Whispers from Space: Life as a Hollywood Insider/Outsider

Filmmaker Ralph Coon speaks frankly to Tony Conn about his cult UFO documentary, the hidden side of Hollywood, and doing heroin with Adam Parfrey.

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Ralph Coon might not be a household name, but you have almost certainly seen his work. His time in Hollywood has seen him working with the likes of Don Coscarelli, Kevin Kerslake, and Errol Morris, usually as an electrician or lighting technician. He is also a writer and photographer who has been involved in the Los Angeles art scene, alternative books, and zine culture for decades.

In 1995, Ralph directed his only feature film, Whispers from Space. This now rarely seen documentary covered the life of ufologist and trickster Gray Barker, told through interviews with many of the people who knew him. To quote Ralph, “This is the only film I ever directed. One was enough.”

Many readers will know Gray Barker (1925–1984) as one of the most important researchers in the early history of ufology. He introduced the real-life Men in Black to the world in his 1956 book They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers, as well as writing some of the earliest material on the Flatwoods Monster, Mothman, and the Philadelphia Experiment.

We now know that Gray Barker was also a serial hoaxer, as attested by his associates Jim Moseley and John C. Sherwood. His reputation was dealt an even worse blow when it was revealed that he had been arrested for fraternising with underage boys. The least we can say is that his legacy is complex.

The film relays all the above, but it does a lot more than that. Shot in beautiful monochrome and edited with sly humour, it presents its subjects without judgement or censure. It is less interested in the veracity of Barker’s claims and more on what they mean to other people. It is a study of a flawed character, a meditation on UFO culture and show business, and a sensitive portrayal of life in rural West Virginia.

The extent to which Barker believed in what he was saying is left to the viewer, as are any moral judgements about his private life. One of the people interviewed is one of his ex-lovers, as we learn about Barker’s struggles as a closeted gay man in the 1950s and ‘60s, and later his death from AIDS complications in the 1980s. Without the man himself being available for comment, the film pieces him together from the fragments that remain.

Ralph Coon had an idyllic upbringing in Manassas, Virginia, exploring the nearby woods and creeks with his dog, making Super-8 films with his friends, and writing for the high school paper and local press. He always had an interest in local characters.

He loved films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Evil Dead (1982) while growing up, “not because I adore horror but there was a time when horror films could make guaranteed money and would draw in artists and filmmakers who were not part of the Hollywood system, films made by one vision instead of a committee of visions.”

After dropping out of college, he moved to Los Angeles. He showed some of his work to cult horror director Don Coscarelli, who then hired him to do the lighting on Phantasm II (1988). This was the beginning of a long career in Hollywood, but a lot of this work is hard to track down. Ralph has multiple IMDb pages and often goes uncredited.

There is a way for me to list all my hundreds of credits, but I really don’t care to take the time to do it as it simply doesn’t matter. I’ve worked with everybody in the 35 years I’ve been doing this. I’ve seen it all. Most of my dealings are with the director, director of photography, and gaffer. I pay no mind to actors. They are talking monkeys.

Ralph acknowledges Errol Morris and Werner Herzog as influences on Whispers, particularly the former’s Gates of Heaven (1978). He even had the pleasure of working with Morris.

He’s a complete asshole. I’ve worked on a bunch of commercials with Morris. I think one was a beer commercial. He’s a talent for sure, or was. His early movies are good. The later ones suck as he became more full of himself. Morris is always right, everyone else is wrong.

I remember a discussion at lunch one day on set, and Morris was holding court, pontificating about Herschell Gordon Lewis films. He got Blood Feast (1963) mixed up with Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964). I gently corrected him, and it was as if no-one on Earth ever had corrected him. He was shocked. He’s probably never done a day of hard labour in his life.

Kevin Kerslake is great. I worked on the lighting for a lot of his music videos. Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, all sorts. I’m not proud of much of the stuff I work on. It’s garbage. But Kevin’s music videos and his photography are pure art. I’m proud to say I’ve worked on his projects and worked with him. And he’s such a nice person. Really stand-up, great guy.

I asked Ralph about some of the musicians he might have met on these projects, including Kurt Cobain and Henry Rollins.

