Richard Sharpe Shaver

From his Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharpe_Shaver

Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 Berwick, Pennsylvania – November 5, 1975 Summit, Arkansas) was an American writer and artist.

Shaver's stories continued to appear in Amazing after Howard Browne replaced Ray Palmer as editor.

Even after his work fell out of favor with Amazing readers, Ray Palmer continued to publish Shaver in other genre magazines.

He achieved notoriety in the years following World War II as the author of controversial stories that were printed in science fiction magazines (primarily Amazing Stories), in which he claimed that he had had personal experience of a sinister, ancient civilization that harbored fantastic technology in caverns under the earth. The controversy stemmed from the claim by Shaver, and his editor and publisher Ray Palmer, that Shaver's writings, while presented in the guise of fiction, were fundamentally true. Shaver's stories were promoted by Ray Palmer as "The Shaver Mystery".

During the last decades of his life, Shaver devoted himself to "rock books"—stones that he believed had been created by the advanced ancient races and embedded with legible pictures and texts. He produced paintings based on the rock images and photographed the rock books extensively, as well as writing about them. Posthumously, Shaver has gained a reputation as an artist and his paintings and photos have been exhibited in Los Angeles, New York and elsewhere.

Biography

Shaver claimed to have worked in a factory where, in 1932, odd things began to occur. As Bruce Lanier Wright notes, Shaver "began to notice that one of the welding guns on his job site, 'by some freak of its coil's field atunements', was allowing him to hear the thoughts of the men working around him. More frighteningly, he then received the telepathic record of a torture session conducted by malign entities in caverns deep within the earth". According to Michael Barkun, Shaver offered inconsistent accounts of how he first learned of the hidden cavern world, but that the assembly line story was the "most common version".[1] Shaver said he then quit his job, and became a hobo for a while.

Barkun writes that "Shaver was hospitalized briefly for psychiatric problems in 1934, but there does not appear to have been a clear diagnosis".[2] Barkun notes that afterwards, Shaver's whereabouts and actions cannot be reliably traced until the early 1940s. In 1971, Ray Palmer reported that "Shaver had spent eight years not in the Cavern World, but in a mental institution".[3][4]

The Shaver Mystery

During 1943, Shaver wrote a letter to Amazing Stories magazine. He claimed to have discovered an ancient language he called "Mantong", a sort of Proto-Human language that was the source of all Earthly languages. In Mantong, each sound had a hidden meaning, and by applying this formula to any word in any language, one could decode a secret meaning to any word, name or phrase. Editor Ray Palmer applied the Mantong formula to several words, and said he realized Shaver was onto something.

According to Palmer (in his autobiography The Secret World), Palmer wrote back to Shaver, asking how he had learned of Mantong. Shaver responded with an approximately 10,000-word document entitled "A Warning to Future Man". Shaver wrote of extremely advanced prehistoric races who had built cavern cities inside the Earth before abandoning Earth for another planet due to damaging radiation from the Sun. Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human "Teros", while most degenerated over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as "Deros"—short for "detrimental robots". Shaver's "robots" were not mechanical constructs, but were robot-like due to their savage behavior.

These Deros still lived in the cave cities, according to Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture. With the sophisticated "ray" machinery that the great ancient races had left behind, they spied on people and projected tormenting thoughts and voices into our minds (reminiscent of schizophrenia's "influencing machines" such as the Air loom). Deros could be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor "accidental" injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Women especially were singled out for brutal treatment, including rape, and Mike Dash notes that "[s]ado-masochism was one of the prominent themes of Shaver's writings".[5] Though generally confined to their caves, Shaver claimed that the Deros sometimes traveled with spaceships or rockets, and had dealings with equally evil extraterrestrial beings. Shaver claimed to possess first-hand knowledge of the Deros and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years.

Palmer edited and rewrote the manuscript, increasing the total word count to a novella length of 31,000. Palmer insisted that he did not alter the main elements of Shaver's story, but that he only added an exciting plot so the story would not read "like a dull recitation".[1] Retitled "I Remember Lemuria!"; it was published in the March 1945 issue of Amazing.[6] The issue sold out, and generated quite a response: between 1945 and 1949, many letters arrived attesting to the truth of Shaver's claims (tens of thousands of letters, according to Palmer). The correspondents claimed that they, too, had heard strange voices or encountered denizens of the Hollow Earth. One of the letters to Amazing Stories was from a woman who claimed to have gone into a deep subbasement of a Paris, France building via a secret elevator. After months of rape and other torture, the woman was freed by a benevolent Tero.[7] Another letter claiming involvement with Deros came from Fred Crisman, later to gain notoriety for his role in the Maury Island Incident and the John F. Kennedy Assassination. "Shaver Mystery Club" societies were created in several cities. The controversy gained some notice in the mainstream press at the time, including a mention in a 1951 issue of Life magazine.

