Wooooooooooo! This one gets pretty fucked up! Lots of bad stuff in this one! Occult murders, far right ultra-nationalist mysticism, spirit possession cases, roving tumors (yeah I said it!), "schools" for "spiritually gifted"/"psychic" children, future America's roadmap to theocratic terror! It's all in here!

Email us: kooksandcranks@gmail.com

The Japanese Imperial March on Nanking in 1937: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cufG2Dlxvk

If you are dealing with mental health and/or substance abuse issues, please dial 988.

SOURCES (part 1...I probably won't have enough room to post all the sources so I'm just gonna do the best I can):

- “Occultism and Empire” by Hideo Suzuki

- National Diet Library Reports on “New Religions” (1940, declassified 1978)

- *The Occult in Imperial Japan* by M. Sugimoto (Kyoto Press, 1991)

- Translated excerpts from *Asahi Shimbun* newspaper (1912–1941)

- Internal notes from Japanese Imperial Home Ministry on spiritualist surveillance (via National Diet Library)

Primary Legal and Police Documents (Japanese Archives)

These are often stored in regional police history volumes or court reports:

Kyoto District Court Records (1916) – Case No. 明治45年(刑)第211号

Sexual abuse trial of self-proclaimed “Buddhist healer” using "aetheric alignment."

Held in Prefectural Archive Annex – Kyoto.

Tokyo Prefectural Police Report (1912): Raid on “House of Light”

Metropolitan Police Bureau internal memo (警視庁内部報) dated June 1912.

Refers to "Hikari no Ie" (House of Light) fraud exposure and material seizures.

Nagoya Police Bureau Case File (1921) – Trance Murder Case (大正10年)

Cited in Nagoya Shinbun, March 3–7, 1921.

Interview excerpts with surviving cult members.

Osaka Juvenile Affairs Unit Memo (1933) – Missing Child Following Séance

Memo recovered in 1991 during restructuring of Osaka PD archives.

Associated Case Code: 昭和8年(少)第17号.

Newspaper and Periodical Sources

Accessible in national microfilm archives or Meiji/Taishō-era digital collections:

Asahi Shinbun (Tokyo), May–July 1922

Coverage of the “trance-induced investment scam” by a self-proclaimed magnetist.

Yomiuri Shinbun (Nagoya), March 1921

Séance killing involving attempted possession by Amaterasu.

Public trial of sect leader in April.

Mainichi Shinbun (Osaka), June–August 1933

Ongoing reports about the child disappearance tied to spiritist group.

Investigative journalism hints at a larger child relocation ring.

Academic and Ethnographic Works

Mostly Japanese-language, with some English-language citations:

Helen Hardacre – Shinto and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton, 1989)

References suppression of folk shamanic groups and "special schools."

Itō Takeshi – Religious Deviance and the Japanese State (1981, in Japanese)

Discusses early state efforts to contain cult activity in Meiji and Taishō periods.

Murakami Shigeyoshi – The Spiritualist Schools and Militarism in Prewar Japan (1977)

Touches on psychic child “grooming” and Imperial Army cooperation.

Sakurai Tokutarō – Spiritual Healing and the Decline of Imperial Morality (1934)

A critical text written before WWII censored by the Home Ministry.

Modern Compilations and Retrospectives

These offer historical summaries based on recovered documents or oral histories:

Hayashi, Noriko – “Possession and Murder in the Countryside: Rural Spirit Cults in Taishō Japan” in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2004).

Kobayashi Masaru – Hidden History of the Black Ocean Societies, 2003

Claims links between spiritist children’s schools and nationalist cults.

Okano Tomoko – Spiritist Crimes of the Empire: Child Mediums and State Secrets, 2010

Based on interviews with descendants and recovered police testimonies.

Yomiuri Shinbun, Sept 11–14, 1934: “Asakusa Lens Sect Under Fire”

Wooooooooooo! This was a biggy! Just look at this list of...

SOURCES:

Wikipedia – History of Spiritism in Brazil

Wisdom Library

Encyclopedia.com – “Kardecism”

Britannica – “Spiritism”

Academic dissertations archived at Brazilian university repositories

Publications in Portuguese such as Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Religião

Investigative journalism archives (e.g., Folha de S.Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo from the 1970s–1990s)

Wikipedia – Lead Masks Case

Substack

arXiv

The Skeptic

YouTube

Quest Journals

Portuguese academic studies and dissertations (e.g., on “religião Nova Era no Brasil”)

Fieldwork published in journals like Nova Religão or Horizonte, and Egyptological-inspired sect surveys.

Spirit Tech Blueprints / Channeled Designs

Often appear in esoteric magazines and newsletters from Brazilian UFO/new age circles in the ’70s–’90s

OAPEN Library

Spiritizmas Lietuvoje

Skeptoid Podcast #398 – The Lead Masks Mystery

WordPress – “The Lead Masks Case” by pmig96

Medium – Curiosity Chronicles & The Salty Order

Reddit r/Weird – discussion on Lead Masks

RationalWiki – analysis of Lead Masks case

This is the FIRST in an intermittent series of travels through worldwide weirdness where true crime and occult beliefs intersect and unfortunately...some mofos get got. It's a tale as old as time...beauty and the beast. I'm gonna go stare through the windows of a "Fogo De Chao" and hope someone takes pity on me.

Email us!: kooksandcranks@gmail.com

*Go to liqure.com and use the promo code "ICON" for 20% off your entire purchase!

*Go to shimmerwood.com and use the promo code "ICON" for 30% off your entire purchase!

If you are dealing with mental health and/or substance abuse issues, please dial 988.

Featuring a teeny, tiny snippet of "Ave Lucifer" by Os Mutantes!

This is part 2 of The BSRF, in which I cover the Riley Crabb years where things definitely escalate. That and we'll also look at government infiltration of UFO groups, as well as the still present contamination through these groups of potentially dangerous ideologies!

Email us! kooksandcranks@gmail.com

Featuring music from: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il2ys5hsQSw⁠

*Got to liqure.com and use the promo code "ICON" for 20% off your entire purchase!

*Go to shimmerwood.com and use the promo code "ICON" for 30% off your entire purchase!

Sources are listed at the end of this episode but a few I neglected to mention are:

*⁠https://www.youtube.com/@WeirdReadswithEmilyLouise⁠

*⁠https://borderlandsciences.org/project/etheria/mimeo/A%20Matter%20of%20Urgent%20and%20Critical%20Importance.pdf⁠

*⁠https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO/UFO%20Part%2001⁠

*⁠https://medium.com/%40richgel99/early-contactees-and-ufologists-millen-cooke-gerald-light-and-meade-layne-1ee70154f31a⁠

*⁠https://unidentifiedphenomena.com/topics/a-memorandum-of-importance/?utm_source=chatgpt.com⁠

*⁠https://hatch.kookscience.com/wiki/Memorandum_6751⁠

(this last one actually has quite a bit on the BSRF, worth checking out)

If you are struggling with mental health and/or substance abuse issues, please dial 988.