I have an avid interest in cyphers and codes stretching back to my childhood. I guess it started when a teacher in our school read us, 8 year old second graders, a story about how Lenin tricked intelligence agents from “okhranka” (tsarist secret service). Yep, this was a story from Russian language textbooks for the 2 grade. I know it sounds insane and weird, but we had many stories in our books about Great patriotic war, communist revolution and Lenin: how he liked kids, or made a friend with illiterate bricklayer, who didn’t know whom he spoke to, etc. It was in the beginning of 80’s in the Soviet Union, and school education was a part of global brainwashing program, I believe. I have no regrets though, as we had great time at school, education was free and very good and that stories in the textbooks were interesting.Back to the cyphers. That story about Lenin and okhranka agents contained some references to the simple way of coding, by book, and the way to do so. Apparently if you use milk instead of ink for writing, nobody can see what there’s something written. To see the message you should hold the page above heat for a while, and transparent lines will become visible. So while in prison Lenin could communicate in this way: he’d shape some bread as ink-pot, pour milk in there and write with it; after he’d finish he’d eat his “inkpot” (milkpot?) and “ink” left; having a nice meal of milk and bread. Secret agents never could catch him; moreover, in such a manner he wrote a couple of books in between lines of some French novels he was allowed to read.I loved this story. Soon I started to research and develop cyphers and ways of communication with my friends, our neighbours kids myself. To omit details, I even took a course on structural linguistics/cracking cyphers at university later. It was very exciting indeed, and I was happy to learn from one of the students of prof. Yuri Knorozov, who amongst other things decyphered Mayan script and later on his life “located” mythical place of origin of Meso-American people, known as Chichomoztoc, which is slightly out of scope of this post, though a very fascinating subject. So I’ll put a picture here, but won’t tell you why at this point:
The seven caves of Chicomoztoc, from Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca.
Continue reading ‘Zodiac killer code: mapping the way to Sirius’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
It was around December of 1993, I was four at the time and the mall in my town was packed. My mother, doing some last minute shopping suddenly found a bin. Not just any bin. But a bin filled with movies. Christmas movies! And they were priced at a dollar each. Well, my mother just couldn’t resist. She blindly grabbed a couple and bought them. It was a snowy night. The fire was lit and the Christmas tree was by the window. The pile of videos my mom had just bought were at the table. My sister and me picked a movie that looked appealing, it was called SANTA CLAUS.
So mother popped it in. It wasn’t until it started playing that I noticed what looked like Satan in the background of the video jacket. What our family (except my father, who hated children’s films) saw was indeed shocking. The movie’s condition was terrible, like some strange 8mm film that had been hidden in a damp cellar. I remember it being the first dubbed movie I had ever seen, and to this day, the worst. I remember how frightening and un- jolly the Santa Claus was. I didn’t understand why there were so many kids in his workshop, I always thought they were elves. And why wasn’t he at the North Pole? I mean, floating castles? Come on! I remember how the little red devil man scared shit out of me and over time, became a frequent visitor of my nightmares! But the one scene I can most clearly remember is the scene where Santa brings this little boy into a weird laboratory with a glass window, and this little boy wishes for parents. Then these awful foil boxes appear and this man and woman rise up in a zombie-like fashion. It scared the crap out of me and still thinking about it gives me chills. I remember being shocked at how religious the movie was. From an impressionable child who’d been watching Disney Films and THE WIZARD OF OZ in an obsessive state had never heard the word “Jesus”, “Hell”, or “Satan” in a film made for children. And the brief images of hell in the movie etched a Catholic idea of it in my head for years until my ideas on religion eventually changed. Till I was at least 6, I had seen the film at least 3 times and each time watching it in complete and utter terror.
Continue reading ‘Evil Santa’
Other posts by grogan
This is a memory of my travel to Africa. We travelled in a group across all the continent. Finally we arrived to a place called Maun near the Okavango delta, which is a superb wildlife area. Around half our group signed up for an excursion by plane into the delta, but I said I would just hire a canoe for the day, and go paddling around.
The problem with paddling around African rivers are hippos. Most
Americans have a pretty benevolent image of a hippo, shaped by Saturday
morning cartoons, but hippos kill more people in Africa than any other
large animal (malaria-carrying mosquitos are the deadliest animal of all,
of course). Hippos are not carnivorous, but they are easily scared, and
an attacking hippo can easily take apart a small boat. In fact, just
last week another tourist at the same campsite had gotten too close to a
hippo, which then attacked and seriously injured him.
But, I was assured, this tourist had been foolish. He had seen the
hippo from a distance, and had tried to paddle in very close to get a
good photo. The manager assured me that if I just avoided any hippo I saw,
the chances were that the hippo would leave me alone. Of course, if I
happened to get too close to a hippo that was submerged and thus could not
be seen … well … crossing the road is dangerous too, isn’t it?
Continue reading ‘Memory of escaping a hippo in Botswana’
Other posts by bartok fiend
I want to share an old dream I had. The dream goes like this:
It was snow, and I was at the Zoo. The animals there were very agitated and the zookeepers couldn’t keep things under control. The problem was of escaped snakes. I was near the zookeepers and they needed help to capture the snakes, which were actualy dark green cobras, I offered to help them capturing the snake. While I was near the snakes, they weren’t aggresive at all, they were very calm and friendly. So I wanted to touch them. When I touched the snakes they agreed that I can capture them. The zookeepers didn’t know how I did that, but they were impressed and thankfull, as I collected them all.
The dream continues when I’m in the city and it’s still snowing, and strange looking people looking like some tribal people, heavily armed and looking like mercenaries were sitting by bonfire. They saw me, and decided to capture me to use me as a weapon. I remember wondering in the dream: why me? what do I have? what weapon? who are these people? … Looking at my body better, I observed a long red cobra snake coiling around my back, at my spine. It’s head was near my right ear. It looked also like it knew me for a very long time and always protected me. In the dream when I met the snake, I had the felling like ” At last we meet again ” or ” Long time no see! “, which was very peacefully and joyfull. It was like I met an old friend or ally again. Then I realised those people wanted the red cobra and not me. The snake gave me a very charmful stare at me and said in my mind ” Don’t worry, they can’t get me “. The ground started to crumble, hurting the mercenaries. The snake and I escaped.
The third and the last part of the dream comes in. We are in the elevator. Suddently a huge dog jumped out of nowhere and attacked us. The dog looked like a massive pincher, without skin and with red eyes, like a hellhound. I was very scared, but the snake bit the dog. The dog shrunk in size, growling of pain and dissapeared.
The ending was also strange. I was looking with the snake, and I noticed a big scar this snake had on it’s right part of the head. The snake told me: “Don’t worry, we’ll meet again”, and was gone. My dream ended.
What is interesting about this dream is the scar that the snake had. It was exactly like I have on my chest. I had a rough accident when I was a kid deforming my chest bones. The snake had the same scar as me, but on it’s head. I still have the scar today, only less observable, and my spine bones hurt sometimes.
I asked many people about this strange dream. Some people said that the snake in the dream called Kundalini snake, some said it was my guardian spirit. Kundalini snake, or guardian spirit, or just a fruit of my imagination… I just wanted to share my dream, though any interpretations are welcome. I have never seen this snake since then, but wonder what is it if we will meet as it promised in my dream.
Cheers to all.
Seung-Hyun Park
Other posts by Seung-Hyun Park
