Ong’s Hat © Patrick Tappe/Shutterstock.com Tucked into the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, Ong’s Hat may be found on actual maps from the early days of the region. The small town finds naming on maps but most likely, it was merely the site where Ong (presumed a farmer) parked in a hut (Ong’s hut) on regular long journeys to and from market. As late as the 1930s, Ong’s Hat appeared on maps but nothing could be done to prove the place ever existed, save finding the ruins of one single hut in the middle of the forest.

It wasn’t until the 1980s when strange tales emerged on various bullet board services and magazines of conspiracy theorists that people thought about the place again. The publications detailed elaborate conspiracies involving mystics and scientists breaking through to another realm via Ong’s Hat. The tales arose from the novel “Incunabula Papers: Ong’s Hat and Other Gateways to New Dimensions.” Author Joseph Matheny probably didn’t anticipate his fictional tales would lead to theorists believing every word until the 2000s, seeking answers of the “truth.”

If you find one of the outdated maps from the 1930s or earlier, you may well be able to pop over to the ruins with your drone. Or visit Google and find the Ong’s Hat Parking area at the Batona Trail and hike out.

LINK: https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/7-famous-places-that-don-t-actually-exist/ss-AA1XgCi9

■Incunabula: Ong’s Hat

“Ong’s Hat” is considered one of the oldest urban legends originating on the internet, and is akin to a creepypasta or SCP. Ong’s Hat is a real ghost town in New Jersey. Ong’s Hat: Piney Ghost Town or Gateway to Another Dimension?weirdnj.com Therefore, there are many anecdotes and legends about it, which seem to be similar to urban legends such as those of Inunaki Village in Japan. The synopsis is as quoted below.

It all started with the emergence of a pamphlet, “Ongu’s Hut: Gateway to Multiple Dimensions, Full-Color Pamphlet for the Chaos Institute and the Moorish Scientific Monastery,” which suddenly began circulating in the late 1980s. According to the pamphlet, Ongu’s Hut was once the site of secret experiments by quantum mechanics researchers the Dobbs Brothers. Nearby, the mystic Wali Fard had founded the Moorish Scientific Monastery. Eventually, scientists and mystics met, merging metaphysical disciplines—including meditation, physics, alchemy, and remote viewing—in unprecedented ways, opening up new frontiers for further experimentation. The pamphlet describes how, after repeated complex and bizarre experiments, they finally pierced the veil between parallel worlds and developed the “Egg,” a pod that allows travel to other dimensions. However, after a mysterious nuclear accident at a nearby military base exposed them to the risk of radioactive contamination, they used the Egg’s technology to transport the entire monastery and its inhabitants to a parallel Earth, leaving only the building for the gateway behind. The end of the pamphlet invites readers to Ongu’s Hut and discover the transdimensional community there, but cautions that it will not be easy.

Another Real World: Collective Delusions in the Post-Truth Era (Part 1) This was later compiled into an online book titled Ong’s Hat: The Beginning by Joseph Masini, the founder of Ong’s Hat.

Matheny first launched the project around 1988, collaborating with anarchist author Peter Lamborn Wilson, physicist Nick Herbert, and artist James Cohenlein to create a legend of paranormal activity in New Jersey. Initially, Matheny and his friends spread the legends through catalogs of magazine articles and ghost books that they compiled and mailed out, but in 1993 they continued the story using the then-new medium of the internet.

Ong’s Hat (ARG) This led to widespread speculation among users online, and eventually, due to harassment from users who mistook it for a real event, Joseph Matheny, the creator of the story, himself confessed that it was fiction, and the story came to an end in 2001. ☟Some of the email text used in the ARG has also been archived. Incunabula: Ong’s Hat- Scans of the original mail art documents form the 80s and early 90s : Joseph Matheny : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveScans of the original mail art documents of the Incunabula Caarchive.org LINK TO ARTICLE: https://note.com/angrybreakfast/n/n668d9bd4f7a2#c3f1e498-c580-43b9-8f14-f65466d3dd08

From: THE COMMERCIAL VIABILITY OF ALTERNATE REALITY GAMES: A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR PROFITABILITY AND SCALABILITY

LINK: https://s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/pstorage-ryerson-5010877717/28138491/Robertson_LeeStahr_G.pdf

