Sleep Has No Master by Jon Konrath

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: Sleep Has No Master

Author:  Jon Konrath

Type of Book:  Fiction, themed short story collection, lunacy

Why Do I Consider This Book Odd:  I don’t even know how to tell you all the ways this book is odd.  I am mostly reminded of this Hunter S. Thompson quote:

Weird heroes and mold-breaking champions exist as living proof to those who need it that the tyranny of ‘the rat race’ is not yet final.

Availability:  Published by Paragraph Line Books in 2012, you can get a copy here:

Comments:  This book gave me the fear.  Like I was going to go full Gonzo-paranoid and end up locking myself in the backyard shed with a gallon of whiskey and a loaded gun.  As I read parts of the book, I thought, “I wrote this.  I wrote this book and I forgot and Konrath sent it to me in some passive aggressive ruse in order to show me he has access to my thoughts and computer and probably even my medicine cabinet.”  I read the title chapter out loud to Mr. Oddbooks, who peered at me nervously from his side of the bed, no doubt wondering if I had had (another) psychotic break (there was a… problem when I read a particular Zippy the Pinhead cartoon that referenced the Oscar Meyer Wiener-mobile, but that was years ago).

A quick summary of the book is likely in order:  this is a short story collection that tells the tales of a dude who does stuff, sometimes alone, sometimes with his loser friends.   Through these dudes, Konrath hits on too many details of my life for this book to be legal.  Some of the topics that include details far too specific for my comfort: insomnia, unlikely car customizations, Varg Vikernes, specific conspiracy theories, a complete inability to use eye drops as a child, over-the-counter sleep aids, corpulent Asians friends, microsleep, the bizarre belief that one’s eyelashes are inverting back into one’s eyelid (mine grow sideways, toward my nose, and it’s a problem), spending most of one’s work days searching eBay listings, self-torture via medical sites, Crispin Glover, gg allin, disgust for how badly movies tended to represent computer capabilities in the 80s, the Voynich Manuscript, fear of what diet sodas may be doing to my brain, and so much more.  This book is, when I can tamp down the paranoia, deeply funny, verging on hilarious at times, but the paranoia lurks because who really could have so many weird idiosyncrasies in common unless something nefarious is happening?

The story “Sleep Has No Master” contains a paragraph that pretty much confirmed for me that Konrath needs to go to jail, the fucker, because I know I wrote this at some point:

I started researching sleep disorders online, the usual death spiral of fanatical WebMD queries, and stumbled upon something called fatal familial insomnia.  It’s an incredibly rare four-stage inherited prion disease that starts with progressively-worsening insomnia and panic attacks.  Then you dive into a wonderful world of Nixon-esque paranoia and vivid hallucinations.  By the third stage, you cannot sleep at all, and your body starts breaking down with rapid weight loss.  It all leads up to a crippling dementia, before you finally buy the farm.  Barbiturates and induced comas, which you’d think would knock you out, actually speed up the disease.  In one famous case, the doctors completely nuked the patient with heavy sedatives, but his brain would not shut down.  This is the exact kind of thing you don’t want to read at 3 AM when you’ve been awake for 40 hours straight and you’re trying  to find some homeopathic bullshit to turn off your brain for the evening.

Seriously, I am rethinking the microwave brain readers that Gloria Naylor insisted were used to read her thoughts.  You know how when your cats freak out and run frantically into the other room, only to stop immediately and then stare, wild-eyed at the wall?  I think that’s when Konrath is warming up the brain-microwave.  

