All this talk of Michael Jackson’s possible involvement in secret plots has really got my head spinning. Besides my post on the subject, you should also run over and read Jeremy’s as well. I thought I’d keep the ball rolling since we’re in a very weird direction, and it could only potentially get weirder from here. And everybody likes a freakshow, after all - that’s why Michael Jackson is still tolerated at all anymore in our culture in the first place.

So without further ado, let’s talk about the folklore tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Thanks to Garrett for reminding me of this. Here’s a short but sweet re-telling of it so you can acquaint yourself with the basic characteristics of the story.

In 1284, the town of Hamelin is suffering from a terrible plague of rats. The town council tries everything to get rid of them — without success. At last, the Mayor promises 1000 florins to the one who can put an end to the plague.

A stranger dressed in bright red and yellow clothes shows up and says he can rid Hamelin of the rats. At night, the stranger starts to play a soft tune on a flute, luring all the rats out of the houses and barns towards the river Weser, where they drown.

The Mayor refuses to pay the piper: “Playing a tune on a flute is not worth 1000 florins. Get out of Hamelin!”

But the piper returns on a Sunday morning, when all the grown-ups are at church. Again he starts to play a tune on his flute. This time, all the children follow him, as he walks out of the gate to the mountains. Suddenly, a cave opens in the mountain. The piper walks into the mountain, still followed by the children, and the cave closes again.

The children were never seen again in Hamelin.

I never knew this, but apparently this story has counterparts in other parts of Europe as well. For example, a town on the Isle of Wight was said to have been completely overrun by the French. Local lore says the reason is that there were no young people left to defend it. Seems a few years prior, they had their very own run in with the Pied Piper.

The Pied Piper. On the Isle of Wight! Was he I wonder the same man who featured in the German legend? Was he the same man who was supposed to have appeared in Hamlyn in 1284. It would be interesting to find out whether he had a German accent. But, alas, folk lore remains silent on this point.

The story, except for a few minor details is pretty much the same, and ends thus:

The Piper picked up his pipe once more and an unearthly trill warbled through the air. He started to walk out of town, and the Newtown children scurried after him. Over the bridge they tripped and into the woods beyond. Neither children nor piper were seen again.

This legend may point to a variety of things. It may be just a simple folktale - although it seems to have a distinct message. You have the established authorities who get themselves into a jam, with wild nature threatening to overrun their village. And then a mysterious almost pagan stranger comes in with a magical solution. Much like Orpheus and his lyre, the Pied Piper seems to have a mystical connection with nature - “soothing the savage beast.” The story seems to suggest a blatant disrespect for the pagan/shamanic tradition of which the Piper is a part. The authorities try to double cross this mystical figure over a simple financial transaction for which he delivered - and the town is punished horribly for its mistake.

However, sometimes stories which pass into legend begin with roots in history. In his book, A World Lit Only By Fire, author William Manchester asserts:

The Pied Piper of Hamelin . . . was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about him. Quite the opposite; he was horrible, a psychopath and pederast who, on June 24, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the Saxon village of Hammel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, the victims were never seen again; others told of disembodied little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the branches of trees

An investigation into this story by The Straight Dope is unable to fully corroborate this story historically. Rigorous Intuition, however, recently posted about an eerily similar historical event surrounding the 15th century Gilles De Rais, a French nobleman. There’s also an excellent run-down on De Rais at Court TV’s Crime Library. For our purposes though, the following summation should suffice:

History tells us that Gilles hid a dark and sinister side for many years, during which he kidnapped, tortured and murdered hundreds of peasant children (mostly young boys) while working with alchemists who used black magic in their attempts to turn base metal into gold.

At this point, you may be scratching your head, asking: What does a fifteenth-century French nobleman have to do with Michael Jackson? Well, the point I’m trying to establish is that myths and legends may have a seed of factuality to them. And through the ages, there are many many myths and even historical accounts which relate to the abduction and potentially the abuse of children. Michael Jackson, as you may recall is actually quite obsessed with another tale regarding the mystical abduction of children. Not only did he name his ranch “Neverland”, but he literally thinks he’s Peter Pan. In his interview with Martin Bashir, he’s quoted as saying:

JACKSON: Peter Pan to me– you know, he represents youth– never growing up– magic–

BASHIR: You don’t want to grow up.

JACKSON: No. I am Peter Pan.

BASHIR: No you’re not. You’re Michael Jackson.

JACKSON: I’m Peter Pan in my heart.

One other weird quote on this interview can be found at a Yahoo News article:

At one point, Jackson lets Bashir in on what he calls a “big secret” — a tree overlooking a fountain Jackson calls his “Giving Tree.” He says he wrote the songs “Heal the World,” “Black or White” and “Childhood” while nestled in its branches.

“I think it’s my favorite thing,” Jackson tells Bashir. “Having water balloon fights and climbing trees — I think that those two are my favorite.”

