The seeds of this album were planted in April 2023 and as is often the case, germinated through a combination of various environments and my own somewhat unmanageable imagination. I’d become hyperfixated on the idea of Alternate Reality Games, and the way that through what are essentially acts of play, a person can experience a degree of brain-change. A form of magic. We can all experience other worlds.
I was particularly obsessed with Joseph Matheny’s Ong’s Hat project, and the Incunabula Catalog of rare and deeply weird books concerning conspiracy theory, frontier science, and alternate worlds. I was walking around the suburbs and countryside, in something of a daze, just living in that reality where interdimensional portals were being opened by psychedelic scientists and quantum hippies. There were so many possibilities. What if these gateways could exist anywhere? What if I followed a magpie down a wormhole that existed in a patch of dandelions?
My immediate environment was changed. Everything had potential. There was magic in the mundane. There was beauty everywhere, you just had to look properly. Everything was exciting and charged with power. I went to Other Worlds, which were hiding all along, in… more
credits
released September 20, 2024
Written and performed by Stephen James Buckley
Mastered by Antony Ryan @ redredpaw.com
Artwork by Nick Taylor @ spectral-studio.co.uk
CiS180
In this episode of The Computer Room, Katherine and friends talk about Art Bell’s legacy. We meet Leah Prime, who’s writing a book about Art Bell, John Steiger who on a mission to hand transcribe every single episode of Coast to Coast AM, and Joseph Matheny, the mind behind Ong’s Hat.
Callie Hernandez: Before we got on I was brushing up on Ong’s Hat. Do you know about this conspiracy theory? It started in New Jersey, and it’s one of the first instances of online conspiracy theory revolving around academia, I think. But basically, four people just made up these narratives and then posted things on bulletin boards and printed magazines starting in the ’70s, but really gearing up in the 80s, CD-ROMs and everything. But the made-up narrative is that one person gets stuck in a parallel universe. That’s kind of what just happened with Courtney [laughs].
Chris Cassingham: What’s the conspiracy? Ong, like O-N-G?
Join Shane Skwarek and Tim Philipps in this mind-bending episode of “Conspiracy Realist” as we dive deep into the enigmatic world of Ong’s Hat with special guest Joseph Matheny. Discover the chilling tale of a seemingly innocuous town in New Jersey that is said to be a gateway to alternate realities, covert experiments, and a unique blend of fiction and conspiracy.
We’ll explore the origins of Ong’s Hat, the mysterious group known as the Ong’s Hat Movement, and how Joseph himself played a pivotal role in bringing this phenomenon to light. Unravel the threads of coincidence, deception, and the search for truth as we question the narratives surrounding this clandestine location.
Whether you’re a seasoned conspiracy enthusiast or just curious about the bizarre intersections of reality and fiction, this episode offers something for everyone. Prepare to be captivated by the possibilities that lie beyond our perception of reality!
🔍 Key Topics Covered:
– The history and lore of Ong’s Hat
– Joseph Matheny’s involvement in the Ong’s Hat phenomenon
– The intersection of conspiracy theories and alternate realities
– What does Ong’s Hat teach us about belief and storytelling?
Welcome to another exciting episode of the Two Scaredy Cats Podcast. This week Kara dives into the story of a cryptid from West Virginia. She tells us the tale of the Flatwoods Monster and we discuss some of the different theories about what it could of possibly been, that all those people saw that day.
Our next topic is about Ong’s Hat, New Jersey. This story has lots of crazy things that have happened over the years. We start off with a brief history of the town and how it got it’s name. Then we get into all the conspiracy theories surrounding Ong’s hat from a supposed secret cult, to a gate to another dimension and other crazy stuff.
LINK: https://shows.acast.com/new-jersey-is-the-world/episodes/a-return-to-ongs-hat
WARNING: Some listeners may be disturbed by the fact that at no point in this episode do Mike D and Andrea mention diarrhea. This is a diarrhea-free episode. Proceed at your own risk.
Longtime subscribers to our Patreon may remember an early episode of South Jersey Is Also the World where Andrea and Gethard went deep into the history of Ong’s Hat, a South Jersey ghost town so tiny it doesn’t even appear on most maps. Its history is a fascinating one, with debatable origins involving bootlegging and hat-based feuds as well as an early Internet legend regarded by many as the genesis of Alternate Reality Games. Since that episode, Ong’s Hat has popped up in a few other places, so we figured it was time for a revisit. While we do discuss the above in some detail, this episode is really about urban legends, how they spread, and why we seem to love them so much more in Jersey. We also discover something about our own history that has the potential to crack this whole Ong’s Hat mystery wide open. We need your help on that one though, so have a listen and let us know what you think!