However, preceding Publius Enigma was what expert Szulborski (2005) suggests was truly the first ARG experience, Ong’s Hat / Incunabula. The Ong’s Hat experience differed in that it intertwined two different narrative from both Ong’s Hat Ashram in the 1970’s as well as that of “Incunabla Papers” (Szulborski, 2005a). Moreover, this experience is only said to have precluded the modern ARG because it began so many years prior to the introduction of technologies that now characterize the genre. The experience was so large and spanned over so many years, that experts are unable to agree on when it actually began. Furthermore, this experience was so ahead of its time that it has been dubbed as a “literary/digital crossover” (Szulborski, 2005a) that incorporated mediums such as the CD-Rom, traditional print, bulletin boards and eventually, the internet(Szulborski, 2005a). In fact, a co-creator of the experience’s CD-Rom has suggested that Ong’s Hat included 23 complex puzzles, some of which have yet to be solved or even identified (Szulborski, 2005a). Consequently, many lessons were learned in this generation of ARGs that aided insofar as identifying feasible experiential scope, depth of cross-media convergence and appropriate timelines for the current generation. Additionally, because this generation of ARGs would effectively draw to a close in the early to mid 1990’s, a majority of the technologies that characterize the current generation of ARGs were beginning to emerge and shape the next generation.

The Unseen Internet

The Unseen Internet

Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse

by Shira Chess

In 2003, I had this idea that a book should be written chronicling the influence that psychedelic drugs and magick had on the development of the early Internet. Granted, my “evidence” was all anecdotal. However, since I was in the trenches during the “dotcom” revolution, I thought I could build a strong case. I pitched it to a couple of publishers. The publishers in question were not convinced that this was really a thing. I think we’d call them “normies.” They also could not envision a marker for such a book. So, I dropped the idea and went about my tech career.

The truth is, I wasn’t the right person for the job. I can say that now. I was too engrossed in developing tech, working on infinite game theory, and championing ARG as a legitimate art form. It would not have received the treatment it deserved as a subject.

I also feel like the time is right for this story, with the advent of LLMs and the ongoing misunderstanding of what AI is, what consciousness is, and why corporations are trying so hard to convince us we need that as a feature in our everyday lives. This book would make a great companion piece to Ong’s Hat: COMPLEAT.

When Shira called me a few years ago and said she was interested in writing such a book for MIT, I was overjoyed and quickly began rattling off names of people she should contact. I also told her stories about my own experiences developing “occult tech,” as well as the cultural milieu that literally built the Internet in the 90s through the mid 2000s. I am really glad that the right person for this job stepped up and kept this story from falling down a memory hole.

I won’t kick it to death by categorically reviewing this book’s contents, but rather, I will give it a full-throated endorsement and assure you that you will be in capable hands. The book finally found the right person and the right co-conspirators at the right time to tell this tale.

A added note; if you’re one of those people who can’t get your head around how Ong’s Hat was a game, read this book.

Included in the interviews, acknowledgements, and profiles (besides your’s truly) are friends, acquaintances, and co-conspirators: Nick Herbert, Tiffany Lee Brown, Jon Lebkowsky, Robert Anton Wilson, Klint Finley, R.U. Sirius, Richard Metzger, Don Webb, Timothy Leary, and Douglas Rushkoff, to name a few. I’m sure I left someone out, but it wasn’t on purpose.

LINK: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553889/the-unseen-internet/

Shira on Substack:

A wonderfully comprehensive entry on Ong’s Hat at TVTropes. Whoever did this entry was very inclusive. LINK: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ARG/OngsHat

The strange saga of Ong’s Hat is one of the earliest and most enduring legends of the internet — an elaborate blend of fact, fiction, and possibility. Born in the early days of online bulletin boards, the “Ong’s Hat” story told of a secret interdimensional travel project hidden deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, accessible only to those who could find the right clues.

Was it an Alternate Reality Game before the term even existed? An experimental art piece? Or something more? We explore its origins, the ideas behind the mysterious Incunabula Papers, and the strange way it spread like a meme through the early digital underground.

In this video, we’ll uncover how the story took root, why it captured so many imaginations, the ethics behind its creation, and — just for a moment — we’ll ask: What if it was real?