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DID THREE PRISONERS REALLY SURVIVE THEIR ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ?

Over the night of June 11/12, 1962 three inmates broke out of the United States maximum-security penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. They carved their way through concrete cell walls with crudely-made tools and entered a mechanical service corridor leading outside. Once over the perimeter fence, the trio fled into cold Pacific waters on a makeshift raft. The felons were never seen again. That left many to speculate whether the fugitives drowned or… if the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz.

Alcatraz Island is a forbidding place. It’s a rugged rock just inside the entrance to San Francisco Bay near the Golden Gate Bridge. Alcatraz is highly visible from the city’s shoreline and is a well-known landmark around the world. It was once also viewed as the perfect place to build a prison.

The lunar-like landmass covers 12 acres and hosts a hostile environment. Its tidal currents run fast and cold making Alcatraz a navigational challenge. An experienced yachts-person would think twice about trying to row around Alcatraz, especially in the dead of night. Even champion swimmers equipped with wetsuits struggle with the 1.5 mile trip to the shore.

The Spanish Navy first “discovered” Alcatraz and named it La Isla de los Alcacatraces which translates to “Pelican Island” after the archaic Spanish word for the bird. There doesn’t seem to be an aboriginal name for the Island because the original settlers probably found the barren place rather worthless.

The United States Army didn’t think that. They saw Alcatraz as the ideal spot for a military jail and developed it in the 1850s. Over time, Alcatraz Island served as a lockup and lighthouse. Common thinking held that no self-respecting prisoner would attempt something as crazy as a swimming escape from “The Rock”.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons felt the same way. In 1933, the Army relinquished Alcatraz to the Justice Department who needed a secure facility to house the worst of the worst offenders. Criminals like Al Capone, Machinegun Kelly, Alvin “Creepy” Karpas, and Robert Stroud (the psychotic Birdman of Alcatraz) served sentences in the “prison system’s prison”.

Alcatraz was a state-of-the-art, super-max facility for its time. There was a one-guard-to-three-inmate ratio with each felon occupying a single cell. But, despite the precautions, it was here in 1962 that three little-known, bank-robbing hoods made their famous escape from Alcatraz.

Frank Lee Morris (Inmate #AZ1441) was born in 1926 to a terribly dysfunctional family. He was orphaned at age 11 and was so incorrigible that foster homes refused to have him. By 13, Morris was already in jail for crimes ranging from armed robbery to narcotic trafficking. Prison authority tests placed Frank Morris in the top 2 percent of inmates when it came to intelligence with a 133 IQ. He was a leader, a conman, and a calculator. Morris arrived on Alcatraz in 1960 with a 10-year bank robbery sentence.

John William Anglin (Inmate #AZ1476) was an east-coast criminal. He was also a broken-home product in a family of 13 kids birthed by migrant farmworkers. John Algrin was 30 years old when he arrived on Alcatraz in the fall of 1960. His sentence was 15-20 years for a string of Alabama bank robberies committed with his younger brother Clarence.

Clarence Anglin (Inmate #AZ1485) was a year behind his brother John in age. However, he was just as bad when it came to criminal behavior. Clarence Anglin’s first conviction was for breaking into a service station when he was 14 and he continued on from there. He entered Alcatraz in January 1961 with a 20-year penalty earned after 10 years of robbing everything from banks to brothels.

Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers didn’t meet in Alcatraz. They went back to being co-inmates in a Florida prisoner where they made repeated escape attempts. Deemed candidates for the Alcatraz treatment, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons sequentially classified them as high-risk offenders and transferred them to The Rock one-by-one. Somehow, the three were assigned to adjacent cells.

The Morris-Anglin escape plan started in December 1961. That was six months before the breakout which gave them plenty of time to think and prepare. Their plan was elaborate, and it took a tremendous amount of coordination and cooperation with the inmate population to pull off. It seems the inevitable escape was one of the worst-kept secrets inside the criminals’ culture.

The escapees used self-made tools modified from old saw blades and kitchen utensils to chip concrete around existing ventilation ducts at floor level in their cells. Their creativity extended to using a power drill made from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor which they ran during music hour in the evening. To conceal their tunneling, they fabricated fake ventilation covers painted on cardboard.

