The Mexican Minotaur Mystery

This baffling tale of highest strangeness first appeared in the Winter 1962 issue of Ray Palmer's The Hidden World magazine - a short-lived publication that had spawned from the controversy surrounding the infamous testimony of Richard Shaver. Unfortunately only one issue of the magazine is available online, and that is not the issue from which I am drawing this story. Instead, I have found this story mentioned on several other websites, and after enough digging (pun intended) I uncovered a full transcription of this amazing account of subterranean terror! 

An Inexplicable Interior

One Frank J. Mezta of Calexico City, California wrote to the aforementioned magazine to tell of a bizarre experience he had, which he had come to believe may well have been the work of the nefarious deros (he actually says 'teros' in his account, but this would make very little sense in the context of the Shaver Mystery) after accidentally stumbling onto some previous issues of the magazine. He had apparently always lusted after answers to the mysteries of ancient history and the origins of civilisation, and he felt he had found just that through the writings of Mr. Shaver. After offering Shaver these generous compliments, he went on to tell his chilling story.

Mezta and a group of friends had decided one day in 1960 to go treasure hunting in the 'interior of Mexico'. This expedition would unfortunately yield them no joy, and would instead leave them questioning their previously-held views of reality. The group arrived at the designated entrance to the cave system, but before they could enter Mezta felt a chilling sensation of fear come over him, seemingly without cause. This was apparently a feeling quite unlike anything Frank had experienced before. He felt as if something was going to happen to him should he enter those caves. It was clearly not only him suffering under the strange sensation, seeing as neither he nor anyone else in the party felt comfortable going underground that day. Perhaps reluctantly, or perhaps with relief, the group agreed to retreat from the cave entrance and return the next day. 

When they returned, the zone of terror had seemingly dissipated - and the group descended, led by Frank. The cave was 'tremendous in size', with passages and paths leading away from it in every direction. Some of these tunnels and chambers were 30ft high and 100ft long. They eventually decided that the system was too vast to feasibly explore, and so they once again decided to leave the caves. However, when they turned around they discovered that there were now two entry tunnels instead of just the one they had come in through. Baffled, the group elected to investigate. They moved down the strange tunnel, and it seemed to go on for ever, winding away into the infinite darkness. Perhaps getting somewhat spooked at this point, the group turned back once more and fled the caves. 

Labyrinth of the Lost

When Frank's group returned to the village, they happened to strike up a conversation with two indigenous Mexicans - who warned them not to enter the 'enchanted caves'. The group was intrigued, and asked the two men just what and where these caves were. They were shocked when the pair directed them to the cave entrance they had visited just a few days earlier. In response to questioning about what exactly happened in the so-called 'enchanted caves', the men answered that people would sometimes go into them and never come back out - and that if one stayed in them for a while and then tried to leave, they would find that the entrances and tunnels had somehow changed. A chill presumably ran down Frank's back at this point - the exact same thing had happened to his group. 

However, the changing geography of the anomalous cave system wasn't the strangest thing about them divulged by the indigenous people. No, that title would have to go to the personal story of the two men. About ten or fifteen years previously, they alleged that they (as well as about twenty or thirty other Native Mexican men) had been hired by an American man to investigate the strange caves. Four or five of their number came equipped with revolvers, and the rest carried lights and tools. They had been labouring away in the cave for a while, when something bizarre and terrifying suddenly made itself known to them. All of a sudden, two figures appeared at the far end of the cave. There was a humanoid with the head of a bull - 'like a bull upright' - and a diminutive entity resembling either a little boy or a 'naked midget'. Horrified, the five armed men pulled out their revolvers only to find that they wouldn't fire, and the lights carried by the rest of the group all went out. 

In the confusion and panic that ensued after this, several of the men were killed in the mad scramble to escape the caves. Since then, nobody had been brave enough to venture into the dark labyrinth below...

The Daedalus Legacy

According to ancient Greek mythology, King Minos of Crete had ordered the architect Daedalus to construct a labyrinth so intricate that not even the builder himself could find his way out without use of a plan. This enormous structure was to be used to house the bastard child of a divine bull and Minos's own wife. Pasiphaë. This child was a monstrous blend of human and bull features, and was known as the Minotaur. Seven youths and seven maidens would be sent into the labyrinth as sacrifices to the Minotaur each year, until the hero Theseus was finally able to slay the beast.

The links between this strange tale and the famous Greek mythological story should be obvious from even a cursory glance. A bull-headed humanoid monstrosity, accompanied by a child, roaming a potentially inescapable network of tunnels and subterranean chambers. History repeats itself, does myth do the same? 