I’m glad you brought up Henry Rollins. I worked with him on some horror film (Feast, 2005) and he was such a professional; always knew his lines, showed up on time, kept his mouth shut, stayed out of the way so the crew could do their work, was a moment away when needed, never hiding in his trailer, playing hard to get. Of everyone I’ve ever worked with, actor-wise, he was the best. The very best.

Kurt Cobain was very sad. Off-in-his-own-world kind of sadness. He wasn’t mean or rude, but you didn’t want to approach him, because you could tell he was dealing with something heavy. Kris and Dave were nice.

The bad people I’ve worked with? There are so many. Too many to name. Most of them, unfortunately. The film industry attracts broken people who seem to enjoy hurting others to achieve power, money, and fame. People who weren’t hugged enough and told they were important by their mom and dad. People who couldn’t get a girlfriend because they’re a dick. Luckily, I’m at the stage of my career where I’m well known enough, I refuse calls from the assholes. Tell them to lose my number.

Ralph’s relationship with action movie director Albert Pyun, who died in November 2022, soon deteriorated after their work on Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon (2004).

The government of Guam co-signed a loan to make the film. Sure enough, the government of Guam got left holding the bag as the filmmakers defaulted on the loan. The whole shoot was a shitshow and stupidly unprofessional. Regardless, I got to know the indigenous Chamorro people, who were wonderful. One guy I met (Michael Lujan Bevacqua) had an online zine called Minagahet, the Chamorro word for truth, and, as the shit hit the fan, he asked me to write about my experience working on the film.

Albert Pyun got butthurt about my story. I called him a lousy filmmaker. He attempted to intimidate me and the coverage of my story. He made up lies about me and threatened to sue me, siccing his sycophantic, basement-dwelling fanboys after me.

I couldn’t care less about Pyun’s reputation and his “cult” library of films. He’s a weasel and a bold-faced, lying piece of shit. Worst experience I’ve ever had in film is working with him, and I’ve had a lot of bad experiences in Hollywood. His films are Tinkertoy garbage. He’s the worst example of everything that’s bad in Hollywood.

When I asked Ralph which filmmakers he admires today, he cited Bill Brown (Roswell [1994], Buffalo Common [2002], Mountain State [2003]) and Bill Daniel (who collaborated with Craig Baldwin on Tribulation 99: Aliens Anomalies under America [1992] and Spectres of the Spectrum [1999]). It is tempting to compare their films with Coon’s – poetic, impressionistic, steeped in kitsch sci-fi imagery and UFO lore.

Whispers from Space

So, what of Ralph’s sole directorial feature? Ralph Coon and Gray Barker were from neighbouring states. One might think that Ralph grew up hearing the local UFO lore, but according to Ralph,

I’m not an expert on UFO shit. Actually, I don’t really much care. I was interested in Gray Barker the man.

There was an independent comic book in the mid-80s called The Silent Invasion (1986–88), by Larry Hancock and Michael Cherkas. It was about a reporter in the ’50s trying to solve a conspiracy re flying saucers and evil people who were trying to thwart his investigation. It was exceptionally well done. In a letters section written by Hancock, he suggested a book called In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space (1985), by a Canadian photographer named Douglas Curran. In the book, Curran travelled all over the US, photographing and writing about people believing in flying saucers, and the coming of flying saucers and aliens to save the world. Gray Barker was featured in the second edition.

It wasn’t a fact nerd book about a UFO that supposedly landed here or there, and who saw it or didn’t, what the Air Force said about it or didn’t, but rather it attempted to display the complex psyche, in photographs and words, of people who believed in such things and what made them believe. It’s an amazing book, and at times amazingly sad. I highly recommend you get and read that book if you have not, regardless of your belief or not in UFOs.

Gray Barker’s composite image of the Flatwoods Monster, c. 1952 (Clarksburg Public Library)

Also, around the same time, while visiting my parents in Virginia, I went to a rare book dealer I’ve had a relationship with for years. He would put aside odd books for me. A book he put aside for me on that trip was something Barker had written called The Book of Adamski (1965), about contactee George Adamski. I’m always drawn to self-published books because I view them as “outsider art.” Most are junk, but some are not. I saw that it was published in Jane Lew, West Virginia, so I went there and started asking around about Gray Barker. The people were interesting, and I thought it might make a good documentary film. I wanted to try to show how the psyche-texture of that small remote place in West Virginia created a person like Gray Barker.

