that people could print such asinine material and pass it off as what I though was suppose to be truth. As a child it was hard for me to even try to comprehend the objective of printing such material, yet at that time I really didn’t understand the concept of money either.

It was the mid 90’s when I first got a Windows computer and within a month I was online. “The information superhighway” people liked to call it at the time. To me, it was more than that. The internet was perhaps the single most influential life changing event for me since birth. The moment I hit the web I was hooked. Such a dramatic impact in my life created an aftershock with ripple effects I can still feel today. The encounter was love at first site (pun intended). I don’t remember where I wandered first, but I remember thinking “this is never going to end”.

Much of the information I thrived for at the time dealt with knowledge in computers and criminal activity with the majority of my reading combining both of the forementioned. Scouring the darkest corners of the internet for the most obscure text files to download, reading The Poor Man’s James Bond, The Anarchist Cookbook, The Hackers Manifesto and Alt 2600 to name a few of the most popular.

A year or so later I came across a site which remains to be one of my favorites today. Such a wealth of information concentrated into a single site proved to be dangerous for many and even fatal for few. The site is Erowid.org, which today is tagged by the headline “Documenting the Complex Relationship Between Humans and Psychoactives”. Erowid.com is a plethora of essays, journals and trip reports documenting first hand accounts from those who dare to explore the outer limits of consciousness and even beyond. It was this site that eventually lead me to some of the psychonaut superstars of psychedelics, entheogens and altered states of consciousness such as Terrence McKenna, Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly, Alex Grey, Daniel Pinchbeck and even Carlos Castaneda.

Just recently I got over a quite fascinating ride in an era of paranoia and delusion. For a while I got really sucked into a subculture filled of conspiracy, aliens and mind control. My first interest in this started in an off topic conversation I had in a restaurant past my curfew late one night in the early 90’s. It was that night a friend of mine talked to me about secret societies and mentioned a book by the now deceased William Cooper entitled “Behold A Pale Horse”. My interest in such themes and fringe topics has varied in interest and intensity over the years. The older I get the more skeptical I become and the less interested I am with the David Ickes of the world. Reading about alternate dimensions, shape-shifting reptile people, underground alien bases and a hollow earth not only shaped and defined a new way of reading for myself but had also adopted another mentality and understanding of humanity.

Over the years I have read much regarding topics such as consciousness, drugs, religion, philosophy and metaphysics. The more I read, the more I want to read. The main problem I seem to encounter time after time is my ability to focus and retain details, to find order in all the chaos of tangents and cross referencing. Much of the material I read today mostly concern philosophy, consciousness, mentalism, linguistics and occult symbolism. I also like to read graphic novels and listen to horror and science fiction books on tape as well. Authors I am currently reading or have read recently include Manly P. Hall, Peter Carroll, William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley, H.P. Lovecraft, William Gibson and Alan Moore. Some of my favorite all time books include “1984” by George Orwell, “The Invisibles” graphic novel by Grant Morrison, “EVASION” by unknown, and “The Secret Teachings of All Ages” by Manly P. Hall.