Legend Tripping- the process of seeking adventure by going to places known to be associated with paranormal events. In the episode we offer some background on legend tripping in America (wait for Part Two for the best international destinations), including Capt. McKerry’s Vault on the Ohio River (Indiana)~Goatman’s Grave in Missouri~Ong’s Hat (ghosttown in NJ~Mountain Meadows Massacre Site (UT)~Winchester Mystery House (CA)~The Marshall House Hotel (Savannah GA)~Bloody Lane at Antietam (Sharpsburg, MD~Fort Monroe (Hampton, VA~ Murder Hotel (Chicago)~The Bridgewater Traingle (Mass)~ The 8 Best Places to find Bigfoot (in US).
In his newest podcast, This Is Not A Game, award-winning journalist and documentary maker Marc Fennell explores the internet’s first conspiracy theory – the legend of Ong’s Hat.
The six-episode documentary podcast investigates the unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures, and simmering paranoia, and follows Fennell as he uncovers how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today.
Podcast Week’sTess Connery caught up with Fennell ahead of the Audible podcast’s launch.
What was it about the legend of Ong’s Hat that caught your attention? How did this whole project come about?
Fennell: “I’ve spent more than a decade covering the internet and technology through my other work, and it occurred to me that when it comes to technology, we often talk about the present and the future. We very rarely talk about how it is that we got here.
“It’s a bloody weird story. The basic gist of it is that in the early days of the Internet, you’ve got this engineer who starts a joke amongst nerds that in the middle of the woods is a shack where a bunch of renegade scientists attempt to build a portal to another world in the shape of an egg. It’s objectively crazy, but the thing is, everyone who was online at that point kind of got it.
“The thing that stood out to me is that it is a cautionary tale. You and I both know that the internet today is a complete trash fire – it’s never been easier to distrust each other. And it struck me that this was a cautionary tale, because everything bad about the incident today, we were warned with this story. This tale is absolutely a parable from the past that could have warned us about how we got here.”
How did you approach the research on this project? The early internet is a whole other beast, how much of it was still around for you to find?
Fennell: “One of the reasons this conspiracy theory was so intoxicating for people is that the puppet master, Joe, would put out little breadcrumbs of real and fake, and people who got sucked into it really felt like they had to investigate, they had to engage. They had to do a bit of work.
“That means they have a sense of engagement, they’re like, I discovered this, I did my own research, which meant that there was a sense of pride. So people kept a lot of stuff, people kept their memorabilia and the bits of pieces of information they’d acquired. That made it a little bit easier to keep track of.”
You have a few podcasts under your belt now. What is it that keeps you coming back to audio projects?
Fennell: “The really interesting thing with audio is that the listener is an active participant, because they are using their imagination to create the world. We’ve gone harder with sound design on This Is Not A Game than any other project I’ve ever been involved in. It’s easily the trippiest, most enveloping audio experience of anything I’ve ever made – the whole idea was to pull people into the rabbit hole.
“What was super important for this series more than any was to create that that sense of getting lost in the woods with you and your imagination. That’s one of those moments, one of those ways in which audio is just so powerful, because it employs your own imagination as a listener.”
What do you hope people take away from This Is Not A Game?
Fennell: “We all share responsibility for the internet, because it’s now so big and so ubiquitous, and it connects us all. It was built as a reflection of certain human tastes and certain human ideas about how we should interact, but now it belongs to all of us. If we want the internet to be less of a trash fire, if we want the internet to be a more trustworthy place, it is now it is no longer just the responsibility of tech companies and government – although they play a role.
“We also have to change how we behave and we treat other people online. There is a transference that’s occurred on our watch from theirs to ours. I think we all have a responsibility to cultivate the web that we want.”
This Is Not a Game is the extraordinary untold story of the internet’s first conspiracy theory, the legend of Ong’s Hat.
Marc Fennell will dive deep into a previously unexplored world of tech hippies, eccentric web subcultures, and simmering paranoia, uncovering how this tongue-in-cheek artistic experiment backfired on its creator and went on to influence much of what’s wrong with the internet today.
