Lovecraftian Hyperdimensional Nazis...

It's been a busy week and not looking like I'm going to be posting anything substantial by the end of it, so just a quick rumination for now: as I write this, I'm in the middle of re-watching UFOs: The Secret Evidence (currently playing on the UK TV channel More 4) presented by Nick Cook, and based on his 2002 book The Hunt for Zero Point. Cook's thesis - premised in part on the work of Polish UFO researcher Igor Witowski (who appears in the documentary) effectively resurrects what has been called by Jocelyn Godwin, Nicholas Goodrich Clarke and other's 'The Nazi Survival Myth'. Cook's claim is that many modern UFO siightings might be the consequence of 'black project' technology derived from anti-gravity research supposedly developed by Nazi scientists towards the end of World War II, ultimately making its way into the hands of the US military via the infamous Project Paperclip.

Of interest to my ongoing research into what I'm coming to call 'the Lovecraftian Paranormal' is how Cook's claims link with the work of conspiracy theorist Joseph Farrell and his notion of 'Hyperdimensional Nazis'. Without going into too much detail here, the work of Farrell, Cook and Witowski form an interwoven thread of contemporary conspiracy theory which takes as its focus the speculated existence of 'The Nazi Bell': a device which Farrell refers to as 'gateway' technology in the sense that it was supposedly developed as a means of exploring A) the utility of torsion physics in a number of fields ('free' energy, weaponisation, etc.), and B) the relation of said physics to a very Lovecraftian sounding 'hyperdimensional geometry'. Also of interest are Farrell's connection with Richard Hoagland, another conspiracy theorist well know for championing the idea that ancient alien artefacts (many of which are also claimed as demonstrating hyperdimensional geometric properties) exist on the Moon, Mars, Phobos, etc.

Needless to say, Hoagland advocates a variant of the ancient astronaut hypothesis inadvertantly popularised by Lovecraft's work, whilst the Nazi occultism/survival myth finds some of its earliest roots in Morning of the Magicians by Pauwels and Bergier (both early champions of Lovecraft's work). Not sure if there are any really substantial links with HPL's fiction in all this, but some intriguing hints of how his work may have tangentially brushed off on another odd (and somewhat distasteful) thread of contemporary conspiracism.