Fred Lee Crisman

[Helen Reyes]

Crisman's 2nd letter to AS with Palmer's response.

May 1947 Amazing Stories, page 168, "Discussions":

Report from Alaska

Sirs :
I have just finished reading the September issue
of Harper's Magazine, and I noted where Williams
S. Baring-Gould had selected my letter to you last
winter as an example of crackpot letters. I bit-
terly resent this. It is all well and good to sit in
a comfortable office or home and look upon far
places and strange things as through a veil of un-
belief . . . however, when you are there and
death looks you right in the eye . . . you feel a
little different and the safe, comfortable U. S. A.
becomes the world of never-was and "does it
really exist?". I felt that you too, Mr. Palmer,
had more or less given me up for a jerk who was
only trying to pull your leg. Again the fear that
maybe all this was only a promotion stunt and
gales of laughter in the AS office.
Well, you see how it is. Dick and I have made
our Alaska journey and we failed, we lost and we
lost a lot, Dick lost his life. The details I don't
suppose you are interested in, however Shaver
would get a kick out of a journey to the Alaska
cave. It seems strange to read AS and see the
"little" people still wondering and still "investi-
gating" their claims of caves. Go and take a look
for yourself, I say. Sure, it takes money and guts.
I know, I have spent all I have of both. It sickens
me when I read an article like Gould's. So smug
and sure. After all, Dick is dead, and that meant
a lot to me. I don't care whether you be-
lieve or not, I'm sick of the whole mess. I don't
even want to think of last year, and of Alaska
least of all. Just wanted to go on record as being
further sickened by Gould's article.
Fred L. Crisman
125 Woodland
Salishan Add.
Tacoma, Washington

Well, there you are, Mr. Crisman, on record.
And we heartily agree with you. But we are in-
terested in the details of your little journey, and
we offer herewith to publish your story of that
Alaska cave complete. Our readers want proof.
We want proof. If you've got any at all, we
want it. In your previous letter, you asked us to
keep your identity secret. We had to do that, and
you can't blame us for being reluctant to believe,
although we did publish your letter because it
was right in line with what we do believe, and
that is the Shaver Mystery. It is shocking, cer-
tainly, to have you tell us that your companion
was killed in that Alaskan adventure, but we can't
let it just rest there. Either this is true, or it isn't
true. And if true, you can't just let it go by being
sickened of the whole affair. We have chosen to
publish this letter, rather than replying directly
to you as yet, although by the time this is pub-
lished you will have heard from us. If your story
can be proved, and this cave shown to us, we CAN
and WILL raise money for a complete investi-
gation. Our readers, judging from the thousands
of letter we have, would find a way to finance
the thing themselves, if we didn't. They're that
interested. For example, Chet Geier, well known
author, has recently started a club of AMAZING
STORIES readers who are interested in doing some-
thing about solving the mystery. That ought to
prove to you that you would certainly not be
considered a crackpot if you came forward with
your complete story. Baring-Gould, true enough,
took it upon himself to cover a subject whereon
he was completely ignorant, and worse still, gross-
ly misinformed. He was like a Zulu given the job
of writing a technical article about an atomic pile
from information given him by a Hottentot. We
consider Mr. Gould's article to be simply a smart
article-writer's annexing of a fat check by getting
there fustest with the mostest words on a subject
he was clever enough to realize was "hot." He
writes for a living, and he'd do an article about
steel mills, if it was as hot. Although we hope
he'd go to a steel mill for his information, and
not a Hottentot.
So, let us go on record too. You send us your
story, and prove it, and we'll pay you a damsite
more than Gould got for his article. And if you
prove to have no more facts than Gould did, we'll
forget about it and no hard feelings. Sound okay
to you? --ED.

http://rapidshare.com/files/204270574/Am...1736__.cbr

note: Jon Gold (some say Gould as well) was Crisman's airname on KAYE FM Puyallup. Crisman was allegedly posted to Alaska AFTER Maury Island, too.

In the summer of 46 Amazing carried a story by a German author named Heinrich Hauser (HH could mean Heil Hitler) called Agarthi ("Hidden in caves under Germany there were great factories turning out monstrous V-7 atomic rockets to blast the whole world"). That summer there was also a last-page feature called King of the World based on Guenon (but hailing from Venus), and mention of Alexandre Saint Yves d'Alveydre, who made a report on Agartha in the 19th century that Guenon cites.

The story Agarthi is in the same issue as Crisman's first letter, June of 46.

http://rapidshare.com/files/175133850/Am...e1736_.cbr