28 “parlor tricks”: Interview with Jefferson Hawkins.
29 “OT Phenomena”: Advance!, no. 33, p. 8.
30 “A theta being is”: Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man, pp. 71–72.
31 “How do you answer”: Hubbard, “State of OT,” lecture, May 23, 1963.
32 “Telephone rings, it springs”: Hubbard, “An OT’s Basic Problem,” adapted from a lecture of Dec. 2, 1952, quoted in Advance!, no. 38, p. 14.
2. SOURCE
1 two bordellos: www.helenahistory.org/family_theatre_reeves.htm.
2 Lafayette Waterbury: Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pp. 8–15.
3 “I was riding broncs”: Hubbard, handwritten memo dated “10 Mar 74.”
4 “devouring shelves of classics”: The Humanitarian: Education, The Ron magazines, 1996, p. 9.
5 Hubbard’s family was Methodist: Karin Pouw, personal communication.
6 “Many members of my”: Hubbard, “Case Analysis: Rock Hunting” question and answer period, Aug. 4, 1958.
7 “I learned long ago”: The Old Tom Madfeathers story is related by Hubbard’s official biographer, Dan Sherman, at the L. Ron Hubbard Centennial Celebration, March 13, 2011; Hubbard’s quote was a voice-over. A spokesperson for the Blackfoot Nation says that blood-brotherhood is not a part of their tradition.
8 “Snake” Thompson: Thompson’s existence has been called into question. Russell Miller says, “He cannot be identified from US Navy records, nor can his relationships with Freud be established” (Bare-Faced Messiah, p. 25). Since Miller’s book, however, there have been a number of new Snake Thompson discoveries, which add substance to this extraordinary man. Among other enterprises, he helped found the Zoological Society of San Diego, served as the vice president of the Washington Psychoanalytic Association, and was director of the Siamese Cat Society. Thompson’s activities as a spy are chronicled in an eccentric memoir by Rhoda Low Seoane, Uttermost East and the Longest War (New York: Vantage Press, 1968).
The Church of Scientology provided a passenger manifest for the transport ship, USS Grant, in November 1923, which lists Commander J. C. Thompson, along with the Hubbard family.
9 “a very careless man”: Hubbard, “The Story of Dianetics and Scientology,” lecture, Oct. 18, 1958.
10 “I was just a kid”: Hubbard, “Dianetics: The Modern Miracle,” lecture, Feb. 6, 1952.
11 “Man has two fundamental”: Commander J. C. Thompson, “Psychoanalytic Literature,” United States Naval Medical Bulletin 19, no. 3 (Sept. 1923): 281–85.
12 “I never knew what to believe”: “Barbara Kaye,” quoted in Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, pp. 168–69.
13 “He braved typhoons”: Adventurer/Explorer: Daring Deeds and Unknown Realms, The Ron magazines, 1996, p. 6.
14 “for weeks on end”: What Is Scientology?, p. 31.
15 “ ‘Why?’ Why so much”: Ibid., p. 32.
16 “The very nature of the Chinaman”: Details of Hubbard’s trip to China are to be found in the testimony of Gerald Armstrong in Church of Scientology, California vs. Armstrong, 1984, and in his handwritten journals of the period, which were provided as exhibits in the trial. Some points were confirmed by the Church of Scientology responses to queries. A redacted account from Hubbard’s diary is in Letters and Journals: Early Years of Adventure, The Ron magazines, 1997, pp. 46–50.
The church maintains that there were other travels during this period, saying that Hubbard roamed through Asia for fourteen months, without his parents, returning to China and stopping in India and Singapore, among other places. There is no evidence of those trips in his journals, although he makes references to such experiences in later lectures.
The church provided a 1929 news article from the Helena (MT) Independent, to substantiate Hubbard’s extensive travel claims, but the article speaks only of a “trip to the orient last summer with his parents” on their way to Guam. Other records of Hubbard’s Asian travels, Tommy Davis told me, had been destroyed because until the Second World War they were being held in Hiroshima.
17 gliding license was #385: Adventurer/Explorer: Daring Deeds and Unknown Realms, The Ron magazines, 1996, p. 53. Hubbard listed his age on the license as twenty-six, although he was nineteen at the time.
18 “We carefully wrapped”: Hubbard, “Tailwind Willies,” republished in Adventurer/Explorer: Daring Deeds and Unknown Realms, The Ron magazines, 1996, pp. 44–50.
19 “Restless young men”: Adventurer/Explorer: Daring Deeds and Unknown Realms, The Ron magazines, 1996, p. 10.
20 “collect whatever one collects”: Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah, p. 52.
21 That was almost the end: “Seekers of Pirate Haunts Finally Go,” Baltimore Morning Sun, June 25, 1932.
22 It soon became evident: James Free letter to Robert H. Burgess, June 21, 1986; James Stillman Free oral history, National Press Club, Mar. 25, 1992.