Subterranean Worlds

"This book is written in such an exciting way that I wanted to find various underground beasties. And that is the author's magic". -- Fate "This is a very well-written, all-inclusive, and absolutely unstoppable book... a brilliant goldmine. The illustrations are superb". -- Gnosis Magazine A delightful work tracing the history of hollow earth theories to their origins. A journey into the human imagination as much as a journey to the center of the earth. Includes dozens of rare photographs and drawings. An excellent book for both teens and adults.

Exploring the hollow earth from the 17th century to the present.

In "Subterranean Worlds Inside Earth," author Timothy Green Beckley has collected many stories from a vast wealth of sources on the subject of what is often called "The Inner Earth Theory." The theory holds that the Earth does not consist of molten metal at its core, as modern science tells us, but is instead quite hollow inside, and supports several different races of sentient beings as well as their impressive underground cities. Those cities are said to be linked to one another by underground tunnels with above-ground openings that the occasional surface-dwelling mortal stumbles on to. Much of the information Beckley presents comes from a man named Richard Shaver, a spot welder on the Detroit automobile assembly lines who one day began to hear strange voices projected at him as he went about his work. Following the trail that began with that unearthly auditory experience, Shaver eventually came to the conclusion that the voices were coming from somewhere beneath the Earth, from a race of creatures he came to call the "Deros," which is short for "degenerate robots." The Deros have a story of their own. They were once a gentle race who lived on the surface of the Earth, until it became apparent that the sun was being transformed in some way that caused an increase in the amount of a form of dangerous radiation contained in its rays. Some of the Deros escaped the planet by going into space in their highly-developed spacecraft, but not all of them managed to do so. Those forced to remain went underground and built the cities referred to above, but the sun's poisonous radiation also caused them to go insane and to develop cruel and sadistic personality traits. It is because of their evil madness that mankind suffers so much today, and Shaver himself experienced some bizarre mistreatments as he sought to learn more about the mysterious Deros. Shaver eventually published many of his Dero tales in a magazine called "Amazing Stories," which were so popular that they greatly increased the magazine's circulation. But Shaver's story of the Deros is only one of many versions of exactly what is down there in the Hollow Earth. Beckley also offers stories by journalist John J. Robinson and others whose research has turned up different legends and personal experiences, some of which tell of a hidden paradise below our feet where beautiful, spiritually benevolent creatures reside. Beckley's use of numerous and divergent reports helps to paint a wonderfully complete picture of the centuries of folklore that have become mingled with scientific fact through real-world investigations into the "Subterranean Worlds Inside Earth." Some of what's here stretches credibility a little more than might be totally comfortable. But if you have an appetite for unsolved mysteries that extend beyond the realm of the safe and the knowable, then Beckley's thorough overview of what may be inside the Hollow Earth is well worth the time spent reading it.

A visual and anecdotal exploration of the curious worlds hidden beneath our feet, including ancient cities, salt mine cathedrals, underground amusement parks, and more. From bone-filled catacombs to sculpted salt churches to hand-carved cave complexes large enough to house 20,000 people, Underground Worlds is packed with more than 50 unusual destinations that take some digging to find. Award-winning travel writer David Farley revels in the unexpected, whether it is a cave city in China which houses one of the world's largest collections of Buddhist art or an old salt mine converted into a theme park in Romania. Stunning photos help readers see places they could not even imagine, such as a three-story underground train station in Taiwan that is home to the a 4,500-panel "Dome of Light" that is the largest glasswork on Earth, as well as secret spaces, such as an ornate temple built beneath a suburban home in Italy. Throughout the fascinating text are themed entries of underground systems such as the 2,500-year-old water tunnels of Kish Qanat in Iran or engineering marvels like the New York City steam tunnels.

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The idea that our planet consists of a hollow, or honeycombed, interior is not new. Some of the oldest cultures speak of civilizations inside of vast cavern-cities, within the bowels of the earth. According to certain Buddhist and Hindu traditions, secret tunnels connect Tibet with a subterranean paradise, and they call this legendary underworld Agartha. In India, this underground oasis is best known by its Sanskrit name, Shambhala, thought to mean 'place of tranquility.' Mythologies throughout the world, from South America to the Arctic, describe numerous entrances to these fabled inner kingdoms. Many occult organizations, esoteric authors, and secret societies concur with these myths and legends of subterranean inhabitants, who are the remnants of antediluvian civilizations, which sought refuge in hollow caverns inside the earth.Assuming that the myths are true, and the Earth is partially hollow, how could life survive underground? How would organisms receive the ventilation required to breathe miles below the surface? What would provide the light needed to see, or to cause the photosynthesis necessary for the plant life that allegedly exists in these inner worlds? Are there any known sources of sustenance available that could provide for a large human population? What evidence is there that a sustainable biosphere could exist miles below the surface, totally isolated from the nourishment and the established life cycle provided by the sun? Where are the entrances to inner earth, and which races live there?Author and anthropologist, Robert Sepehr, explores these questions and attempts to unlock their riddles, which have eluded any serious consideration in mainstream academia. Numerous endevours have been undertaken to access the interior of the earth. Polar expeditions and battles, such as Operation Highjump, still remain largely classified, and have been shrouded in secrecy for decades, but scientific revelations validating the rumors surrounding these covert events, and their implications, are finally being exposed to daylight. What are the mysteries of inner Earth?

"Oil is a fairy tale, and, like every fairy tale, is a bit of a lie."—Ryzard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs The scale and reach of the global oil and gas industry, valued at several trillions of dollars, is almost impossible to grasp. Despite its vast technical expertise and scientific sophistication, the industry betrays a startling degree of inexactitude and empirical disagreement about foundational questions of quantity, output, and price. As an industry typified by concentrated economic and political power, its operations are obscured by secrecy and security. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the social sciences typically approach oil as a metonym—of modernity, money, geopolitics, violence, corruption, curse, ur-commodity—rather than considering the daily life of the industry itself and of the hydrocarbons around which it is built. Subterranean Estates gathers an interdisciplinary group of scholars and experts to instead provide a critical topography of the hydrocarbon industry, understood not solely as an assemblage of corporate forms but rather as an expansive and porous network of laborers and technologies, representation and expertise, and the ways of life oil and gas produce at points of extraction, production, marketing, consumption, and combustion. By accounting for oil as empirical and experiential, the contributors begin to demystify a commodity too often given almost demiurgic power. Subterranean Estates shifts critical attention away from an exclusive focus on global oil firms toward often overlooked aspects of the industry, including insurance, finance, law, and the role of consultants and community organizations. Based on ethnographic research from around the world (Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Oman, the United States, Ecuador, Chad, the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan, Canada, Iran, and Russia), and featuring a photoessay on the lived experiences of those who inhabit a universe populated by oil rigs, pipelines, and gas flares, this innovative volume provides a new perspective on the material, symbolic, cultural, and social meanings of this multidimensional world.