Palmer claimed that Amazing Stories magazine had a great increase of circulation because of the Shaver Mystery, and the magazine emphasized the Shaver Mystery for several years. Barkun notes that, by any measure, the Shaver Mystery was successful in increasing sales of Amazing Stories. There was disagreement as to the precise increase in circulation, but Barkun notes that reliable sources reflect an increase in monthly circulation from about 135,000 to 185,000.[1]

From 1945 to 1948, Barkun notes that about 75% of the issues of Amazing Stories featured Shaver Mystery content: sometimes to the near-exclusion of any other topic. Historian Mike Dash declares that "Shaver's tales were amongst the wildest ever spun, even in the pages of the pulp science fiction magazines of the period".[5] He also published in Other Worlds magazine; the first issue featured his story "The Fall of Lemuria".

Many science fiction fans felt compelled to condemn the Shaver Mystery as "the Shaver Hoax". These fans, already distressed by Palmer's shift away from the literary or hard science fiction of earlier years to often slapdash space opera, organized letter-writing campaigns to try to persuade the publishers of Amazing Stories to cease all Shaver Mystery articles. In fact, Palmer printed a number of critical or skeptical letters sent to Amazing Stories, and he and other contributors occasionally rebutted or replied to such letters in print. As Bruce Lanier Wright notes, "[t]he young Harlan Ellison, later a famously abrasive writer, allegedly badgered [Palmer] into admitting that the Shaver Mystery was a 'publicity grabber'; when the story came out, Palmer angrily responded that this was hardly the same thing as calling it a hoax".[3] Dash writes that the "critics of the 'Shaver Mystery' were quick to point out that its author was suffering from several of the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, and that many of the letters pouring into Amazing recounting personal experiences that backed up the author's stories patently came from the sorts of people who would otherwise spend their time claiming that they were being persecuted by invisible voices or their neighbor's dog".[5]

During 1948, Amazing Stories ceased all publication of Shaver's stories. Palmer would later claim the magazine was pressured by sinister outside forces to make the change: science fiction fans would credit their boycott and letter-writing campaigns for the change. The magazine's owners said later that the Shaver Mystery had simply run its course and sales were decreasing.

The Shaver Mystery Clubs had surprising longevity: representatives of a club discussed the Shaver Mystery on John Nebel's popular radio show several times through the late 1950s. Nebel said he thought the discussion was entertaining, but in extant recordings he was also skeptical about the entire subject.

Even after the pulp magazines lost popularity, Palmer continued promoting the Shaver Mystery to a diminishing audience via the periodical The Hidden World. Lanier describes the magazine as "Shaver in the raw" with little of Palmer's editing. Shaver and his wife produced the Shaver Mystery Magazine irregularly for some years.

[More within the Wikipedia article]

Footnotes:

• 1. Barkun, 116
• 2. Barkun, 115
• 3. Wright Fear Down Below
• 4. Ackerman. World of Science Fiction. p. 117. Forrest J Ackerman states that it was "the late '70s" when Palmer revealed Shaver had been treated for paranoid schizophrenia in a mental hospital.
• 5. Dash, 229

--

Additional details on his early life by Fate Magazine writer Richard Toronto:

From War over Lemuria: Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer and the Strangest Chapter of 1940s Science Fiction

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.asp...

Richard Sharpe Shaver (1907–1975)

Richard Sharpe Shaver was an American writer and “outsider” artist best known for his controversial stories known collectively as “the Shaver Mystery,” which were presented as nonfiction in science fiction magazines, most notably Amazing Stories. These stories, in which Shaver claimed to have discovered an ancient, sinister civilization in underground caves, led to Shaver Mystery Clubs and influenced many artists and writers, including Harlan Ellison and Phillip K. Dick. Shaver died in the Arkansas town of Summit (Marion County), where he had moved in the mid-1960s.