At first, I was going to make a film about television preacher Dr. Gene Scott. However, Gray Barker came up and that just took over. It’s too bad in a way. The Gene Scott film would have been crazy. I figured if I did make a film about him, he would have sued me, as he’s obscenely litigious, and the film would have been about a crazy TV preacher suing me. It’s one of my great regrets in life: not being sued by Dr. Gene Scott.

Whispers was self-funded off the back of Ralph’s Hollywood day job. The 16mm film stock and processing cost close to $30,000 (over $61,000 today).

I couldn’t let the camera run, hoping I got something (“spray and pray”). I was very specific with my questions, because I had done my research beforehand, having gone to West Virginia twice on tech scouts and pre-interviews. I knew who knew what. When finished shooting, I hand-wrote down everything everybody said on paper. I felt doing this brought me closer to the material. I cut and pasted that, with scissors and tape, into the sequential narrative and cut the movie following that paper edit.

I watched lots of documentary films before making mine. There are people like Frederick Wiseman, who make Direct Cinema. They try to blend in with the action, try not to attract attention to the fact that a film is being made. Think Titicut Follies (1967). There are filmmakers like Nick Broomfield, who do man-on-the-street stuff, they are part of the movie. Then there are folks like Errol Morris, who bring in big cameras and lights and let it be known that a film is being made and stay hidden, as the filmmaker, from the process. I chose the latter. I didn’t want to have reverse shots of me vacuously nodding to the interviewees. It’s not needed. Who cares about me and my role in Whispers while watching it?

I got along fine with the interview subjects. Some of them were simple, meaning not educated, but through no fault of their own – because of lack of opportunity and poverty. Some viewers of the film thought I was making fun of them. This is not true. Why shouldn’t they be in the film? They knew Barker and asked to be in it. Why not? Because they don’t talk like you or think like you or act like you? They were wonderful people, real people.

Jim Moseley was a double-edged sword. He knew from a showbiz angle what I was trying to do narrative-wise and he could perform on demand, which is good when you’re shooting film as opposed to video. However, if Jim doesn’t get his way, there is hell to pay. He is a petulant manchild. He wanted me to cut my film so there was more of him and less of Barker. And, further down the road, he was unhappy with the distribution of the film, as if he knows anything about film distribution.

Whispers was shown in theatres across the US and the world, it was put out on video for a while, it was in film festivals, etc. This wasn’t enough for Jim. He wanted his face shown more, so he contacted one of his UFO friends who has a shitty-stupid-low-rent UFO/paranormal website and that guy started bugging me. In hopes that Jim would shut the fuck up, I went and saw him. He had a contract for distribution that would give him all the money first, and when his costs of duplicating and what-the-fuck-ever were recuperated, then, and only then, would I start to be paid. I told him to fuck off. Jim, of course, got butthurt and started talking shit about me, and airing my personal problems in his weekly flying saucer zine Saucer Smear.

James Moseley in Whispers from Space (Ralph Coon)

Since there are no such things as flying saucers, he has to write about something, so that something is UFO personality gossip or reprinting stupid News-of-the-Weird fluff, like the story of the dog who could take the train by himself to the pet store. Some of the ammunition he got about me came from a friend of a very good friend of mine who also helped with Whispers. This guy seems to know a lot about making films, but surprise! he’s never made one and never will. You know why? Because it’s hard and the guy can’t do hard. And that says it all. I believe he makes his money as a babysitter and he’s in his forties.