The enlarged vent ducts gave them access to a 3-foot wide service corridor that was unpatrolled. This led to a larger area where they smuggled-in around 50 rubber raincoats donated by other inmates. The investigation later showed Morris and the Anglins built an inflatable raft and blow-up life jackets with the raincoats by vulcanizing the rubber on the facility’s steam pipes.

To inflate the raft and personal flotation devices (PFDs), they got even more ingenious. They pilfered a musical instrument called a concertina which is an accordion-like device they converted into a bellows. The trio also sourced wood scraps and screws to build paddles.

On the escape night, the three simulated themselves in bed by stuffing clothes and towels under the blankets to build body shapes. What really topped-off their attention to detail was fabricating human heads with paper mache that were authentically painted with flesh tones. They even attached human hair sourced from the Alcatraz barbershop.

Getting out of the prison facility took some doing. The fleeing felons used a ventilation shaft from the corridor to climb to the roof and then shinnied two stories down to the ground along service lines. Then, they faced inner and outer perimeter fences topped with barbed wire before making the shore.

How they hauled the raft, paddles, and some limited personal effects through this route is not clear. It took determination and considerable physical dexterity. However, the cons did it, and it worked.

The three were discovered missing during the 7 am stand-to and head-count. This set off a massive search done by the prison officials with the help of the local police and the Coast Guard. Bit-by-bit, pieces of their escape showed up.

Alcatraz Island National Park sits to the south-west of San Francisco Bay. It’s 1 ½ miles north of downtown San Francisco, about 3 ½ miles east of the Golden Gate Bridge and Horseshoe Bay in Marin County, and just over 2 miles south of Angel Island. Alcatraz is also slightly under 3 miles west of Treasure Island.

The searchers found their evidence near Angel Island. That included a broken paddle, two deflated life vests, shreds of raincoat material, and a wallet containing contact information for the Anglin relatives. Examination of one life jacket noted deep teeth marks in the inflation piece indicating that the wearer may have been struggling against air loss.

The main search lasted for two weeks. There were no signs of the Anglins or Morris, either alive or dead. Who aided the investigation was Allen West, an Alcatraz inmate who was part of the escape plot but couldn’t get through his enlarged ventilation duct in time to join the party.

West cooperated in exchange for immunity from punishment. He revealed the planning and the escapee’s intentions. According to West, the plot was to paddle the raft west from Alcatraz and land near Horseshoe Bay near the north end of Golden Gate Bridge. Here, they intended to steal clothes, a vehicle, rob some money, and then head for the Mexican border.

The investigators took West seriously. They followed every lead linking to car thefts, clothes swiping, and hold-ups. Nothing even remotely matched a modus operandi that indicated the trio had landed anywhere in the San Francisco Bay region.

Over time, many tips came in but nothing panned out. Some information was well-intended but wrong. Others were obviously pranks and hoaxes. There was one reported sighting of a man’s body floating in the Bay area that described it as wearing denim clothes consistent with prison garb. It was never found.

Another lead surfaced years later, and it came along with photographs. A long-time con-man claimed to have seen the Anglin brothers in Brazil and took their photos. By this time, the FBI had closed the case after writing off the escapees as having succumbed to hypothermia and drowned on the night of their mission. The U.S. Marshalls, however, took the photos seriously and sent investigators to Brazil. Nothing amounted to this but, today, there’s still speculation it might have been them.

So, what are the chances the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz?

The answer lies in the water. The reason authorities selected Alcatraz as a maximum-security prison site was because of how nasty the water conditions surrounding the island were. The temperature, currents, and wind conditions made this spot nearly impossible to cross without the right knowledge, timing, and equipment.

San Francisco Bay is a large water body that drains about 40 percent of California. Combining its inlets and estuaries, the bay area exceeds 1,500 square miles. That water gets flushed twice a day by ebb and flow tides that have to pass through the mile-wide Golden Gate narrows. This creates tremendous current action and some of the fastest waters on the California coast.