Richard Shaver was born on October 7, 1907, in Virginia, but his family moved to Berwick, Pennsylvania, sometime before 1910. Little is reliably known about Shaver’s early life. According to Shaver, in 1932, while working on an assembly line at a factory, he developed telepathic abilities that gave him insight into “malign entities in caverns deep within the earth.” According to author Michael Barkun, Shaver gave inconsistent accounts of how he first learned of the hidden cavern world, but the assembly line story was the “most common version.” Shaver said he then quit his job and became a hobo for a period. In 1934, according to Barkun, “Shaver was hospitalized briefly for psychiatric problems…but there does not appear to have been a clear diagnosis.”

In 1943, Shaver wrote to the editors of Amazing Stories, claiming to have discovered an ancient Proto-World language he called Mantong. When one editor threw away Shaver’s letter, Ray Palmer retrieved it and contacted Shaver. Shaver claimed that in Mantong, which was the source of all earthly language, each sound had a hidden meaning, and, by applying a formula to any word in any language, one could decode a secret meaning from any word, name, or phrase.

Over the course of their correspondence, Shaver described a race of aliens who had populated caves within the Earth before fleeing the planet, though not without leaving behind two groups of offspring—one, the “Teros,” a benevolent humanoid group, and the other, “Deros,” or “detrimental robots,” a sadistic group that tortured and ate humans. Women, especially, were treated brutally by the Deros. (Shaver claimed to have been held prisoner by the Deros for several years, though Palmer later stated that, in fact, Shaver had been in a mental institution.) These alien races were explained in detail in a 10,000-word document titled “A Warning to Future Man,” which Palmer edited and rewrote, cutting much of the sadomasochistic content toward women, though he claimed that he remained true to Shaver’s vision. Palmer re-titled the now 31,000-word manuscript “I Remember Lemuria!” and published it in the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories.

The issue sold out. Palmer claimed to have received thousands of letters in response from people who claimed to have experienced similar things. According to Barkun, circulation of the magazine increased from about 135,000 to 185,000. “Shaver Mystery Club” societies were created in several cities. The controversy gained some notice in the mainstream press at the time, including a mention in a 1951 issue of Life magazine.

For the next few years, much of the content of Amazing Stories was related to the Shaver Mystery, though many science fiction fans disapproved, even organizing letter-writing campaigns in protest. Palmer printed a number of critical or skeptical letters sent to him, and he and other contributors occasionally rebutted or replied to such letters in print. Bruce Lanier Wright notes, “The young Harlan Ellison, later a famously abrasive writer, allegedly badgered [Palmer] into admitting that the Shaver Mystery was a ‘publicity grabber’; when the story came out, Palmer angrily responded that this was hardly the same thing as calling it a hoax.” Critics of the “Shaver Mystery” were quick to point out that its author was suffering from several of the classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

In 1948, Amazing Stories discontinued publishing Shaver’s stories due to decreased sales. Palmer continued publishing Shaver’s work in The Hidden World, and Shaver and his wife produced the Shaver Mystery Magazine irregularly for some years.

Shaver moved to Summit, Arkansas, in the mid-1960s with his wife, Dottie. During the 1960s and 1970s, now living in obscurity, Shaver claimed to have discovered physical evidence of the aliens in certain “rock books” embedded with pictures and texts. He wrote about, photographed, and made paintings of the images he found in these “rock books” for years, going so far as to create a lending library through the mail, sending to the borrower a slice of polished agate with a detailed description of what writings, drawings, and photographs were archived inside the stone.

Shaver never succeeded in generating much attention for his later findings, but, in the years since his death in 1975, there have been exhibits of Shaver’s art and photographs at the California Institute of the Arts, the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Gallery of Chapman University in Orange County, California. Shaver’s art has also been exhibited in art galleries in New York City and in a traveling exhibition of “outsider photography” called “Create and Be Recognized” that originated at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, California, in 2004. Shaver died on November 5, 1975. He is buried in Layton Cemetery in Yellville (Marion County).

For additional information: Ackerman, Forrest J. Forrest J. Ackerman’s World of Science Fiction. Los Angeles: R. R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1997.

Barkun, Michael. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Dash, Mike. Borderlands: The Ultimate Exploration of the Unknown. New York: The Overlook Press, 2000.

Tucker, Brian. “Shaver Declared a Master Surrealist!” http://www.softcom.net/users/falconkam/tuckershow.html (accessed March 19, 2010).

Wright, Bruce Lanier. “Fear Down Below: The Curious History of the Shaver Mystery.” http://www.softcom.net/users/falconkam/feardownbelow.html (accessed March 19, 2010).

