close, died. His brother’s death affected Shaver very badly and he became increasingly depressed and paranoid, claiming that people were following him. However, as Childress notes, (45) as a known communist, Shaver may well have been genuinely under surveillance.
Shaver received another blow when his wife Sophie died in a mysterious accident in her apartment (they were living separately at the time). While Shaver returned to his welding job, their daughter went to live with Sophie’s parents (who apparently told her that her father, too, was dead). (46) For the next few years, Shaver travelled around North America, finding the odd job here and there and marrying again. The marriage was short- lived, his wife leaving him when she found papers indicating that he had been in a sanitarium. Shaver moved back to Pennsylvania and married for a third time.
In 1936, he came across an article in Science World magazine. Entitled ‘The True Basis of Today’s Alphabet’ and written by a man named Albert F. Yeager, the article claimed that there were six letters in our alphabet that represented concepts in addition to sounds. These six letters could thus be used as a key to unlock the hidden meanings in words. In response to this article, Shaver wrote to Science World, claiming that he understood the hidden concepts behind all the letters of the alphabet. He called this conceptual language ‘Mantong’.
After several years of work with the Mantong language, Shaver wrote the following letter to Amazing Stones in September 1943:
Sirs:
Am sending this in hopes you will insert it in an issue to keep it from dying with me. It would arouse a lot of discussion. Am sending you the language so that some time you can have it looked at by someone in the college or a friend who is a student of antique times. The language seems to me to be definite proof of the Atlantean legend.
A great number of our English words have come down intact as romantic — ro man tic — ‘science of man life patterning by control.’ Trocadero — t ro see a dero — ‘good one see a bad one’ — applied now to theatre. This is perhaps the only copy of this language in existence and it represents my work over a long period of years. It is an immensely important find, suggesting the god legends have a base in some wiser race than modern man; but to understand it takes a good head as it contains multi-thoughts like many puns on the same subject. It is too deep for ordinary man — who thinks it is a mistake. A little study reveals ancient words in English occurring many times. It should be saved and placed in wise hands. I can’t, will you? It really has an immense significance, and will perhaps put me right in your thoughts again if you will really understand this.
I need a little encouragement.
— R.S. Shaver, Barto, Pennsylvania (47)
Enclosed with this letter was the Roman alphabet together with its associated Mantong concepts, which Childress reprints in his excellent book Lost Continents and the Hollow Earth:
A — Animal (used AN for short)
B — Be (to exist — often command)
C — See
D — (also used DE) Disintegrant energy; Detrimental (most important symbol in language)
E — Energy (an all concept, including motion)
F — Fecund (use FE as in female — fecund man)
G — Generate (used GEN)
H — Human (some doubt on this one)
I — Self; Ego (same as our I)
J — (see G) (same as generate)
K — Kinetic (force of motion)
L–Life
M — Man
N — Child; Spore; Seed
O — Orifice (a source concept)
P — Power
Q — Quest (as question)
R — (used as AR) Horror (symbol of dangerous quantity of dis force in the object)
S — (SIS) (an important symbol of the sun)
T — (used as TE) (the most important symbol; origin of the cross symbol) Integration; Force of growth (the intake of T is cause of gravity; the force is T; tic meant science of growth; remains as credit word)
U-You
V–Vital (used as VI) (the stuff Mesmer calls animal magnetism; sex appeal)
W — Will
X–Conflict (crossed force lines)
Y — Why
Z — Zero (a quantity of energy of T neutralized by an equal quantity of D) (48)
By applying these strange hidden meanings behind the letters of the alphabet, one can perceive even stranger hidden meanings behind various words. Childress supplies a number of examples, but we need only detain ourselves with a couple. The word BAD, for instance, can be interpreted as ‘Be a de’, to be a destructive force. LADY is interpreted as ‘Lay de’, a complimentary term meaning to allay depression. The reader will note that in both of these examples, the letter D (DE) is used, meaning unpleasant, destructive and detrimental. The letters D and T were of great importance to Shaver, as we shall see shortly.
At this point, it is worth noting a peculiar similarity between Shaver’s strange interpretation of the alphabet and the spurious power and significance perceived by Rudolf John Gorsleben, the Edda Society and Karl-Maria Wiligut in the runes of Norse mythology (see Chapters One and Six). In each case, a hidden history of humanity was to be discovered by careful examination of the components of written language — with the aid, that is, of an overheated imagination. It must be added, however, that in Shaver’s case the result was harmless, if somewhat lurid entertainment; while the historical and linguistic fantasising of the Edda Society and its members became one of the motivators of racial hatred.
Shaver’s letter landed on the desk of Amazing’s, associate editor Howard Browne. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he threw it into his waste basket as soon as he had finished reading it, dismissing Shaver as a crackpot. (49) Palmer, however, was intrigued and decided to publish both the letter and the accompanying alphabet in the December 1943 issue of Amazing Stones. Alongside Shaver’s material was a caption that read: ‘We present this interesting letter concerning an ancient language with no comment, except to say that we applied the letter-meaning to the individual letters of many old root words and proper names and got an amazing “sense” out of them. Perhaps if readers interested were to apply his formula to more of these root words, we will [sic] be able to discover if the formula applies …’ (50)
Palmer proved more perspicacious than his colleague Howard Browne: the December issue prompted hundreds of people to write in claiming that the Mantong alphabet really did release the hidden meanings of words. Encouraged by this response, Palmer wrote to Shaver asking for more information on the Mantong language and how his understanding of it had developed. Shaver responded by sending a 10,000-word manuscript evocatively entitled ‘A Warning to Future Man’. Palmer felt that this was the circulation-booster he had been looking for: the article detailed the hidden history of the Earth, complete with ancient spacefaring civilisations, lost continents, sex, violence and high adventure. Shaver’s writing style, however, was not as impressive as his subject matter, and Palmer decided to rewrite ‘A Warning to Future Man’, turning it into a 31,000-word story which he retitled ‘I Remember Lemuria!’ and published in the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stones. (51)
In this story and the many others that followed it (all of which were billed as true), Shaver painted a terrifying picture of a world honeycombed with vast caverns and tunnel systems containing enormous cities and advanced technology. Shaver’s awareness of this world had begun while he was a welder in Highland Park in 1932. He realised that one of the welding guns was somehow allowing him to read the thoughts of his fellow workers in the factory. As if this were not bizarre enough, he also began to pick up the thoughts of evil creatures living far
