Born Liars by Ian Leslie

Author:Ian Leslie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc.
Published: 2011-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

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The Chicago cult had two leaders. Dr Thomas Armstrong, a physician who held a senior post at a nearby college, had a long-standing interest in the occult and in flying saucers. He was the group’s spiritual authority. Marion Keech, a housewife, was its prime mover and organiser. In the autumn of 1954, Marion was at home when she received her first message from the spacemen. It came in the form of a high-density vibration that guided the pen in Marion’s shaking hand across the paper in front of her. The news it scrawled out was not good: ‘The uprising of the Atlantic bottom will submerge the land of the Atlantic seaboard; France will sink . . . Russia will become one great sea.’ America would not be spared. Eventually the whole world would be submerged, ‘for the purpose of purifying it of the earthlings, and creating the new order’.

After this first message more followed, in quick succession. The spiritual beings communicating with Marion revealed themselves to be called The Guardians. Their ruler was a God named Sanander. The Guardians gave Marion the exact time and date of humanity’s impending destruction. At midnight on 21 December, only those who believed in Sanander would be saved.

Luckily, Marion knew just who to speak to about this. She had met Dr Armstrong at the local flying saucer club, where local people met to discuss the possibility of alien visitations. As soon as Marion told Dr Armstrong about her message, he understood the gravity of the situation. They agreed to tell the others from the club and to make preparations for the alien landing. Within a week or two they had gathered a group of around thirty believers, including several undercover social scientists.

In the weeks leading up to the flood date, Festinger and his colleagues were impressed by the solidarity and commitment of the group, which only seemed to grow stronger the more they were criticised or ridiculed by outsiders. The members endured fallings-out with family and friends, and threats from their neighbours to have them declared legally insane. Dr Armstrong was fired from his post; his sister filed a motion to take away his two children. One cult member sold her house and moved in with her infant daughter to Mrs Keech’s home. Others quit their jobs and threw away their belongings. What did it matter if the whole world was against them when the whole world was about to be swept away?

Festinger noted that the group didn’t proselytise. Although it issued one press release, announcing the news of the apocalypse, it did surprisingly little to spread the word of The Guardians or to recruit new members. As the day itself approached, dozens of requests for interviews with local newspapers and TV stations were ignored or refused by Marion, and every other member of the group. The researchers later remarked that the group behaved towards the outside world ‘with an almost superior indifference’.

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