Customer Reviews

Labyrinth13: True Tales of the Occult, Crime & Conspiracy

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I had a blast reading through Labyrinth 13, picking and choosing on any given night which spooky or strange phenomena I wanted to immerse myself in. The facts are presented without too much bias or conjecture, allowing the reader to ruminate on all possible explanations behind the mysterious stories. Read at night by candlelight!

For years, I was a true crime buff. I still possess more useless knowledge about some of America's infamous serial killers than I care to admit to. Give me a good "true" ghost story or A&E/ Travel Channel historical haunting feature or reality ghost hunting show and I'm glued to the television for hours. So, when Curt Rowlett approached us with his three books devoted to mysteries, murder, and the occult, I immediately wanted to read all of them!

Labrinth13 is my favorite of the three, and covers the subject matter of the other two books which I will discuss in this review as well. L13 is divided into three sections: Occult, Crime, and Conspiracy. There is an outstanding introduction where Rowlett explains how this book was born out of a website he created by the same name to record his research while preserving his artistic integrity and capturing a reading audience. Rowlett even goes into great detail to explain where the title came from, giving a nice explanation as to the fear behind the infamous number 13 while citing a long list of historical events and information related to 13 including classical composer Arnold Shonberg who suffered from triskaidekaphobia which is a fear of the number 13. And he had a right to be afraid of it. He was born on Friday the 13th, and died on Friday the 13th and 13 minutes before midnight!

Vampire fans will enjoy the first chapter of the Occult section where Rowlett explores the history of Bram Stoker's Dracula and how Stoker might have also been inspired by unknown vampiric history that took place on American soil. This is based on newspaper clippings found in Stoker's papers about a Rhode Island vampire named Mercy Lena Brown who might have inspired Stoker's character named Lucy. Rowlett also covers werewolves in another chapter for those of you who enjoy lycanthropy over vampires.

Rowlett does an excellent job of weaving his research and theory into nice tight chapters that move at a decent pace, definitely keeping the reader interested, and also cause a few chills along the way. Take this opening paragraph as an example, from the story about a strange visitor to Edgar Allan Poe's grave:

For over 50 years since 1949, on the night marking the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birth, a mysterious man-in-black has entered the cemetery where the master of the macabre lies buried, and, making his way through the dark shadows to Poe's grave, he places a partial bottle of expensive French cognac and three blood-red roses there, presumably as tokens of admiration and in tribute to the great author. This ritual completed, he then slips away into the night as quietly and as mysteriously as he came. The identity of this dark stranger -- dubbed "The Poe Toaster" by observers -- has never been revealed.

My favorite chapter in the Occult section is Chapter 8, where Rowlett covers several "uncanny occurrences" in small sections including an odd tale about Mary Shelley and her deceased husband's heart, one about Mark Twain and a Ouija Board, and another coincidence concerning Poe and the unfortunate fate of a literary character and two different real life men all named Richard Parker. Writers will also enjoy the frightening tale about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and one man's "insane" passion for words.

Part 2 of the book, Crime, starts off with an extensive piece about the Zodiac killer, followed by focus on Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, and the Process Church and what role Christianity and Satanism both played in bringing fear to America during the late 70s and early 80s. Rowlett lays out some fascinating research on symbolism and how it also played an important role during this time.

Part 3 of the book, Conspiracy, begins with a bizarre look at how our government might have been involved in mind control and creating programmed assassins. Rowlett focuses on several well known gunman including Sirhan Sirhan, Lee Harvey Oswald (a favorite subject of mine in high school), James Earl Ray, and Mark David Chapman, pointing out their political ties, military background, and literary tastes. Rowlett also points out the odd rise of serial killers in the 1980s may have very well been "a stockpile of sleepers who woke up too early."

Consider that for the most part, serial killers tend to prey on the so-called "undesirables" of society, such as prostitutes, drug addicts, homosexuals, and other targeted minorities of the ultra-right wing. (The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit has stated that as many as 150 serial killers may be operating undetected in the United States). Serial killers, like mind-controlled sleepers, outwardly appear normal to the rest of the world, but also seem to be acting under a programmed obsession to kill, usually in the same way, over and over again, as if trying to fulfill some sort of mission that is echoing around in their heads.

I have to commend Rowlett on his research and attention to detail. The notes, resources, and appendix of this book is well over 100 pages.

Rowlett's book, Riding on Your Fears, is a 67 page essay and more extensive look into the Manson Family and the murders they committed. Rowlett mentions Manson quite a bit in L13 and discusses in great detail the effect Manson might have had on the hippie movement.

Could Manson be considered a true counter-culture revolutionary? Was he a well-intentioned, but ultimately misunderstood guru whose followers took it upon themselves to murder for him? Or was he, as the prosecutor at his murder trial portrayed him, simply a crazed cult leader and career criminal? This book contends that Manson is a varied combination of all of those things.

Through research and interviews, Rowlett points out several mysteries behind Manson, his "family," and the infamous murders he's still known for today.Rowlett also discusses several rumors and urban legends that have followed Manson over the years.

I have to admit I had never heard of Palmyra Island before reading Rowlett's book, The Curse of Palmyra Island. It's a small South Pacific atoll which is shrouded in mystery much like the Bermuda Triangle. It has a long history of strange events, supernatural occurrences, and murder. Much of Rowlett's 72 page essay is featured in L13, but in this book Rowlett also covers the history of the island along with a map and beautiful illustrations.

Rowlett cites a book called And The Sea Will Tell which focuses on a sailing couple, Mac and Muff Graham, who were killed in 1974 on the island by another couple who were inhabiting it. Rowlett was later contacted by and given the chance to interview a lady named Sharon Jordan who actually discovered the remains of Muff Graham washed ashore on the island seven years later. Mac Graham's remains have still not been found to this day.

