A Spy in the House of Ancient Aliens – An Alien Con Travelogue

Friday, October 28,th 2016: On the road to Alien Con… 

We are careening south, down Interstate 5... main artery of the west coast, extending North/South from  Canada to Mexico. The sky is overcast… spackles of rain. The steal yer face scull grins a macabre grin through the back window… sparkling. We cross the Oregon border into the California frontier at dawn. It’s too cloudy to see Mt Shasta as we drive by… but we feel her presence… looming. Agent 87 sits in the front passenger seat, delivering a critique of Tom Waits’ “What’s He Building in There?” …we have a right to know. The question evolves over time and takes on a certain memetic, prophetic quality… “what’s he doing in there?” A premonition… but of what?

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The inaugural Alien Con was held in Santa Clara, California on October 28th through the 30th, 2016. The History channel, A+E Networks, and Cosmic-Con, partnered to create: “the ultimate extraterrestrial experience… the world’s first convention devoted to exploring space and the unknown.” With the commercial success of the Ancient Aliens TV show (currently going into its 11th season) Alien Con booked filmmakers, artists, storytellers, celebrities, and ancient aliens experts to explore the outer limits of science and pop culture… all under one roof. In their words: The truth IS out there, and you can find it this October at the very first convention devoted to fans of HISTORY’s Ancient Aliens, sci-fi buffs, and pop culture enthusiasts alike! 

Given that it was scheduled for Halloween weekend, team Tek-Gnostics (consisting of 87 & myself) deemed the event auspicious and signed on to this fan convention, in the spirit of having a great time, seeking adventure and entertainment, networking, merchandising and presenting my first book in the Tek-Gnostics Trilogy: The Tek-Gnostics Heresies – Tales of Wonder from the Collective Conscious …to a broader audience. Per our synchronous experiences… Samhain would never be the same!

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Later that day: On the road to Alien Con… 

The wait is over. We are closing in on the savage heart of Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Convention Center… and Alien Con 2016. Tech companies line both sides of Great American Parkway. High Tech and palm trees…  At a stop sign, blocks away from the convention center, half a dozen young men in stylish Nehru jackets traverse the crosswalk in front of us. They appear to be Indian, although quite possibly Pakistani… tech gurus from the sub-continent. California’s Silicon Valley exhibits a multicultural, affluent population.

On the road, we had decided to keep a Synchronicity Log to keep track of the significant events of the History Channel’s inaugural fan convention, showcasing their hit cable TV show: Ancient Aliens. All of the heavy lifters from the show were scheduled to be there…  David Childress… show producer Kevin Burns… and of course:  Giorgio A. Tsoukalos. Agent 87 has expressed an explicit interest in speaking with William Henry, as well as Jonathan Young, PhD. As founding curator of the Joseph Campbell Archives, Dr Young brought a scholarly perspective to Ancient Aliens… or so thought 87.

The sync log had already produced some, shall we say, interesting entries by the time we parked our transport and headed into the convention center for vending check-in. 87 had made several entries on the road, as our conversation began to meaningfully meander. The syncs began to intensify, as 87 had initiated one of our main experiments of the Halloween weekend… microdosing. This experiment was significant enough to warrant its own installment in this series… more on this intriguing subject later!

We had signed up for an “Artist’s Alley” table, which proved an excellent choice. Here we were surrounded by other authors, as well as publishing houses and the like. Check-in was uneventful… we pickup up our vendor lanyards and proceeded to our assigned booth. That is when things began to get strange. We had expected to see vendors such as MUFON, Contact in the Desert, Roswell Books and Sedona Orgone Vortex… but were pleasantly amazed by such booths as… Sasquatch Syndicate… UFO Medicine Man… Planet X Vodka… Epic Loot… and perhaps my favorite… Nuthin Good Ever Happens at 4 am.

We were surrounded by a multitude of “vendors of the fringe.” Perhaps it was the approaching of All Hallows Eve… the night when the veil between worlds grows thinnest… perhaps it was a contact high from 87’s micro dose… perhaps it was just… contact. The scene was definitely weird… but as we all know… “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” 

Speaking of pros, the vendor to our right of our booth was Kathy Porter ...author of the Gray Guardians sci fi series. Not familiar with her work, but Kathy and her team were warm and welcoming… good neighbors. Watching Kathy work the crowd was a lesson in promotion. After getting to know 87 and myself a little… after listening to our ravings about tekgnosis… it was Kathy who came to me and suggested… “it’s like you guys are the ‘x-files of consciousness.” She winked as if to say: “no charge for the pitch idea.”

As this was a fan convention, there was no shortage of cosplay characters… plenty of Jedi Knights and Storm Troopers… sexy slave girls from Orion… and some that left you wondering. There were some characters… who were not dressed up. As 87 had remarked… “if you were a bona-fide extra-terrestrial, stationed in California, wouldn’t you come to Alien Con? …perfect cover!”

As Friday evening wore on, and at the risk of using an over-used metaphor… the rabbit hole deepened. The whole scene took on a surreal, psychedelic ambience. As one of the synchromystic community’s favorite heroines, Alice, famously exclaimed: Curiouser & Curiouser! As the strange got stranger and the weird became weirder… Agent 87 and I became incredulous observers… spys, if you will… in the House of Ancient Aliens. It was clear this would be one long, strange trip of a weekend.

In upcoming installments of this series, we will flesh out the week-end long microdosing experiment. Although originally cynical of the concept, having taken a more heroic dosage approach in my youth, the microdose tactic proved to be phenomenal. We will also delve deeper into the mysteries of our sync log… the deeper we went, the rounder we got! One interesting note per the sync log… placing our attention on synchronicities had a cumulative effect on the phenomena. This effect culminated in the infamous Voodoo Papa Legba incident… 

Stay tuned intrepid travelers of the fringe… stay tuned!