The shoot was about two weeks in the heat of summer, and then probably three days of reshoots about three months later. Do I have stories? Boy, do I have stories. My cinematographer (Karl Hawk) is this crazy, but nice, guy who loved to carry a gun wherever he went. So, we’re shooting (film) deep in the woods, high on a mountain where the graveyard is that Barker is buried at. There is nobody for fucking miles. I’m trying to direct, trying to figure out everything. I had to rent some hillbilly’s 4-wheel drive Jeep just to get all the gear up there, and I’m exhausted. All of a sudden, Karl starts freaking out that someone has dug up Barker’s grave. I run over there, and Barker’s grave does have freshly overturned dirt on it, but nobody dug it up. Karl pulls out his gun and starts running around looking for the graverobbers, looking for Barker’s corpse, disappearing in the woods, screaming. Man, I could go on and on and on.1

Filmmaking is just too heartbreaking. Too many hands are on your art, and you lose control. I wanted the entire film to look like the scene with Barker’s lover with the bad toupee in the diner. Rich, dark blacks and halo-like bright whites. It’s why I shot in black and white to begin with. But the Mom-and-Pop lab we used to develop the negative (very nice people) had the chemistry too hot at times and burnt the shit out of the neg. That’s why some scenes are so grainy. I went to DuArt in NYC to pull the answer print and they fucked that up. Eight grand that thing cost me. There is no way to make your money back. None at all.

In a now infamous poem, Gray Barker calls ufology a “bucket of shit.’ (“UFO is a bucket of shit / Its followers / Perverts / Monomaniacs / Dipsomaniacs / Artists of the fast buck… / And I sit here, writing, / while the shit drips down my/face in great rivulets.”) I asked Ralph if he agreed with that summation.

I don’t think about UFOs much. Basically, yeah, I think it’s a crock of shit. In a universe of possibilities, I guess it’s possible. I saw a ghost as a kid. A Civil War soldier running in terror across an old Civil War wagon trail which we use to ride our BMX bikes on. I don’t know if the ghost was a soldier from the North or South. He was just running, terrified. People don’t believe me and laugh at me, and that’s ok. I know what I saw and it was a ghost from the past.

Later in life, I was in an old hotel outside of Death Valley, California, and I witnessed poltergeist activity. I was up at 3am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I was staring at a desk and chair in the room, waiting for the sun to come up, bored. The chair moved slightly, as if someone was sitting down. I told the hotel clerk that morning, and she said people see weird stuff all the time at that hotel. Again, these things happened, so something is going on.

For as dumb and silly as Jim Moseley could be, one day on the set of Whispers he told me of a theory he had that there are other dimensions that vibrate different than ours, and when something happens to shake up or shift that vibration, sometimes things from other dimensions drift into our dimension and we see them. This seems to make sense to me. Perhaps that is how UFOs travel. I do not know. But again, something is going on, because I saw a ghost and ghostly activity.

Most UFO people annoy the shit out of me. People suggest I should get a table at a UFO convention and sell Whispers. I’d rather clean every toilet in Los Angeles than do that. Those people are so lost and silly. Greg Bishop is the only person I find interesting speaking about weird phenomena. He had a zine called The Excluded Middle and has a podcast, Radio Misterioso. He asks interesting questions like, “Was the woman menstruating when she claims to have seen the UFO?” or “Was the man in the middle of a divorce when he saw the phenomenon?” It’s interesting to think like that. What was going on with them when they claim to have seen what they see. He has the right balance of scepticism and belief. Moseley, for all his faults, had that too. There was a famous debunker named The Amazing Randi (James Randi), but he was so sceptical of everything that it seems to have poisoned his soul.

I asked Ralph what he thought Gray Barker’s legacy was.

To people who know, Barker is responsible for the Men in Black. To make it palatable to the general public, you’ve got to dumb it down and make a joke of it, like the big-budget moron movie Men in Black (1997). Barker might have made it all up (I believe he did), but a broken clock is right twice a day. I don’t know anything else he might be remembered for. I imagine there will come a day when Barker will have his day in the sunshine (“Gray Barker: The Musical!”), but again it will have to be silly and stupid and dumbed down for the public to get on board and spend money.

John C. Sherwood has written about his relationship with Barker, including the claim that he lied on Barker’s behalf and fabricated UFO stories. In Whispers, Jim Moseley corroborates much of this, even demonstrating how he and Barker faked the Lost Creek UFO film using a model saucer dangling from a fishing pole. Barker and Moseley wrote the so-called “Straith letter” to George Adamski, written on headed notepaper and signed by a fictional government official. They also involved John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies (1975), in many of their pranks, Keel often being an unwilling participant. I asked Ralph whether he thought hoaxers could have a positive role to play in society.

