February is Edgar Cayce Month

One from my writing blog:


In my latest installment of Commonwealth Curiosities, I'm layin' down the lowdown on "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce, whose birthday is celebrated every February at the Pennyroyal Area Museum in Hopkinsville, KY. Check out the new issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine at your local bookseller, or even better yet - subscribe!

William Branham

The great Kentucky psychic faith-healer William Branham died on this day, Christmas Eve, in 1965.

Branham was born in Burkesville, KY in 1909 to a Catholic family. As a young man, he began racking up an impressive career as a boxer, with fifteen wins on his record. He coulda been a contender, but something happened that caused him to abruptly change his life's trajectory in favor of the Baptist church. He hung up his boxing gloves, donned a suit, and began preaching the gospel in tent revivals.

Preaching was definitely Branham's calling - he was very charismatic, so much so that he quickly acquired his own church with swelling ranks of devotees. As his congregation grew, so did his messianic nature. On June 11, 1933, while baptizing people in the Ohio River between Louisville and Jeffersonville, he claimed that a bright light descended upon him and a disembodied angelic voice told him, "As John the Baptist was sent to forerun the first coming of Jesus Christ, so your message will forerun His second coming."

As the 20th century progressed, many other thinkers and gifted individuals (including fellow Kentuckian Edgar Cayce) began feeling their way from traditional theology toward what would later be known as "New Age" philosophies. Branham's beliefs went from Baptist to Pentecostal, then gradually became more and more apocalyptic and further out past the fringes of mainstream Christianity.


Branham claimed to be the literal reincarnation of the Biblical prophet Elijah, and that his past lives extended throughout history. Says Branham, he was with Moses at the Burning Bush and saw the parting of the Red Sea. I've always wondered if he ever listened to the folk song "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago". (I like the Elvis version best!)

Branham was also a major proponent of the controversial "serpent seed" doctrine, which held that the snake in the Garden of Eden was actually a reptilian humanoid who mated with Eve to produce Cain. The idea did not originate with Branham, however; it was once a relatively accepted idea in early Jewish Midrashic texts and in the obscure Rabbinical treatise Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (פרקי דרבי אליעזר).

Branham's grave is located in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Many of his followers are still active today.


Consult your copy of Weird Kentucky for more Branham revelations!

(Top image: Branham preaching. Middle image: the prophet Elijah, riding his flaming chariot across the sky. Bottom image: poster for a 1956 event with Branham. )

Edgar Cayce

There have been many self-proclaimed psychics over the last century, but none so interesting as Kentucky's Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping prophet" from Beverly, KY just outside of Hopkinsville. Totally lacking the razzle-dazzle showmanship of your garden-variety professional psychics (which almost always turn out to be frauds), Cayce was a very reluctant psychic - once word got around about his powers, they had to practically drag him kicking and screaming into using them.

There were indicators early on that Cayce had the psychic "shining" gift as a child, and he gradually became famous in adulthood for his ability to go into hypnotic trance states. During these, he essentially browsed the so-called "Akashic Records" and spouted remedies for diseases and solutions for problems. He became so in demand for these readings, that by the end of his life, he was giving eight readings a day and his appointment book was full for two years in advance. Unlike other psychics and spiritualists who gave vague, open-ended, non-specific advice, Cayce channeled accurate recipes for home-remedy treatments that worked. But because of his strict upbringing in the Disciples of Christ church, he had great misgivings and anxiety about whether what he was doing was sacreligious. But as long as his channeled cures worked, he reckoned he must be doing the Lord's work by helping people, despite the unusual methodology.


As the years passed, however, Cayce gradually began to accept more and more of the "New Age" (though no one called it that back then) concepts associated with his trance readings, to the point where he went the other direction off the deep end, some assert. He began to embrace Egyptian mysticism, astral projection, communication with the dead, aura reading, reincarnation, karma, astrology, and channeled wisdom from a supernatural civilization on the lost continent of Atlantis. These super-Atlanteans, he proclaimed, also populated ancient Egypt and pre-Columbian America. He began to espouse a radical reinterpretation of Christianity that alienated many of his original devotees, much in the same manner as the Kentucky faith healer William Branham was doing contemporaneously.

Cayce also began to speak of a cosmic conspiracy regarding an evil interdimensional secret society called the "Sons of Belial", who supposedly turned Earth's prehistoric early hominids into slaves. Cayce claimed that in a past life, he helped the forces of goodness free the apes from the aliens. He also claimed that he had once been an Egyptian priest named "Ra Ta" who was a master healer presiding over something called the "Temple of Sacrifice" and the legendary "Hall of Records" purportedly hidden beneath the Sphinx (as well as two branch locations in Bimini and Mexico).


And in between our past lives, said Cayce, our souls go on tour in space, visiting the other planets of our solar system. The planets may seen uninhabited to the naked eye but are actually densely populated by other-dimensional beings that we cannot perceive. (However, Cayce's cosmology didn't mention what modern science now knows - that our solar system is far bigger than it was thought to be, and that there are hundreds of thousands of planets, both major and minor, in it.)