[On a side note: I once heard - I think it was on the radio show “Love Lines” - they were talking about molestation victims. How when they get older, you can often quickly spot them because even as adults they talk in a sort of unnatural child-like voice. Essentially because some aspect of their psychological development gets frozen or fixed at whatever point their abuse occured…]

Retellings of the Peter Pan story often focus on this aspect of “not wanting to grow up” but seem to casually brush over the fact that Pan’s whole modus operandi was to come in and whisk children away to a magical land. Pan’s author, J.M. Barrie was well-acquainted with the Scottish folklore traditions of fairies who did exactly this same thing (see Fantastic Planet for more info).

That article from the Straight Dope also has an excellent quote about how the Pied Piper story often has a similar element to the “Neverland” of Peter Pan:

Some say that the children were just taken to a nearby cave and never seen again. In other versions, the cave is actually a tunnel leading to Transylvania. The most popular versions have the piper taking the kids into a mountainside from which they are taken to a land where they will be happy away from the cruel adults for the rest of their lives. Some versions add a little lame boy who is denied entrance because of his disability. The Disney version magically cures the little lame boy and the children are transported to a magical wonderland full of merry-go-rounds and candy and gumdrops and other things that don’t promote good dental hygiene.

Eerie tunnels and the mention of Disney bring us full-circle back to some comments left by a reader named “N.M.” on my post yesterday about Jackson & Mind Control. N.M. writes that Disneyland may be one of the hubs of modern day ritual abuse and mind-control programming of children:

Disneyland is where they have huge gatherings of this type because the kids get to mix up all of the fun activites they do during the day, with the cold and dark ones they go through in the night.

Also provided is a link to a site which connects Disney to the Illuminati agenda. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, much of it highly speculative in nature. I’d have to track down sources for this stuff before I’d be willing to vouch for it, but here goes nothing:

According to CIA informants opposed to the NWO, CIA contractors were brought in to build the underground tunnels under Disneyworld in 1977. These contractors were sworn to secrecy, but were only informed on a need to know basis why the CIA was involved with an amusement park. To work on the secret tunnel project took an “Above Top Secret” clearance. A major programming center was constructed under Lake Holden. […] The tunnel system was built for programming trauma-based total mind-controlled slaves. It was built of concrete with steel reinforcement. […]

In spite of Draconian measures of secrecy, numerous lawsuits (Fed. & State) were filed over the years by victims trying to expose the Disneyworld programming tunnels, so that finally the programming center was dismantled, cleaned up and a “maintenance” tunnel level and a “casting” tunnel level were opened to the public. During its heyday, the programmers (military & intelligence men) had exotic offices underground with unusual programming equipment.

Again, this is all highly speculative (and quite possibly not on the mark), but the implication seems to be that an organized system of abduction, abuse and programming MAY be in place. N.M. also suggests that members of the Mickey Mouse Club - Mousketeers - are victims of long-term trauma-based mind control in the style of the CIA’s top secret MK ULTRA project. Over several years, these child stars are moulded and conditioned for later use in cultural propaganda. Besides Britney Spears, examples are said to include:

[…] Justin Timberlake and Joshua “JC” Chasez, who would go on to become two-fifths of the teen pinup band ‘NSync. Other talented alumni to emerge from the cast are Keri Russell of Felicity, singer Christina Aguilera, Nita Booth, and Ryan Gosling

(This all certainly gives a wild new level of meaning to Bitscape’s Mickey-Mouse based celebrity tarot card. It also makes me wonder about who the modern-day equivalent may be to the “rats” in the Pied Piper story.)

The further suggestion is made by N.M. that more or less the entire Jackson clan (the kids anyway) were subjected to similar torture and programming throughout their lives. I don’t, of course, have any way to prove this, but it’s a very tantalizing suggestion. I think the reason this story is so tantalizing is that we already as a culture sort of suspect that famous people have to “sell their souls” in order to get famous in the first place. If there were some occult/criminal cabal controlling access to the gates of media success and fame, then perhaps this popular fantasy would have some teeth.

I’ve been speculating that Michael Jackson is still involved with such covert operations, and maybe went sort of haywire - so they’ve tried to reel him back in line by trying to publicly ruin him. In essence, taking away the success which they originally granted him. But Jackson’s success was beyond their expectations, and despite weird behavior and rumors, love for him has never gone away. I mean, his early music really is still absolutely amazing even today.

Another reader, Crasspastor, also brings up an interesting point:

Jackson’s popularity was probably, second to none, most expressed in the children of 1982 who now find themselves 28 to 38. Thriller may have shot up the *adult* charts as per radio play 23 years ago, but its influence is still prodigiously felt in that generation’s psyche — a generation I might add which largely refuses to grow up. I may be thirty for instance, but I don’t feel a year over 15. I’ve been talking to friends about just this. None of us can figure out why we don’t feel like adults yet.

Also, none of us truly believes Jackson is guilty. Even though he is a “freak” we all admit this is not damning evidence.

I find this idea rather striking - especially in light of the legend of the Pied Piper. Here’s a mystical figure who is brought in to solve a problem, only to be double-crossed by authorities. In turn, the musical genius betrays the establishment and walks away with an entire generation of children. The question, of course, becomes: where has he lead us? Is it to another land away from the cruel adults? Is it a cave where we all disappear? A tunnel leading to Transylvania - or even to Disneyland? And is the fate which awaits us in Neverland a paradisical one or something much much worse?