Source

'MEXICO'S HAUNTED UNDERGROUND HALLS'

Nancy Evans Bush Escaped the Matrix

We’ve all heard stories of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). The ‘normal’ format for such a story involves the separation of the soul from the body and then the subject perceiving an tunnel of white light down which they proceed, eventually being met by departed family members or angels or suchlike. These experiences are normally peaceful and inspiring, and they have been known to lead neuroscientists to take abrupt heel turns towards Christianity. However, not all stories of NDEs are easy reading. Admittedly the pleasant ones are the more common of the bunch, and so if you ever happen to temporarily die you can hold out a reasonable degree of hope that you’ll see a happy and peaceful Other Side - but of course for every rule there has to be an exception. Some people see the Abrahamic Hell, burning with sulphurous flames and crammed with monstrous demons. Some just end up in what is called the Void - an endless empty space where only loneliness exists. Nancy Evans Bush, the subject of this article, was one such unfortunate experiencer.

Meeting the Simulators

Sometime during the mid-to-late 20th century (approximately 1962), Nancy Evans Bush was lying prone on a hospital bed - screaming in agony as she gave birth to her second child. Suddenly, something bizarre happened. Perhaps it was relaxing at first - if a little disquieting. She felt her soul separate from her body. Any curiosity about this experience she might’ve had quickly evaporated, however, and was replaced with utter horror as her consciousness was pulled up into an infinite blackness at tremendous speed...

Nancy’s soul flew ever higher - up and out of the roof until she could see over the hospital. She eventually ascended so high that she could see nothing around her, just a meaningless black void. Presumably still in a state of complete shock and horror, she soon became aware of a group of circular entities floating around her. They were constantly changing colour - 'clicking' from white to black and back again. Although they struck her as heartless and malicious, she was careful not to say that they were evil. They seemed 'authoritative'. It was clear to her that they were in control in the bizarre environment around her, and that they knew far more than she did. Despite her Christian faith as part of the Congregational United Church of Christ, it never occurred to her that what she was seeing could've been Hell - she just assumed automatically that this was what waited for her after death without assigning any religious meaning to it. The entities started to speak, and what they had to say was truly horrifying.

They told her that she had never existed. Her 17-month-old daughter had never existed. Her mother had never existed. The Earth wasn't real - it had all been a 'joke'. She was overcome with a sense that what the circular entities were telling her was incontrovertibly true, and that there would be no point in arguing. Utterly crushed, she listened in silence as the entities told her that 'none of that had ever been real; this is all there was'. Eventually the beings vanished and left her alone in the endless blackness around her. I cannot imagine how that must have felt.

She had no context whatsoever with which to understand this new revelation. Her father and her grandfather had been intellectual, liberal-minded Christians, and she had been taught that Jesus loved everyone and that if you did the right thing you would go to Heaven. This experience was eating away at that faith. In later research into Near-Death Experiences, she would come to the conclusion that bad things often happened to who she thought of as bad people - faithless, guilt-ridden, hostile people. She had been born again, and although she acknowledged that she was 'far from perfect' - there was nothing in her background that suggested to her that she might've deserved such a hellish fate. When she was revived, her soul returned to her body and the first thought she had was that Calvin had been right - predeterminism was real and she had been born to suffer. The truth about the virtual nature of the world weighed on her as a heavy burden. She felt it was too terrible to ever tell anyone about it.

Six months after the experience, she was on the road to recovery when she was having tea with a friend. Her friend handed her a book which they had just purchased that day - Jung's Man and his Symbols - and told her to have a look through it. This she did, but she soon dropped it and stumbled away from the table in abject horror. There, on the left side of one of the pages, was a large illustration of one of the discoid entities from her dream. Only later did she realise that she was looking at the well-known symbol of the yin-yang from ancient Chinese philosophy. She had previously had no exposure to this concept, seeing as she had grown up as a New England Congregationalist. It would be this bizarre realisation that would start her down the course to joining the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and becoming an advocate for those who have suffered through unpleasant NDEs in the face of the overwhelmingly positive New Age view of the phenomenon. She has even written a book on it, which is listed in the sources below.

Sources

'Dancing Past the Dark' by Nancy Evans Bush

2009 Interview with Nancy Evans Bush for Vital Signs (IANDS Newsletter)

'Distressing Near-Death Experiences' by Nancy Evans Bush and Bruce Greyson