Further, Cayce taught that an alien civilization on the planets of Arcturus is one of the most advanced in this galaxy. He described it a "fifth-dimensional civilization that is a prototype of Earth's future". From this, an entire army of spinoff UFO religions devoted to the Arcturians sprouted in the subsequent century, with many post-Cayce wannabe-channelers claiming to be Arcturians themselves, such as Commander Theda.


Cayce finally died of exhaustion in 1945, but his voluminous teachings are kept alive by the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach. Alas, there's very little tribute paid him here in his home state by Kentuckians, save for an exhibit at the Pennyroyal Area Museum and my own painting of him with a two-headed calf.

Heaven's Gate in Hopkinsville

Remember the Heaven's Gate people? In 1997, thirty-nine members of this UFO-worshipping group committed mass suicide, dressed in black and wearing their hair in buzz cuts. They killed themselves off in shifts, using a combination death-trifecta of pills, alcohol and suffocation.

Their leader was Marshall Herff Applewhite, a former music professor from Texas. In the months leading up to their mass suicide, several Heaven's Gate members, including Applewhite himself, castrated themselves, in preparation for a spacecraft that was scheduled to pick up their souls after death and take them to a higher plane of existence. Seems to me that if you're a sentient disembodied soul, you're already on a higher plane of existence and don't need a spaceship, but hey, it's their religion, not mine.

But did you know that Applewhite had previously already made headlines in Kentucky - in 1973? From the Kentucky New Era newspaper, March 1, 2002:

It seems that Applewhite, before he became famous, and a companion -- presumably Bonnie Lu Nettles, the woman who introduced him to the world of metaphysical studies -- made a one-day pilgrimage to Hopkinsville on Oct. 9, 1973, to visit Edgar Cayce's grave at Riverside Cemetery.

While here, they checked into the old Holiday Inn on Fort Campbell Boulevard, now the Econo Lodge, where they managed to make a lasting impression.

At the time of the 1973 visit, there had been quite a bit of publicity about psychic David Bubar's claim that he received an "angel message" from Cayce, directing him to establish a mountain-top healing center near Hopkinsville.

Interestingly, news reports of the day indicated that Bubar, of Memphis, received his instructions from Cayce's spirit on Sept. 8 of that year while also staying at Hopkinsville's Holiday Inn.

Applewhite's visit to the community caught the attention of the late Joe Dorris, who wrote about it in his "Watching The Parade" column, published on Oct. 19, 1973.

Dorris' Applewhite column -- based on an interview with Chip Miles of the Holiday Inn -- had been saved all these years by Johnson, who stumbled across it and made the Heaven's Gate connection several months after the cult's 1997 mass suicide.

In the column, Miles recounted how a mysterious couple, without a car and no luggage, showed up at the Holiday Inn and asked for a room.

The man's driver's license identified him as M.H. Applewhite, 42, and he told the desk clerk that he and the woman were from Texas.

When a maid went to clean their room the next morning, she found the guests had vanished, skipping town without paying the $20 motel bill.

Left behind was a two-page note that suggested the man and woman were not from this world.

The note read:

"From occupants of 47.

"Dear Sir: Thank you for permitting us accommodations in your inn. It would be impossible to explain to you who we are, where we come from, and who we represent. If we tried, you would not believe us.

"We exist in another dimension, which does not allow for the use of currency. We are on the planet for a few more months and our mission is for good.

"It would be useless for people to attempt to treat us as they would their own or to bring us harm, for it would result only in their death. This note is true and certainly not to be understood as threatening but as thanks for accommodations.

"This information should be kept in the strictest of confidence for your best interests. You will be rewarded well for your cooperation."

Miles, although out $20, had some fun with the odd encounter, according to Dorris' column.

On the Holiday Inn marquee, he changed the wording from the traditional "The Nation's Innkeeper" to "Innkeeper Of The Universe."

"It was probably worth the publicity we got out of it," Miles said, with a laugh, while recalling the incident after he was asked about it earlier this week.

Now, more than 28 years later, Miles said he still remembers the purported space travelers and the note they left for him.

However, Miles said he had forgotten that the stranger from the Lone Star state signed his name M.H. Applewhite on the motel's guest register. As a result, he never made the connection to the Heaven's Gate mass suicide when it occurred about 23½ years after the two Texans visited Hopkinsville.

"I'll be darned. I just never put all that together," Miles said.

About two years after seeing Hopkinsville, Applewhite and Nettles made national headlines when, claiming to be space aliens, they reportedly convinced a group of 20 people from Waldport, Ore., to leave their homes and move to Colorado to meet up with a space ship that was supposed to take them to a far-off planet.

Pennyroyal Area Museum

The Pennyroyal Area Museum in Hopkinsville has many different exhibits and goodies, but it's their Edgar Cayce section that interests us most. Among the many curious items there, they keep Cayce's desk on display along with his typewriter, as if awaiting his return....


Other attractions at the Pennyroyal Area Museum include exhibits on the Night Riders, the Trail of Tears, and Jefferson Davis. Find it at 217 E 9th Street in Hopkinsville.