The Accidental Conspiracy Theorist

A scene from The Twilight Zone, "The Purple Testament"

   I should have known better than to reference The Twilight Zone in the introduction to my new two-CD audiobook "Premonitions, Visions, Nightmares and Other Unexplained Circumstances." Of course I remembered the episode about a World War II soldier who can look into another soldier's face and tell if that soldier is going to be killed, what could be wrong with mentioning that? YouTube, that's what.

   So I go to YouTube and do my due diligence, typing Twilight Zone and World War II into their search thingie and before you can say Clem Kadiddlehopper I learned not only that I was looking for Episode 19 but that it was titled The Purple Testament.

   Naturally, I thought I'd watch the few minutes of it that were available on YouTube. The first segment I watched was either in Spanish or Portuguese, it was posted by a Brazilian so it was probably the latter, and even though I didn't understand a word, the music was sufficiently creepy to get the show's message across. Then I found pretty much the same footage in English and watched that.

   But was I finished? Nooooo. There was a picture from Episode 19 with the title "Was Kennedy's Death Predicted in Hollywood?" Click. The video begins with a line of text saying that we all know that Sept. 11 was predicted, superimposed over a scene of Homer Simpson looking at a tourist flier that says New York and a big dollar sign followed by the number 9, and just to the right of the number 9 are the twin towers so that it looks like 9 11. What? You have an argument with that? How about a screen shot from a 1993 Mario Bros. game showing smoke rising from the Twin Towers?

   And then the question: Did Hollywood predict the death of John F. Kennedy. The soldier who could see the strange light in the faces of those about to die was named Lieutenant Fitzgerald. John F. Kennedy was a lieutenant in World War II and his middle name was Fitzgerald. Of course the conspiracy theorist who uncovered this misspelled his name as Frizgerald, but we all know that JFK was not John Frizgerald Kennedy, why let a typographical error get in the way of a good conspiracy?

   Needless to say, there are eight minutes and 48 seconds of items like "This soldier's name was Freeman ... Orville Freeman nominated Kennedy for President."

   Oh. Did I mention that the video begins with a photo of a sign painted on a highway overpass that says: "Caution 9' 11" "

   Which brings me to my newest double audio CD, which will be available shortly in my eBay store. Here are some excerpts:

 

Dan Diel

 

 

Lou Putnoky

 

 

Patsy Giacchi