I don’t know. It would seem to me if you’re studying a subject in earnest, and you’ve got to spend time navigating hoaxes and bullshit, hoaxes would be a waste of your time and a pointless drain on resources and energy. With specificity to the UFO field, I couldn’t care less.

Barker’s true beliefs were never clear. Sherwood is often scathing, describing Barker’s behaviour as self-serving and manipulative. This may well be true, but others have suggested that part of him still believed. Ufologist Rick Hilberg, interviewed in the 2009 documentary Shades of Gray, said, “There are two aspects of Gray. There was this one aspect of Gray that really, really wanted to believe that all this was happening and who was indeed fascinated by it all, and there was this other more cynical side of Gray.” He seems to have been part cynic, part romantic.

According to David Houchin, curator of the Gray Barker collection at Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library,

The people that Barker dealt with were, you know, to some extent, there for him to exploit. Their stories were there for him to exploit in his writing. And, if their stories needed to be modified for the sake of exploitation, he’d do that too.… Oddly enough, hoaxing is part of UFO. Part of the performance of UFO is to create and distribute frauds, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t believe in the genuineness of the underlying phenomena, you just accept that somehow the creation and distribution of frauds is part of it.

In 1962, Gray Barker was arrested on the vague charge of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor,” due to the time he spent around local high school boys. Much of Gray Barker’s private life remains mysterious, but we know that he had gay relationships – not easy in rural West Virginia at that time. I asked Ralph what he thought about this case, whether Barker might have been a sexual abuser, and whether he might have been treated differently because he was a gay man.

I don’t know a whole lot about whatever legal trouble Barker got into in the ’50s or ’60s. Just what you saw in the film. I do know it happened because Moseley, when I flew him up from Key West, brought with him some legal docket booklet re the trial that he had had Barker sign as a joke. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time or resources to go hunting down court transcripts in the Clarksburg Courts from 40 years ago, or whenever it was.

The gist of it is probably this: Gray befriended some high-school-age boys because they were cute, they cut class to talk with Barker about UFOs, and he enjoyed them being around, and then the truancy police came around and Barker got in trouble. I’m just guessing, though. Yes, I believe Gray was treated differently in all areas of his life than a West Virginia Macho Mountain Man, because he was gay or effeminate-acting.

In 2009, Bob Wilkinson made his own documentary about Gray Barker called Shades of Gray, interviewing some of the same people who appeared in Whispers, including Jim Moseley and Richard P. Taylor. I asked Ralph what he thought of the film.

I have seen it. I admire the person who made it. I think I talked to him once in the late ’90s, as he was making it and encouraged him to do it. I don’t remember. It’s all hazy. I admire him, because he saw my film, obviously didn’t like it, and instead of bitching about my film he went and made his own. I admire that in a person.

So, your question with specificity is what did I think of the film and not the person who made it? I thought the film sucked. It was insufferable. It was this dumb “recreation” film. I honestly thought Robert Stack at some point was going to come out and start narrating the film like an episode of that dumb TV show Unsolved Mysteries (1987–2010). It was the exact kind of film I didn’t want to make. I wanted a psychotronic-like film. Shades of Gray was a 100 percent stupid dullsville film that was 100 percent commercial. Did this guy make his money back? Doubt it.

I managed to obtain a copy of Whispers through Ralph’s friend Dan Wininger, the former owner of Amok Books. The film is now extremely rare and has little online presence. Will it ever get a rerelease?

Yes, no, maybe? Everybody wants to sit around on their ass and push buttons on the computer and have everything delivered to them. Did I get to sit on my ass and push buttons and suddenly get a film? And now “But don’t you want people to see your work?” becomes the question. Of course I do, but how much do I? Do you want me to come to your house, clean up your TV room, hook up your VCR, put a tape of my film in your machine, rub your feet, and hand-feed you Cheetos while you watch the film? How about if I bring you some spare spending cash, too. Fuck you. I honestly don’t care if people see the film or not anymore.