When I see things like this in the news, or read of a murder in the newspaper, I'm always the one who questions everything and usually suspects the most bizarre and unusual thing to have happened. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Curt Rowlett's work because of my fascination with such stories. He is truly a well versed student and expert of the supernatural and occult.

If you are a fan of such writing, theories, mysteries, and more, then you can visit Curt on the web and read more of his work at [...].

Curt Rowlett is about the only one writing along the lines of the classic Charles Fort to record the events of the odd and unusual. He also takes it beyond that and does his own investigations. His compilation Labyrinth 13 is both a history of odd happenings and an analysis of these events. He offers possible solutions and gives the reader insights into such bizarre and macabre crimes as the Zodiac killings, the Palm Island murders, and the Manson cult.

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a taste of Fort into the 21st century.

Curt Rowlett brings a great deal of welcomed reasoned analysis to subject matter usually told with breathless, sensational hyperbole. Investigations into the usual cast of characters -- the Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, Charles Manson -- are side-by-side with more obscure but equally fascinating uncanniness. This book's strengths are Rowlett's sharp compression of different sources and his own investigatory work and interviews. Even without the breathless hyperbole, there is enough creepiness in this book to make you sleep with the nightlight on.

The chapter on Charles Manson, Son of Sam, and the Process Church is a good example. Rowlett makes clearheaded analyses while poking around at the stories' edges and their wild possibilities. (Who knew that the Son of Sam may have been the sons of Sam?) And Rowlett's not shy from taking on those who make wild claims ("smoke pumpers") for their own reasons.

My favorite chapter is on Palmyra, a bucolic island with a creepy, bloody history. That the murder of a monied boating couple by two scraggly hippies could be as gripping as chapters on the Zodiac Killer and the Manson Family proves that Rowlett knows how to spin a tale while fleshing out what's real, what's possible, and what's been left unexplained.

A fun read and was written and researched well.

I bought this book mainly to read the chapters about the Manson and Son of Sam connections to the Process cult and for the chapter on the Zodiac killer, but found that I also enjoyed the rest of it. (There is one story in particular related to the Manson case about how the hippie image was tarnished by the Manson family crimes and other murders by people on LSD).

Also good chapters about mind control and the death of Kurt Cobain.

This is one of the worst books I've ever read. The only reason I actually read the whole thing was that it was so awful after fifty pages I thought there might be some humor value (not really) and I thought I at least owed it to the author to finish it if I was going to give it a review.

First, The book is badly in need of a real editor. It reads like a poorly maintained blog; full of repitition and bad style. Sometimes the same material is re-presented within just a few paragraphs.

Second, The book is almost entirely content free. Most of the chapters have a very scanty synopsis of the topic followed by a handful of conjectural statements and a bunch of editorial opinion. There is no real research of any of the topics by the author himself, with the possible exception of a few phone calls he made on the topic of Palmyra Island and in the case of the Process Church and its connection to The Son of Sam. Other than that, just verbiage and rumors freely (and often more interestingly) available on the Internet.

Third, the book is badly organized. The material in the Appendices should have been cut by about a half and worked directly into the text itself, but I guess cut-and-paste on Word or Star-Office would've been too much of a hassle; or, he is aiming at an audience whose only exposure to reading is the various World of Warcraft mythologies online and he didn't want to confuse them with too much linearity or detail. (In that case: EPIC FAIL. Those d00ds don't read actual books anyway.)

Fourth, the logic presented is, in a word, missing. I fully understand that in a book about conspiracies one should expect to be smacked in the face repeatedly with connections of the most tenuous kind, but in this putative "work" the author takes the usual inanities to a whole new level. He mocks the author of "The Ultimate Evil" (rightfully so) for the most febrile connections between mass murderers of the sixties and early seventies and the Process Church and then turns around and in the very next chapter proceeds to posit a connection between MKULTRA mind-control experiments and the most famous assassinations of the last fifty years with no real nexus between them other than the fact that they all appear in the same chapter of his lame book.

"Is is possible that Oswald killed Kennedy on a trigger phrase left in his subconscious by mind-control?" Now substitute Sirhan, Chapman, Fromm, Manson, and even Bremer and Hinckley(!) and their victims in the same sentence, repeat it over and over again, and you get a very succinct version of his presentation. This isn't evidence. It isn't even rumor. It's just repeating the same charge over and over with different names and dates. Most laughably, he muses that all this is the work of extreme Right-Wingers. Really? Gerald Ford, George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan were all targets of Right Wing vitriol? Who knew?

Fifth, some of the material presented is simply *wrong*. His chapter on Zodiac relies almost entirely on Robert Graysmith's best-selling book (and, I guess, movie of the same provenance) apparenly blissfully unaware that most of Graysmith's theories have been pretty thoroughly demolished over the last ten years. A DNA test all but exonerated the main target of Graysmith's attacks, for example. He also believes there was some kind of nationwide Satanist scare that swept the country duing the 1980's. That's interesting. Like the author, I lived as an adult through those years, and I really don't remember people being all that worked up over Satanism outside of the 700 Club (or PTL, or whatever it was called back then.) But then again, those folks are always worked up over Satanism, so what the Hell.

In fine and in sum: a thoroughly execrable excuse for a book. My relatives know that I love conspiracy theories so I got it as a Christmas gift. It was, as they say, "the thought that counts."

The sheer collection of interesting tales and their variance makes for a five star publication.One has howling Dogs that are ghosts,and the Zodiac Killer.Darlene Ferrin was one of his victims.Let's keep that name alive anD the names of other vicTims.