Has the great world-mind of the telecommunication infrastructure begun to breed its own myths? The elusiveness of the Incunabula's original proponents, Emory Cranston (a pseudonym) and Joseph Matheny (his real name), has spawned wild speculation that the Ong's Hat legend is nothing but a media hoax. However there is a dark side to this story that has never been fully told, which may help explain their circumspection.

What began as an heretical Islamic sect founded in the early 1900s by Black circus magician, Noble Drew Ali, evolved over the century into a techno-tantric commune whose members managed to escape this befouled world into a pristine, Edenic parallel universe, a New Jersey Pine Barrens devoid of inhabitants.

While Montauk's Phoenix Project employed an assortment of deranged dorks (Aryanist, pedophile, woman-hating, military/intelligence operatives along with their totally uncool ET allies), the Ong's Hat posse embraced a colorful array of maverick misfits (Black Muslims, Sufi drug dealers, bikers, lesbians, computer hackers and chaos math whizzes).

This latter rag-tag group built the "Egg" - a glistening Faberge-like device that enabled trans-dimensional travel into unpopulated mirror worlds (per the Everett-Wheeler-Graham model). A special quantum-tantric feature allowed passage for two occupants while they made love, irrespective of their race, age or gender. This feature says a lot about the tantric ideology of the Ong's Hat group versus that of Montauk. Take your pick: free love in hyperspace or the infernally dark scenarios described by Phoenix survivors, who testify that the specific 'race frequencies' of eight year old, blond, Aryan Montauk Boys, psychotronically zapped into pre-orgastic arousal for hours on end were required for the creation of Nazi 'time tunnels'. Yuck! The Ong's Hat crew is more fun!

I am personally aware of two separate first-hand narratives of how the New Jersey Pine Barrens commune was stormed in the mid-1970s or 1980s (depending on the sources) by a Delta Force team from nearby Fort Dix. These shock troops reportedly descended from ropes off helicopters, toting flame-throwers and automatic weaponry. In a precursor to the Branch Davidian massacre, the Ong's Hat commune was burned down to the ground. As many as seven cult members were killed. It never made the papers. The two sources that have relayed these accounts to me are as intensely cagey about discussing the whereabouts of any survivors (whether in this universe or in an alternate), as they are about describing the particulars of the Egg's technology.

A recent offshoot hacker organization called the Neo-Travelers Front for a New Ong's Hat (NTF-NOH) uses the battle cry, "Avenge the Ong's Hat Seven!" Evidently, the commune's survivors still maintain a loose organization dedicated to research but they no longer have a centralized base of operations--all the better to avoid further massacres. Unfortunately, certain 'shadow-government' organizations apparently have the capabilities to streak across alternate dimensions in pursuit of the happy commune members.

But wait, there's more! Add to this mix a benevolent race of humanoids descended from Javanese lemurs on a parallel Earth, capable of dimensional shift without machinery, who have been world tripping for thousands of years. You've got your chaos; sex magick; applied quantum physics; shadow conspiracy; crypto-palaeontology and enlightenment hopes all wrapped up in one neat package. What the Hell more do you want?