I get emails every once in a while from some yahoo who wants to “start a UFO film festival” (as if I’d want to get within 50,000 miles of it) and wants to show Whispers. Of course, I would have to pay for everything, pay my flight, pay my hotel, miss work – in other words, do all the work. “Well, just mail your film then.” Sure, let me mail (I would have to pay for postage of course) a $10,000, 19-pound answer print to someone I don’t know, and then sit on you until you hatch to get you to mail it back, and it would be ruined and scratched from your shitty projector, if I ever got it back. Sometimes, you have to make an effort in life, you know? The only reason I’m talking to you and taking you seriously is because you made an effort on your own to see the film and you researched me enough where I’m somewhat impressed, otherwise you wouldn’t get the time of day.

“Put it on the internet and charge people!” It’s not worth the 13 cents it would make. Now, there is a fellow named Jimmy McDonough who is the executive editor of Nicolas Winding Refn’s website, byNWR.com. He’s been a mega-fan of the film for years and years. Jimmy is an amazing writer, and I’ve enjoyed and been blown away by his writings since his early/mid-80s zine days of Sleazoid Express (1980-85). I admire him. I trust him. He’s the only one I’d let put it on the internet. But he’s got a boss, Refn, you know, so there’s only so much he can do.

People sometimes think they’re doing me a favour by posting my film on the internet without my permission. And now I’ve got to spend all my time getting it taken down while it, sometimes, ruins the chances of it getting put up professionally. If people wanna put their own film on the internet, make a film and put it on the internet all day long and stop bugging me. But, again, people won’t make their own film because it’s hard to make a film and people can’t/won’t do hard.

LA’s Alternative Writing Scene

Whispers started its life as a series of articles in Ralph’s zine, The Last Prom. Ralph has a long history of collecting rare books and writing on various subjects, often mixing with well-known figures in Los Angeles’ alternative book scene.

I write about things that interest me. I can’t manufacture enthusiasm. If I don’t care, I can’t write about it. I like to write about people who never got their due. I write about things that most nobody cares about. It’s my specialty, fortunately or unfortunately.

I went to Amok bookstore and Mondo Video A-Go-Go, both in East Hollywood, a lot back in the day. Stuart Swezey (founder of Amok), Dan Wininger (who took it over), and Colonel Rob (Robert Schaffner, owner of Mondo Video) were good people. I admired them. Dan is an amazing collage artist and Stuart is a great writer/publisher/filmmaker. The others I didn’t care for so much. Warning bells went off inside me when I was around them, so I stayed clear.

Adam Parfrey photographed by Scott Lindgren (Laura Lindgren/https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adam_Parfrey_by_Scott_Lindgren.jpg)

Nick Bougas and the Goddess Bunny (Sandie Crisp) were always hanging out at Mondo Video. Adam Parfrey (founder of Feral House and editor of the Apocalypse Culture books) I was never too sure about. We did heroin some together. I saw him buying from my dealer in downtown once and therefore knew he was a junkie too. He had this incredible house built back in the ’30s by some Disney animators. We would do heroin there. He obviously had a trust fund from his actor father. You don’t make a living and live like he did by publishing books. I don’t care if someone has a trust fund. Good for them. He used it to publish books which was cool but don’t get pissy with me if I have to work for a living.

I was a heroin addict for part of the late ’90s and early 2000s. I have recovered and now spend much of my time trying to help others afflicted with the same problem. I don’t know why I got strung out on heroin. Dealing with personal pain? Read too much William Burroughs? Being a junkie was fun and interesting until it wasn’t.

I like some Feral House books, others I thought were stupid. Parfrey, on Ibogaine heroin detox treatment, started yelling at me one day because I couldn’t come to one of his dumb salons he had at his house. I told him to fuck off and he got butthurt, like spoiled children tend to get.

Sandie Crisp, the Goddess Bunny (Rick Castro). instagram.com/castrrick

Sandie Crisp, the Goddess Bunny (Gibson Fox)

The Goddess Bunny (polio survivor, drag performer, and later viral video star) was always hanging out at Mondo Video in her wheelchair. I didn’t get bad vibes from her like I did the others. She seemed off in her world, sad. No one really paid her any attention. I read later, after her death, that she died alone and that most of the “hipster community,” Marilyn Manson and others, had abandoned her after they had used what they wanted from her, so it was just sad. She was sad.

