Piece Of Art

The Fayette Factor Who--or more precisely, what--is "the Fayette Factor?" It is probably one of the strangest mysteries in American Forteana, first discovered by researcher William (Bill) Grimstad, back in 1977, and written about in "Fateful Fayette," Fortean Times , No. 25, Spring 1978. Namely, the "Fayette Factor" has been the finding of a surprisingly high incidence of Fortean (inexpliable) events linked to places named after one of the USA's Founding Fathers--the Marquis de Lafayette.  Fayetteville, West Virginia Since Grimstad's discovery , several items on this lexilink between Fayette (as well as its related forms - Lafayette, La Fayette, Fayetteville, Lafayetteville) and high strangeness have been published. In his book,   Weird America   (New York: EP Dutton, 1978), Grimstad mentions several Fayette hot spots but did not dwell on them. In exchanges with Bill, a small group of Forteans discussed the Fayette Factor privately throughout the l...

You may vaguely recall Seven Days in May as a tale of the attempted overthrow of the United States of America. The book has been described as realistic, prophetic, and a  page-turning tale of conspiracy at the highest political levels.  What many have forgotten, in the book and movie, intriguingly, is that the story develops due to a background conflict occurring between Russia and the United States in... Iran . Seven Days in May is an American political thriller written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, who both worked at Cowles Communications, publisher of Look Magazine .   Look Magazine , for those who think such a publication was far from the field of intelligence, spying, and agents, are cautioned to remember what was happening in the 1950s and 1960s. It was the reporters and photographers who would be allowed into the hills of Cuba to take pictures of Fidel Castro or who traveled behind the Iron Curtain to interview Communists. Journalism was a cov...

Films have a strange way to foreshadow events. Or at least, the human mind thinks this may be so. No one knows how or why, but the visual component of having a permanent record of a fictional incident collides across time and space, infrequently, with the reality of an unforgettable disaster, tragedy, or assassination. Raymond Shaw ( Laurence Harvey ) in the sniper's nest. In the case of the death of John F. Kennedy, chroniclers, researchers, and theorists have often pointed to the intriguing timing and plot of one specific motion picture, The Manchurian Candidate . The 1962 film directed by John Frankenheimer, stars  Frank Sinatra (a close friend of JFK), Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury.   The central plot of the film is that the son of a prominent, right-wing political family has been brainwashed to be an unwitting assassin for an international Communist conspiracy.  The Manchurian Candidate  was nationally released on...

The Texas School Book Depository Building was rebuilt in 1902 on the foundation of the Rock Island Plow Company's warehouse. The original five-story building was destroyed by fire in 1901. Located in Dealey Plaza in Dallas (the site of the first Masonic Lodge in Texas), the TSBD was the one time employer of Lee Harvey Oswald, who was the lone person charged with the killing of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.  The original Hertz/Chevrolets sign at the moment of the JFK assassination (12:30 pm), above, was replaced by a Hertz/Fords sign, below, years later. A replica building of this site has been made by InFocus Tech .  For assassination researchers, it is well worth owning. This model is 3-1/4" tall and is finished in antique pewter. It can be obtained in a brick red finish with gold highlights, also. The original signage and time at the moment of the assassination have been preserved on the top of the TSBD. I highly recommend it be acquired by serious investigators. C...

Malcolm Oliver Perry II, 80, the doctor who attended JFK in Dallas has died, reports the Dallas Daily News . As noted in the Paraview Press book, Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed by Charles A. Crenshaw, et al., Perry was one of the doctors who believed the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy had come from the front (not the back, as was the conventional Warren Commission finding). Dr. Malcolm Oliver Perry II, who attended to President John F. Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital after he was shot in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, has died. The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, the teaching hospital for Parkland, said Monday that Perry died Saturday, December 5, 2009, in Tyler, Texas, after a battle with lung cancer. Perry was an assistant professor of surgery at UT Southwestern and a vascular surgeon on the Parkland staff when he became the first staff surgeon to treat Kennedy. In an extensive interview by the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassi...

"I'm just a patsy," uttered by Lee Harvey Oswald, at 7:55 PM Central Time, Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, per reporter Seth Kantor's notes; located at Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XX, page 366 ( 20H366 ). Associated Press writers Michael Hill and Jim Fitzgerald begin to unravel the story behind the "Temple Plot" headlines of the day, when they write: The four men accused of plotting to bomb New York City synagogues and shoot down military airplanes with missiles are down-and-out ex-convicts living on the margins in a faded industrial city. One is a petty criminal who spent a day in 2002 snatching purses and shooting at people with a BB gun from an SUV. His lawyer calls him "intellectually challenged." Three have histories of drug convictions, one of them for selling narcotics in a school zone. The man prosecutors portrayed as the instigator of the scheme said he smoked pot the day he planned to blow up the temples. They went to Wal-Mar...