C. L. Bledsoe

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1152

   Author: Richard S. Shaver Author Record # 1152

   Legal Name: Shaver, Richard Sharpe

   Birthplace: Berwick, Pennsylvania, USA

   Birthdate: 8 October 1907

   Deathdate: 5 November 1975

   Language: English

   Webpages: research.borderlands.com, SFE3, Wikipedia-EN

   Used These Alternate Names: Wes Amherst, Edwin Benson, Alexander Blade, Peter Dexter, Richard Dorot, The Red Dwarf, Richard English, G. H. Irwin, Paul Lohrman, Frank Patton, Stan Raycraft, D. Richard Sharpe, Richard Shaver, Gerald Vance

   Author Tags: archive.org (4), action-adventure (1), hollow earth (1), heroic fantasy (1), occult (1), lost world (1) 

Showing all translations. Registered users can choose which translations are shown. Other views: Awards Alphabetical Chronological

Fiction Series

   Ben Uniaty

       The Masked World (1946) also appeared as:

           Serializations:

           The Masked World (Complete Novel) (1946) 

       Earth Slaves to Space (1946) [SF] 

   Big Jim Steele

       Cult of the Witch Queen (1946) with Bob McKenna also appeared as:

           Serializations:

           Cult of the Witch Queen (Complete Novel) (1946) 

       The Sea People (1946) [SF]

       Gods of Venus (1948) only appeared as:

           Translation: Zauberbann der Venus [German] (1973) 

           Serializations:

           Gods of Venus (Complete Novel) (1948) 

       Titan's Daughter (Complete Novel) (1948) [SERIAL] also appeared as:

           Translation: Titans Tochter [German] (1975) 

   Mutan Mion

       "I Remember Lemuria!" (1945) [SF] also appeared as:

           Variant: "I Remember Lemuria!" (1945) [as by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer]

           Variant: I Remember Lemuria (1945) 

       Invasion of the Micro-Men (1946) [SF]

       The Return of Sathanas (1946) [SF] [also as by Richard S. Shaver and Bob McKenna]

       The Land of Kui (1946) [SF]

       We Dance for the Dom (1950) [SF]

       Beyond the Barrier (1953) only appeared as:

           Serializations:

           Beyond the Barrier (Part 1 of 4) (1952)

           Beyond the Barrier (Part 2 of 4) (1952)

           Beyond the Barrier (Part 3 of 4) (1953)

           Beyond the Barrier (Part 4 of 4) (1953) 

   The Shaver Mystery Collections

       1 The Shaver Mystery, Book One (2011) [C]

       2 The Shaver Mystery, Book Two (2011) [C]

       3 The Shaver Mystery, Book Three (2012) [C]

       4 The Shaver Mystery, Book Four (2013) [C]

       5 The Shaver Mystery, Book Five (2014) [C]

       6 The Shaver Mystery, Book Six (2015) [C] 

Novels

   The Sun-Smiths (1952) only appeared as:

       Serializations:

       The Sun-Smiths (Part 1 of 3) (1952)

       The Sun-Smiths (Part 2 of 3) (1952)

       The Sun-Smiths (Part 3 of 3) (1952) 

Collections

   I Remember Lemuria, and the Return of Sathanas (1948)

   The Sea People / Witch's Daughter (2012) 

Anthologies

   Ice City of the Gorgon / When the World Tottered (2011) with Chester S. Geier and Lester del Rey 

Chapbooks

   Titans Tochter [German] (1975)

   I Remember Lemuria (2007)

   The Return of Sathanas (2007)

   Of Stegner's Folly (2010)

   The Dark Goddess (2010)

   The Plotters (2010) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   Daughter of the Night (2010) 

Short Fiction Series

   Frank Farar

       Lair of the Grimalkin (1948) [only as by G. H. Irwin]

       Where No Foot Walks (1949) [only as by G. H. Irwin]

       Glass Woman of Venus (1951) [only as by G. H. Irwin] 

   Red Dwarf (Shaver)

       1 Daughter of the Night (1948)

       2 Erdis Cliff (1949) 

Short Fiction

   Return of a Demon (1943) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   Thought Records of Lemuria (1945)

   Cave City of Hel (1945)

   Quest of Brail (1945)

   An Adam from the Sixth (1946)

   Luder Valley (1946)

   The Tale of the Last Man (1946)

   Death Seems So Final (1947) [also as by Alexander Blade]

   First Rocket (1947) [only as by D. Richard Sharpe]

   The Tale of the Red Dwarf Who Writes With His Tail (1947) [only as by The Red Dwarf]

