The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine

Episode 192
The Shaver Mysteries (Part 1)

In this episode of MonsterTalk, we get a brief overview of the history of Hollow Earth theories and start our deep dive into the topic of The Shaver Mystery with repeat guests Dr. Jerry Drake and Dr. Jeb Card. Weird-Science, lost civilizations, UFOs, and Nazis — this story has more threads than a fancy bedsheet set!

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Some links from the Hollow Earth introduction

• Duane Griffin’s academic research on Hollow Earth history (From archive.org snapshot)
• 1665 — Athanasius Kircher — review of The Subterranean World (Mundus Subterraneus)
• 1692 — Edmond Halley’s paper “An account of the cause of the change of the variation of the magnetical needle with an hypothesis of the structure of the internal parts of the Earth”, Philosophical transac­tions, xvi (1692), 563–87
• 1721 — An Account of a Voyage from the North Pole to the South Pole via the Centre of the Earth (Anonymous French volume)
• 1741 — The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground
• 1818 — John Cleves Symmes issues tract urging exploration of the poles and hollow earth
• 1820 — Symzonia: Voyage of Discovery
• 1826 — James McBride — Symme’s Theory of Concentric Spheres
• 1838 — The Great United States Exploring Expedition
• 1833 — E.A. Poe’s MS Found in a Bottle
• 1864 — Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth
• 1869 — Cyrus “Koresh” Teed starts Koreshanity
• 1871 — (more on this in pt2) Bulwer Lytton’s The Coming Race
• 1888 — Helena Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine
• 1905 — Frederick Oliver’s A Dweller on Two Planets
• 1906 — William Reed’s Phantom of the Poles
• 1909 — Cook & Peary race for the Pole!
• 1913 — Marshall Gardner’s A Journey to the Earth’s Interior, or Have the Poles Really Been Discovered?
• 1914 — Edgar Rice Burroughs At The Earth’s Core
• 1931 — Harvey Spencer Lewis’s Lemuria: The Lost Continent of the Pacific
• 1934 — Guy Ballard’s Unveiled Mysteries

There’s lots more discussed in the episode and in part 2’s show notes. Here are a few more helpful links:

• Dan Loxton’s Junior Skeptic Hollow Earth coverage Part 1 and Part 2 were very helpful.
• Wired magazine’s 2014 Hollow Earth article was also useful for me.
• I haven’t read it, but 2004’s book-length bibliography of Hollow World texts Subterranean Worlds looks both comprehensive and interesting.

Music

• Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys

The views expressed on this program are not necessarily the views of the Skeptics Society or Skeptic magazine.