The logical escape plan for Morris and his Anglin accomplices would be to use the tide currents to their advantage. That would have to be when the ebb or outward action was happening, and the currrent would carry them from Alcatraz to their apparent destination near Horseshoe Bay on the Marin County shore. This would move them the fastest and minimize their paddling.

If they didn’t plan their water trip with a favorable tide, the flow tide would carry them into the bay and swirl their raft like in a toilet bowl. Surely these convicts who went to an elaborate escape effort would have considered the tide timing. That’s exactly what Allen West said they did.

Historical tide records are available online at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website. A little Googling found the tidal information for San Francisco Bay at the Alcatraz Island area for the night of Monday, June 11 and Tuesday, June 12, 1962. Here’s what was going on:

  • High tide of 5.24 feet at 7:11 pm on June 11
  • Low tide of 1.47 feet at 1:39 am on June 12
  • High tide of 3.69 feet at 7:27 am on June 12

To understand tide-talk, the figures 5.24 feet, 1.46 feet, and 3.69 feet refer to water levels above the mean or average low watermark. An important part of tidal water navigation is working with what’s called slack tide. This is the short period between ebb and flow when the current is neutral.

Low slack tide happened between Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate narrows at 1:39 am on the Tuesday morning. Before that, there was a strong ebb or outflow current moving a significant water exchange between the earlier high at 5.24 feet and the low at 1.47 feet. That meant that 3.77 feet of water depth changed from a 1,500 square mile bay area and sent it whooshing beside Alcatraz and under the bridge.

Should the escapees have missed their window of opportunity from the prison “lights-out” at 10:00 pm and the low slack time at 1:39 am, they’d have faced an incoming flow tide returning a 2.22 foot rise in water coming back into San Francisco Bay. It would’ve been a challenge to paddle a homemade raft into that force.

So, it looks like the escapees had about 3 ½ hours to crawl out of their cells, haul their gear over the fence, and catch a favorable tide to make it 3 ½  miles to freedom at Horseshoe Bay. That seems do-able… except for the wild card.

Every trained mariner respects the wind. Air movement can be good or bad depending on your vessel type and travel direction. More Google exploration found the San Francisco weather records for June 11/12, 1962. It was a cool and cloudy night with a west to southwest wind coming in off the open Pacific at a steady 10-13 mile-per-hour blow with gusts up to 21 miles-per-hour.

The escapees and their blow-up raft would have paddled into an oncoming wind which certainly would have worked against the tide power. In fact, this combination of an inflow wind hitting an outflow tide makes for choppy surface conditions, especially in shallow water. The wind and tide action also create whirlpools which seriously suck to paddle through.

San Francisco Bay is notoriously shallow as large inlets go. That’s a major reason why the U.S. Navy chose San Diego as a main port over more centrally-located San Francisco. The average depth of San Francisco Bay is 20 feet which is less than the draft on most freighter ships. The deepest part of the bay is a 300-foot underwater canyon on the north side of the Golden Gate narrows that creates significant turbulence during tide changes.

It’s an understatement to say the water surface conditions were challenging for the escapees. It seems obvious they intentionally chose that period to run as it gave them the best odds of making it. They had favorable moonlight conditions with a ¾ waxing image being blocked by high cloud. According to weather records, nautical twilight occurred at 9:42 pm on June 11 and nautical sunrise occurred at 4:37 am. Therefore, they certainly had the cover of darkness.

Weather records indicate there was no rain, there was a high barometric pressure of 102.1, and a relatively cool nighttime air temperature of 48-50 degrees Fahrenheit. With the windchill, it would feel more like the mid-40s. The water temperature was a different story. NOAA recorded the waters surrounding Alcatraz to be 47 degrees Fahrenheit on the outflow and 50 degrees Fahrenheit on the inflow. That’s due to the colder freshwater coming into San Francisco from the Sacramento River’s spring melt and the warmer Pacific saltwater returning.

There’s a picture emerging of three desperate men with little tidal water experience making an untested run for freedom using their human technology against nature’s elements. The escapees calculated their timing to use darkness and an ebb tide to carry them along, so they took their chances. What they may have failed to consider is the subterranean characteristics of the bay and air power.