I asked Ralph about the way that many people in the scene courted controversy, often promoting serial killers, child abusers, and white supremacists. Nick Bougas, director of Death Scenes (1989) and The Goddess Bunny (1994), also seems to have had a sideline as the favourite cartoonist of neo-Nazis under the alias A. Wyatt Mann. A. Wyatt Mann created the so-called “Happy Merchant” character, which later became one of the most prominent anti-Semitic symbols on websites like 4chan. The alias was later adopted by Patrick Keogan, convicted in 2017 of threatening to burn down a mosque and possession of child pornography.

Bougas’s wife and many of his friends are at least partly Jewish. In The Goddess Bunny, he provided a sympathetic portrayal of Sandie Crisp, a disabled trans woman. Many have wondered whether he could be as hateful as the cartoons suggest or if it is purely for shock value. In the end, does the distinction even matter?

People like Nick Bougas, Boyd Rice, and their ilk are cartoon characters. They fancy themselves intellectuals and “Social Darwinists.” Everyone else is stupid and they are superior. They are trolls. I got an idea: why don’t they kill themselves first to lighten Earth’s load?

Lisa Carver’s writings about Rice are interesting (“Boyd’s rather unimaginative sadism used to embarrass me, but then he explained it using words like ‘Weltanschauung’”). Rice mocks the mentally disabled, and Rice’s very own child is mentally disabled, the child he abandoned. Figures. The child his “superior” loins produced.

Experimental musician Boyd Rice had a son with Lisa Carver in the mid-1990s. Wolfgang Carver, now in his late twenties, has DiGeorge syndrome, caused by the deletion of a small number of genes on one chromosome. The condition is linked to cleft palate, heart problems, and developmental delay. Ninety percent of the time, DiGeorge syndrome is the result of a random mutation, but 10 percent inherit it from a parent with the condition.

I contacted Boyd Rice and Lisa Carver for comment. Rice declined, but Lisa said that he hasn’t seen Wolfgang since he was eight years old: “He abandoned the son he had before Wolf too. Most artists are pretty shitty as human beings, I find.”

Carver did want to clarify one thing: “Wolf is not mentally disabled. He’s plenty able to think obsessively and deeply and sweetly.” A collection of Wolfgang’s art was released in 2012, called Wolf the Artist: From Apocalypse Back, available from his mother’s website.

Coon admires some of Rice’s music,

but when he opens his mouth, he reveals himself to be the moron he is. To spend time/energy to be upset by something Bougas or Rice say or do is like spending time/energy being upset that the coyote can never catch the roadrunner. They’re fucking cartoons. They stand outside the prison when Charles Manson has a parole hearing, holding signs that say, “Free Charles Manson.” Why? To get on TV by being contrary and polemic. They love serial killers because to do so upsets people. Who cares about them and what they think? All the Church of Satan dumb shit. It’s showbiz. I don’t pay attention to racists and white supremacists.

Did the internet kill zines?

The internet killed a lot of things and continues to do so. Before, you had to do a bit of work to write/publish/edit/distribute zines. Now you just hit a button or two. And, as I’ve made clear before, rarely do people want to do work to produce something. Thank you, Internet!

The internet is a tool. Like much in life, it is made up mostly of shit, with a nugget or two of gold here and there, and it’s exhausting to dig for that gold. I don’t know what the internet has or hasn’t done except to make people more gullible, stupid, and lazy than ever.

In addition to his writing and film work, Ralph is an accomplished photographer.

I did street photography for about 10-12 years. I took over 25,000-30,000 photos, edited them down to 50, and published a monograph of my street photos called Watch Channel 38 Every Night Until Jesus Comes (2014). I’m very proud of my photographs. It’s out of print. I have no idea how to get one.

After a long hiatus, Ralph’s next writing project revolves around the artist Julie Becker. Her installations and intricate miniatures made her a talent to watch, but her life was cut tragically short in 2016.