   The Vanishing Spaceman (1947) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   The Mind Rovers (1947)

   Joe Dannon, Pioneer (1947)

   The Princess and Her Pig (1947)

   The Crystalline Sarcophagus (1947)

   Formula from the Underworld (1947)

   The Red Legion (1947)

   Witch's Daughter (1947)

   Zigor Mephisto's Collection of Mentalia (1947)

   Mer-Witch of Ether "18" (1947)

   Witch of the Andes (1947)

   Of Gods and Goats (1947)

   Flesh Against Spirit (1948) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   The Monster from Mars (1948) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   The Plotters (1948) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   "Slaves of the Worm" (1948)

   The Thin Woman (1948)

   Ice City of the Gorgon (1948) with Chester S. Geier

   The Valley of Madness (1948) [also as by Alexander Blade]

   Mirrors of the Queen (1948)

   Fountain of Change (1948) with Chester S. Geier

   Dynasty of the Devil (1949) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   Pillars of Delight (1949) [only as by Stan Raycraft]

   Prometheus' Daughter (1949) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   The Jinx (1949) [only as by Alexander Blade]

   When the Moon Bounced (1949) [only as by Frank Patton]

   The Cyclopeans (1949)

   Exiles of the Elfmounds (1949)

   Battle in Eternity (1949) with Chester S. Geier

   The Fall of Lemuria (1949)

   The Devil in a Box (1950) [only as by Gerald Vance]

   The World of the Lost (1950) [only as by Paul Lohrman]

   Sons of the Serpent (1950) [only as by Wes Amherst]

   Lady (1950)

   Marai's Wife (1950) [only as by Edwin Benson]

   The Gamin (1950) [only as by Peter Dexter]

   Palace of Darkness (1950) [only as by Peter Dexter]

   Green Man's Grief (1951)

   Journey to Nowhere (1951)

   Lightning Over Saturn (1951) with Chester S. Geier

   Yelisen (1951)

   Of Stegner's Folly (1952)

   The Scarpein of Delta Sira (1952) [only as by G. H. Irwin]

   The Dark Goddess (1953)

   Paradise Planet (1953)

   The Heart of the Game (1953) [only as by Richard English]

   She Was Sitting in the Dark (1953) [only as by Richard Dorot]

   Why Skeets Malloy Has Two Heads (1954) [only as by Richard Shaver]

   The Shaver Mystery: No. 2: The Rescue of Atlantis and Lemuria by the Flying Saucers (1956) with Raymond A. Palmer only appeared as:

       Variant: The Shaver Mystery No. 2: The Rescue of Atlantis and Lemuria by the Flying Saucers (1956) [as by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer] 

   The Dream Makers (1958)

   A Taste of Heaven (1961)

   A Witch in the Night (1961)

   Disaster and Escape (1961)

   Flight into Futility (1961)

   I Enter the Caves (1961)

   The Living Library (1961)

   The Tormenting Voices (1961) 

Essays

   Mantong, the Language of Lemuria (1945) with Raymond A. Palmer

   Open Letter to the World (1945)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, August 1946) (1946)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, May 1947) (1947)

   Proofs (1947)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, August 1947) (1947)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, October 1947) (1947)

   Foreword (I Remember Lemuria, and the Return of Sathanas) (1948)

   Medieval Illicit (1948)

   Shaver on Inertia (1948)

   If We Get a Chance! (1948)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, November 1948) (1948)

   The Cyclops (1949)

   The People Who Make Other Worlds No. 4: Richard S.Shaver (1952)

   How I Discovered the Caves (1955)

   The Shaver Mystery: I Contacted an Unknown Race (1955)

   The Shaver Mystery No. 3: Why Do We Die? (1956) with Raymond A. Palmer [only as by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer]

   The Secret Caves of the Dero (1956)

   The Flying Saucers (1956)

   Historical Aspect of the Saucers (1957)

   The Key to Mantong—The Ancient Language (Shaver Mystery Issue) (1958) with Joel Kos also appeared as:

       Variant: The Key to Mantong (1958) 

   The Shaver Mystery—A Defense (Shaver Mystery Issue) (1958) also appeared as:

       Variant: The Shaver Mystery - A Defense (1958) 

   A Dictionary of the Manthong Language (1961)

   The Ancient Alphabet (1961) with Raymond A. Palmer [only as by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer]

   Why the Caves Are Secret (1961)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, November 1971) (1971)

   Letter (Amazing Stories, September 1972) (1972)

   The Shaver Papers (1974)