Their raft was also untested. Same with their life jackets. It’s hard to say what happened once the men’s weight put pressure on the inflated raft and jacket seams. Leaks likely started early in their journey, and this would have made paddling hard. Probably, the harder they struggled, the more force they exerted on their raft and buoyancy devices which possibly failed.

If Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin ended up in the water, their life-expectancy would be limited. An average man, with a thin build like these escapes had, would go numb within a few minutes. According to charts by the U. S. Coast Guard , in water temperature between 41 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit, this scenario would happen:

  • Shock  Setting — 1 to 3 minutes
  • Exhaustion Onset — 30 to 60 minutes
  • Certain Death — 1 to 3 hours

Did the escapees survive? We’ll likely never know for sure. There is no conclusive proof one way or the other. There are urban legends and family suggestions that at least the Anglin brothers made it to safety, but you have to question the source. It’s theoretically possible for three men in a rubber boat to go from their cells to shore in a 3 ½ hour period, but they’d need a dose of luck from the escape gods.

However, their bodies have never been found. Some historical unidentified remains were recently examined through DNA testing which eliminated the Anglins from being a recovered John Doe. So far, forensic investigators haven’t been able to rule out Frank Morris, as he has no known living relatives to get a DNA comparison standard from.

If the Anglins and Morris did perish in San Francisco Bay, it’s not surprising their bodies didn’t surface – especially if their life vests failed. Typically, human bodies initially sink when immersed in water. Bodies then respond to environmental conditions like temperature and salinity.

San Francisco Bay was cold in June of 1962. It also had high freshwater content due to the late-spring runoff. Bodies tend to float better in saltwater than freshwater, but they need a reasonable amount of gas to do so. With the ambient temperature being so low, it’s unlikely there’d be sufficient postmortem gas generated to cause buoyancy. If the men sank, the tidal action would have pushed them around for a while and then dropped them off in the deepness of the sea where they’d permanently decompose.

On the balance of probabilities, it’s unlikely the three prisoners really survived their escape from Alcatraz. However, there’s always a chance given the time frame they had. If they did and were still alive, they’d be old men by now. The FBI gave up the chase a long time ago, but the U. S. Marshalls still have an open file. They have a reward for you… if you can find them.

THE TERRIBLE TRUTH ABOUT ADOLF HITLER’S REMAINS

The name “Adolf Hitler” is synonymous with evil. Pure evil. Hitler, or the Fuhrer as he self-titled, ruled Germany as chancellor and dictator from the rise of Nazism in 1933 until his death by suicide in 1945. During that time, millions of civilians and soldiers died and the Motherland was destroyed — a truly atrocious era in human history. Horrific as that time was, today there’s a terrible possibility a new monster could arise from Adolf Hitler’s remains.

From the moment Adolf Hitler expired, rumors circulated about what really happened to the Fuhrer’s body. Many witnesses were at Hitler’s death scene. Most saw his deceased form, and some admitted to help dispose of Hitler’s earthly evidence. Despite sworn statements and hard medical facts, few details were released to the Allies and the western world. That was because Russians did the investigation. Red Army Intelligence officers processed forensics that included autopsying and conclusively identifying Hitler’s cadaver.

Because of a lack of released information, speculation of Hitler’s survival soon started. Concocted conspiracy theories began, and there were sightings of the Fuhrer reported on every continent including a secret submarine base near Antarctica. Nazi hunters followed clues across Europe, in Asia, Africa, America and deep into Argentina. None paid off because the truth was the Russians had Hitler all along.

The truth is also that Hitler’s corpse made a remarkable journey from one hiding spot to another. He was buried and dug-up at least five times over a twenty-five year period. Today, tangible parts of Adolf Hitler still exist, and that leads to a modern biological possibility the Fuhrer could live again. Here’s the terrible truth about Adolf Hitler’s remains.

*   *   *

Adolf Hitler entered the world in 1889. His birthplace was near Linz which was then part of the Austrian-Hungarian alliance. Hitler moved to Germany in 1913 and worked as an aspiring architect but amounted to no more than a starving artist.

He served in the German Army during World War 1 and rose to a corporal rank. He was injured while running messages and spent most of the First World War on the sidelines. Following Germany’s surrender, Hitler immersed in trade union politics with the German Workers Party and soon got himself in trouble.