The Franklin Cover-Up by John W. DeCamp

This post originally appeared on I Read Odd Books

Book: The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska

Author: John W. DeCamp

Type of Book: Non-fiction, conspiracy theory, Satanic Panic, politics

Why I Consider This Book Odd: Okay, this is circuitous, but this book came across my radar in the following manner: When Jeff Gannon, porn star and male escort cum White House reporter/Bush apologist was outed, I was interested in finding out how such a man got high clearance press credentials. A web search on his name turned up a website devoted to a kidnapped child from Nebraska. Evidently, there are those who think Jeff Gannon is Johnny Gosch, whose mother Noreen maintains that after he was kidnapped in 1982, he was forced into child porn and prostitution (and no matter what, this is not going to be a discussion on poor Noreen – just don’t do it, okay?). The case of Johnny Gosch is as fascinating as it is sad, and on a conspiracy site, I found a thread accusing Hunter S. Thompson of being linked to the Gosch kidnapping because a “reputable” source said he filmed kiddie porn snuff films. The reputable source was this book. Yeah… When a book has you yelling, “Oh my god!” before you even read it, it’s gonna be odd.

Availability: This book was updated and is still in print. You can get a copy here:

Comments: Hoo boy. This is some excellent conspiracy theory, in that it is amazingly insane and involved. On one level, I actually believe about 1/8th of this book. The rest is just so whacked and beyond the realm of reason but with just enough grains of truth here and there that you can’t help but get sucked in.

First, let’s eliminate the whole Hunter S. Thompson thing. There were two sentences in the book that referred to Hunter Thompson as someone who filmed kiddie snuff porn. The person making the accusation is a man who evidently suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder (or Multiple Personality Disorder as it was called when this book was initially written). I have no idea what DeCamp really knows of Thompson, but he calls him a “well known sleaze-culture figure,” whatever that means. It does not appear as if Thompson was ever visually identified by Paul Bonacci, the man making the claim, and no greater research went into proving it. (ETA: A commenter below pointed out that it was Anton Chaitkin who called HST a “wellknown sleeze-culture figure. I re-read and sure enough, I had misattributed the quote.)  Evidently another young woman claimed Thompson tried to make her watch a snuff film but she didn’t watch whatever she claims he wanted her to see.  Was it the horror film Snuff?  Was it Cannibal Holocaust, which some still believe qualifies as a snuff film because of the live animal deaths included in it?  Was she making it up, did she misunderstand?  We don’t know.  All we have is an unverified statement from some woman and two lines in this book attributed to a young man whose origins no one has been able to trace and whose lies/fantasies have fueled a bizarre conspiracy theory.

This book was initially released in 1992. Had anyone any evidence that Thompson filmed children being killed during sex, he would have been investigated thoroughly. Thompson was a man who showed no proclivities towards abuse of children or respect of authority to the extent he would have kept quiet about such a horrific thing out of fear of what would happen to him.  Thompson was a thorn in the side of the government and authority in general – had he been involved in something so vile police would have been only too glad to investigate, as glad as he would have been to expose anyone who killed children on film. That all that seems to be out there to support this claim are the two lines from this book and some unclear claim from someone else sort of closes the case. But if that is not enough, bear in mind that Bonacci claims Thompson filmed kiddie snuff porn in the 1980s. Thompson already had a very successful career as a journalist and an author then. He didn’t need the money, had it been a part of an investigation into political corruption he would have reported on it gleefully, if not paranoiacally, and given his nature, had he been in the wrong place at the wrong time, he would have blown a whistle long before he took his own life.

So let there be no more said on this topic. Anyone who wants to discuss it here can, but I won’t reply. On your head be it if you decide to smear the name of a man whose career completely belied any association with such deviance without any proof other than hearsay from a fragile man who makes all sorts of extraordinary claims because one suspects he may be too mentally ill not to make such claims.

Back to the book… This book has it all, for the seasoned conspiratologist. It has Satanic Panic, with cabals of Satanists killing children, burning their bodies and grinding up their bones and teeth. It has a ring of pedophiles all the way up to the White House, flying out kids from Nebraska for sexual purposes. It makes reference to militias, Oklahoma City, the Montana Seven, the Monarch Project, Bohemian Grove, the Gosch kidnapping (but no Jeff Gannon, alas – perhaps DeCamp will issue a new edition?), the utter shittiness of Bob Kerrey (a subject on which I whole-heartedly agree with the author, because I can easily see a man who lied about being a war criminal for so many years lying about all the other things DeCamp claims), Iran-Contra, LaRouche, a conspiracy to murder witnesses and more and more.

