extraordinary%20encounters

North Pole expedition. Written in an amateurish,
pulpy style, strikingly unlike the erudite
prose found in Byrd’s undisputed published
works, the diary has Byrd and his radio
operator passing over a green landscape and
spotting a “mammoth,” while the temperature
rises to seventy-four degrees. Soon the two
men spot three flying saucers with swastika insignias
(perhaps not coincidentally, Shoush’s
group held that the inner-earthers, a Teutonic
race known as the Arianni, favor the
swastika). The saucers take control of Byrd’s
plane and lead it to a city “pulsating with rainbow
hues of color.” There they meet the Arianni
and engage in conversation with an aged,
wise man known as the Master. The Master
warns that human beings are insufficiently advanced
to be fooling with something as dangerous
as atomic energy. The diary’s last entry,
supposedly written shortly before Byrd’s death
in 1957, says, “I have faithfully kept this matter
secret as directed all these years. It has been
completely against my values of moral right.”
Though unsupported by any evidence, the
s t o ry of By rd’s flight beyond the pole became a
staple of hollow - e a rth literature. As late as
1993, Timothy Green Beckley was asking,
“Was it because of Admiral By rd’s we i rd fli g h t
into an unknown Polar land in 1947 that the
International Geophysical Year was conceive d
in that ye a r, and finally brought to fruition ten
years later, and is actually still going on? Di d
his flight make it suddenly imperative to disc
over the real nature of this planet we live on,
and solve the tremendous mysteries that unexpectedly
confronted us?” (Be c k l e y, 1993).
Dennis G. Crenshaw, editor of The Hollow
Earth Insider Research Report, expresses a view
that is at once skeptical and conspiratorial. He
notes that when the diary quotes some of the
Master’s words, those words bear an unsettling
resemblance to those spoken by the
Dalai Lama of Shangri-La in the classic 1937
film Lost Horizon. He also bluntly charges that
Tawani Shoush and his group forged the
diary. Nonetheless, he sees a sinister hand in
all of this. Byrd’s polar expeditions were in the
service of the “paymasters” of the “Illuminati
Lanello 153
and . . . a New World Order . . . John D.
Rocherfeller [sic] and his pals.” Moreover, Giannini
himself consciously served the conspiracy.
From uncertain evidence, Crenshaw concludes
that Giannini’s family “owned the Bank
of Italy and the Bank of America.” He goes
on, “If, as my research seems to indicate, it is
the One Worlders’ plan to hide what is going
on at the earth’s poles, what better way to
cloud the water, so to speak, than to have one
of their own, an admitted member of an international
banking family, toss in a controversy—such
as this phony trip by Admiral
Byrd—to make hollow earthers appear as
ridiculous[?]” (Crenshaw, 1996).
See Also: Hollow earth; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993. The Smoky God
and Other Inner Earth Mysteries. New Brunswick,
NJ: Inner Light Publications.
Crenshaw, Dennis G., 1996. “The Missing Diary of
Admiral Byrd: Fact or Fiction?” The Hollow Earth
Insider Research Report 4, 1: 8–15.
———, 1997. “Admiral Byrd’s 1939 Antarctic Expedition
and the Mysterious Snow Cruiser.” The
Hollow Earth Insider Research Report 4, 2: 4–16.
A Flight to the Land beyond the North Pole, or Is This
the Missing Secret Diary of Admiral Richard Evelyn
Byrd? n.d. Houston, MO: International Society
for a Complete Earth.
Giannini, Amadeo F., 1959. Worlds beyond the Poles.
New York: Vantage Press.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races, and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Palmer, Ray, 1959. “Saucers from Earth! A Challenge
to Secrecy!” Flying Saucers (December):
8–21.
———, 1960. “Editorial.” Flying Saucers (February):
4, 29–34.
———, 1961. “‘Byrd Did Make North Pole Flight
in Feb., 1947!’—Giannini.” Flying Saucers (February):
4–11.
Lanello
In his most recent incarnation on Eart h ,
Lanello, an Ascended Ma s t e r, was Ma rk L.
Prophet (1918–1973), married to El i z a b e t h
C l a re Prophet of the Church Un i versal and
Triumphant. Since then, as Lanello, he has