Hitler was jailed as a political prisoner after he led a failed coup. His lock-up during 1923 and 1924 gave him time to write Mein Kampf (My Struggle) which was his manifesto outlining his plan to gain dictatorial power in Germany and expand Aryan racial interests. Hitler also met Rudolf Hess who had significant influence in solidifying anti-Jewish hatred in Hitler’s psyche.

By the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler attained sufficient control through the National Socialist Party which were the Nazis. Hitler surrounded himself with particularly nasty men and used brute force to gain and maintain authority. Some were ideological psychopaths such as Heinrich Himmler. Others, like Herman Goering, were crass opportunists.

Hitler managed to establish massive support from the German population which included the Caucasians and excluded other races and cultures, especially the Jews. He formed plans to expand Germany’s empire and gain space for the blond-haired, blue-eyed pure Aryans. But, his 1939 action of annexing Poland started the Second World War and began his undoing.

One of Hitler’s massive mistakes was declaring war on Russia. From a historical point, there was no need to do this for Hitler to execute his manifesto. It seems Hitler went slowly mad and his delusions caused him to fatally overextend his armed forces’ capacity and the world turned on him through an unlikely Russian and western alliance.

By April of 1945, the war was nearly over and Hitler denied it. He was probably insane by this time which is backed-up by accounts of his inner circle who stayed with Hitler in his Berlin bunker until the Russians arrived. There were reports of Hitler collapsing in tearful rages and hysterically ordering non-existent army units into combat action.

On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler married his long-time mistress, Eva Braun, in the Fuhrer bunker. After a minor champagne celebration and dictating his last will and testament, Hitler and Braun retired to their chambers and committed joint suicide. Exactly how they did it and what became of their bodies turned into a world-class mystery. Some describe it as a parlor game full of crazy conspiracies.

The best evidence of what really happened to Hitler and Braun comes from two sources. One is eyewitnesses who were in the bunker at the time. The other is scientific material carefully collected by the Russian government. The first information pool has the usual witness fallibilities. The second source has credibility issues due to Russian misinformation, concealment, and cover-ups.

There is absolutely no doubt Adolf Hitler died on April 30, 1945. That is uncontested by any credible opinion. Most accounts have Hitler using the “pistol and poison” method where he ingested prussic acid, or hydrogen cyanide, while putting a handgun in his mouth and pulling the trigger. All accounts indicate Evan Braun was not shot. Rather, she also took a cyanide dose.

Hitler clearly expressed his wish to have their bodies cremated. He’d learned of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s public execution where Mussolini’s body was hung by the feet and mutilated by the crowd. Adolf Hitler did not want that happening to him. He specifically instructed his staff to take his body out of the bunker and set in on fire in the garden.

This act is well recorded and supported by now-released evidence. Hitler’s aides poured some sort of petroleum fuel over the Fuhrer and Eva Braun. However, they were unable to create sufficient heat to consume the corpses and the cadavers were only charred.

There were several attempts to increase the inferno, but time ran out. The Russians were on their doorstep and lobbing artillery rounds into the garden and at the bunker. Aides hastily dug a shell crater into a shallow grave and covered up Hitler and Braun’s burnt bodies.

The bunker occupants surrendered and quickly disclosed where Hitler and Braun lay buried. Russian medical experts arrived on May 4, 1945, and exhumed the grave. They took both bodies to a facility at Buch in Berlin and stored them above ground. Two Russian pathologists performed autopsies on May 10, and their report was publicly released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act in 2000.

Hitler and Braun were superficially scorched to the point of visual non-recognition. However, they were skeletally intact which included their organs being suitable for dissection. Braun showed no bullet wound but did exhibit post-mortem shrapnel damage. One pathologist noted this probably happened as an artillery round exploded while she was on fire. Glass shards and cyanide traces were in her mouth, and they listed Eva Braun’s cause of death as suicide by poison.

