Augustus Knapp’s “Mysteries of Xibalba” from The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928

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Reclaiming the Damned

Mitch Horowitz
35 min readMar 28, 2020

Several years ago a critic wrote about me, “Horowitz is an okay historian, but the guy believes in leprechauns for chrissakes. That is true — I plead guilty. In this paper, I will try to explain why my critic is right.

Author Charles Fort (1874–1932)

Although I am not a crypto-zoologist, I am a great admirer of the paranormal investigator Charles Fort (1874–1932), after whose work this essay is named. People wouldn’t necessarily call me a Fortean, though. I don’t study anomalies. But my critic was referencing a series of events that I once related, which happened to me about 20 years ago in the nation of Belize in Central America.

For those of you who don’t know Belize, it’s a very beautiful, English-speaking country that borders Guatemala and Mexico on the Caribbean. Belize is filled with lush forestry, rainforests, snaking rivers and hills — including vast hills in the highlands, which are the subject of folklore and mysteries.

I was staying in the hill country at an eco-jungle lodge founded by a very enterprising couple and…

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Mitch Horowitz
Mitch Horowitz

Written by Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China

Responses (6)

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Great article, I was introduced to your work through your Medium article about Satanism, which has been very enlightening. I’ve been listening to your lectures on Youtube as well, some really interesting stuff there.
Through your ideas and research…

Brief mention of fairies. Don’t forget nymphs, dryads, gnomes etc.
Great work!

I have two degrees in science and then a PhD in science education. I have had many psychic eperiences over my 70 years. One time I had a schuffled deck of cards, and I held one card up at a time looking at the backside. I guessed at each one… at one…