Honestly, there is too much to go into even for my verbose nature.

But on the most basic level, there is a kernel that can be believed in this book, though like I said, 7/8 of it, if not more, should be dismissed. The Franklin Credit Union in Omaha was run by a man named Larry King (no, not that Larry King), who embezzled approximately $40 million and undoubtedly molested children. The credit union was probably involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. Though no real trace seems to have been done on the money he stole, it would appear most of that money embezzled went into parties, stretch limos and access to private planes. King probably did have the sex parties described in the book, though I think the truth of the situation probably ended at flying some of the older kids to other locations to have sex with King. I can see that happening, though most of the other stories are implausible.

Not all the kids were in complicit foster homes or kids of the street – didn’t the orphanages or parents notice when the kids, some youngsters, went missing for days on end as they were carted from one locale to the other for sex. Additionally, some of the things that the chief witnesses described could have caused grave harm and certainly permanent scars or physical damage. There is no mention of a physical examination given to any of the witnesses. Moreover, one of the witnesses claims she gave birth to a police chief’s child. A paternity demand to this day could prove her side of the story, and since she is serving years and years of jail time for perjury, that this step has not been taken is baffling. (ETA: Alisha Owen’s child has been definitively proven not to be the result of any sort of sexual activity between Alisha Owen and police chief Robert Wadman.  That is a huge problem for anyone who wants to believe Owen’s tales of institutionalized and systemic child rape condoned and committed by Omaha police.)

You have to keep in mind that DeCamp, while clearly holding some wacky beliefs, also fell down the rabbit hole in the 1980s when Michelle Remembers was still believed to be factual and not even psychologists knew how to question genuinely abused children without leading them to say all sorts of things that never happened in order to please the questioner. He is a true believer, and as such, dismisses lack of evidence as law enforcement involvement in the conspiracy, a media reticence as a form of institutionalized stonewalling (as if the media would really turn away a chance to score a scoop on a salacious story if there was any truth to it), and any evidence that disproves the Panic is a complicit act to encourage abuse of children. I don’t know exactly how men like DeCamp fall down the rabbit hole, and though they ultimately do more harm than good, I understand how it happens. So while I find DeCamp a little icky in other respects, his intent belief in the unbelievable does not surprise me.

Nor was it a surprise to find the unpleasant, sticky presence of Ted Gunderson, former FBI agent, in this book. The man believes in Satanic Panic to this day, but he also believes all kinds of bizarre things, as I will discuss in a moment.  He is either a loon or crazy like a fox and either way, he is dangerous. He is also lawsuit happy, suing people whom he thinks slander him, including people who have clear screws loose and should be pitied rather than sued. (Google Ted Gunderson and the name Barbara Hartwell and just marvel at the sadness of it all.) I can say without any hesitation that his investigative presence in the Johnny Gosch kidnapping (and sadly, as most believe, murder) has kept the vulnerable Noreen Gosch in a realm where she will believe anything as long as it means her son is alive. It has made her prey to con men and people who torment her. I dream of seeing Gunderson in a whacked-theory cage match with someone – I just can’t think of whom I would inflict Ted on. Art Bell has already won an out of court settlement against him for calling him a child molester so it will have to be someone else (and since it was an out of court settlement with a gag order, there are no firm facts and all the information out there comes from sources that I would rather not link to, lest I become overrun with avid true believers from the whole rainbow spectrum of conspiracy, and if you think I’m verbose…). Gunderson to this day believes the McMartin preschool molestation/Satanic ritual abuse case happened and has been a force behind sending innocent people to prison.  He is wicked, nasty and preys on the unstable and it’s not entirely logical for me to say that I automatically believe the opposite of anything he has to say, but that’s actually close to the truth.