Julie Becker was an amazing artist. She had a troubled life. She killed herself. I dated Julie casually in the mid-to-late 90s. I’m making a zine/monograph about her life. It’s the first Last Prom in 30 years and it will be special, well done, and very luxurious. I don’t know when it will be done. I don’t know how people can get it.

Julie Becker’s work is overdue for examination. Some of her most notable work consists of recreated rooms, empty of people but with the ghostly traces of their lives. They evoke a feeling of kenopsia – the eerie atmosphere of a place once bustling with life that has since fallen silent. They are even more poignant in retrospect.

Ralph has been described elsewhere as Becker’s biographer. We await the final product that will hopefully put her work in context and reveal more about her life. She deserves to be remembered.

Ralph Coon has no current plans to rerelease Whispers from Space, so catch it where you can. Ralph was informed of the deaths of Albert Pyun (1953–2022), Adam Parfrey (1957–2018), and Sandie Crisp/The Goddess Bunny (1960–2021). He was happy for his comments about them to remain in the article. Feral House went on record to say that Adam Parfrey did not have a trust fund.

Bibliography

Gray Barker, They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers (1956, University Books).

Gray Barker, Gray Barker’s Book of Adamski (1965, Saucerian Books).

Joseph Bernstein, “The Surprisingly Mainstream History of the Internet’s Favorite Anti-Semitic Image,” Buzzfeed News, 5 February 2014. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/the-surprisingly-mainstream-history-of-the-internets-favorit

Michael Lujan Bevacqua, “Hollywood Havoc Comes to Guam,” Minagahet, 27 October 2006. http://minagahet.blogspot.com/2006/10/hollywood-havoc-comes-to-guam.html

Richard Birkett, Jocelyn Miller, and Chris Klaus, “Julie Becker: I Must Create a Master Piece to Pay the Rent,” Museum of Modern Art, 2019. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5085

Lisa Carver, “The Way to a Boy’s Heart Is through His Stomach,” This American Life 264: Special Treatment, 2004. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/264/special-treatment/act-four

Wolfgang and Lisa Carver, Wolf the Artist: From Apocalypse Back (2012, self-published).

Kim Christensen, “Camera, legal action!,” Los Angeles Times, 13 June 2007. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jun-13-fi-guam13-story.html

Ralph Coon, “Hollywood Comes to Guam, Then Leaves: The True Story of Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon, Guam’s ‘Propitious’ Film,” Minagahet, April 2004.

Ralph Coon, Watch Channel 38 Every Night until Jesus Comes: South California Photographs (2014, unknown publisher).

Douglas Curran, In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space (1985, Abbeville Press).

John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (1975, New American Library).

Chris Kraus, “Passages: Julie Becker,” ArtForum, October 2016. https://www.artforum.com/columns/julie-becker-230775/

Joel Kuennen, “Julie Becker: (W)hole.” Del Vaz Projects, February 2023. https://www.delvazprojects.com/julie-becker-w-hole

Gabriel Mckee, “A Contactee Canon: Gray Barker’s Saucerian Books,” from The Paranormal and Popular Culture: A Postmodern Religious Landscape, eds. Darryl V. Caterine and John W. Morehead (2019, Routledge), pp. 275-288. https://archive.nyu.edu/bitstream/2451/63886/2/Contactee%20Canon%20-%20Barker%27s%20Saucerian%20Publications%20-%20Final%20revision.pdf]

Zachary Lipez, “Adult Problems – Everyone Is Flying to Jesus with Wolfgang Carver,” Vice, 18th July 2012. https://www.vice.com/en/article/6vmmyr/everyone-is-flying-to-jesus-with-wolfgang-carver

Adam Parfrey (ed.), Apocalypse Culture (1988, Amok Press).

Adam Parfrey (ed.), Apocalypse Culture II (2000, Feral House).

John C. Sherwood, “Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker,” Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 22, no. 3, May/June 1998, pp. 37-39. https://www.csicop.org/si/show/gray_barker_my_friend_the_myth-maker/

John C. Sherwood, “Gray Barker’s Book of Bunk: Mothman, Saucers, and MIB,” Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 26, no. 3, May/June 2002, pp. 39-44. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2002/05/22164744/p39.pdf

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