Adolf Hitler showed no conclusive sign of disease or any sudden medical event. As rumors always said, Hitler only had one testicle. His brain was biologically unremarkable, but it was traversed by a bullet passage. The pathologists could not identify an entrance wound and theorized it was probably through the mouth. There was also no notable exit wound or bullet slug itself. The report says Hitler’s upper cranial bone was missing, and they assumed it was blown off by the gunshot force.

The pathologists conclusively found glass shards and cyanide traces in the Fuhrer’s mouth. They listed his cause of death as a combination of cyanide poisoning and a gunshot wound to the head. Something else they discovered in Hitler’s mouth was crucial to identifying his body. That was Adolf Hitler’s unmistakable dentition.

Hitler’s teeth were in terrible condition. His upper and lower mandibles were a mess of bridges and crowns with a sprinkling of natural enamel that enclosed tooth pulp. His gums were inflamed, and he had several extraction gaps that weren’t replaced. It was an odontologist’s dream when it came to making a postmortem identification.

The Russian pathology team located Hitler’s dentist and assistant who were thoroughly familiar with every part of the Fuhrer’s mouth. They viewed the dental work from the cadaver and produced Hitler’s complete records. They established there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever these dental works belong to the now-deceased Adolf Hitler.

Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator, wasn’t so sure. Stalin was paranoid that his nemesis Hitler would come to haunt him by people believing Hitler was alive and hidden or having his body become a future Nazi shrine. Stalin stalled and ordered Hitler’s body temporarily buried with the dental work brought to Moscow for his inspection.

It’s not clear from historical records where Hitler’s body was temporarily interred. It seems he was stored in the Russian-occupied sector of Berlin. Once Stalin was satisfied Hitler was dead, and the dental work was conclusive identification, he began a misinformation campaign to deny this. Stalin’s motives for fooling the west have gone to the grave with him, but Stalin wasn’t finished with Hitler’s body.

On June 3, 1945, Stalin ordered Hitler’s remains exhumed from temporary storage and moved to a highly-secret and secluded spot. This was in the Brandenburg forest area southwest of Berlin. Hitler, and presumably Braun as well, were buried in wooden caskets which were more like shipping crates. They lay undisturbed for several months until Stalin had a change of plans.

For whatever reason, Stalin ordered Hitler dug-up again. On February 21, 1946, Stalin directed that Hitler be put under the ground at a parade square inside a Russian-held military base at Magdeburg, Germany. This spot was southwest of Brandenburg, but in a high-traffic area instead of a remote forest.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Russia carried on as the Soviet Union and entered the cold war. By 1970, Russia began turning occupied territory over to the East German government which was communist friendly. That included the Magdeburg base going back into German hands.

Yuri Andropov, who went on to be the Soviet Union leader, was the KGB head in the early 70s. Andropov knew Hitler’s body was under the Magdeburg parade square, and the last thing he wanted was a future German regime breathing life into Hitler’s memory by turning that site into a Neo-Nazi Mecca. Andropov had Hitler exhumed again and finally dealt with.

In the middle of the night on April 3-4, 1970, a secret shovel squad extracted what was left of Adolf Hitler’s bones and burned them. There are conflicting stories about what happened. Andropov is on public record stating the ashes were scattered in the nearby Elbe River. Work-party members state the bones were so dry that they vanished in smoke. And a few reports hint that Adolf Hitler was dumped into the city sewer system.

What finally took place with Hitler’s cadaver may never be known. However, there’s one thing for certain. Adolf Hitler’s teeth remain locked in a Kremlin vault. They’re resting there today.

What’s also certain is Hitler’s natural teeth contain his DNA. Those molecules stay preserved in the pulp. Hitler’s biological profile is encased within the enamel practically forever, and DNA can be cloned. Cloning Adolf Hitler was the plot in the 1978 blockbuster The Boys From Brazil. Back then, it was science fiction. Today, technology of DNA extraction and cloning zygote embryos into a surrogate mother is not sci-fi. It’s very, very, very real.

All it would take is some evil crackpot doctor like Joseph Mengele to steal Hitler’s tooth, saw it open, and start cloning away. That’s the terrible truth about Adolf Hitler’s remains.

THE OLD STONE BUTTER CHURCH

*Note* I originally wrote this piece for the 2018 CBC Short Story Contest.

It called to me—the Old Stone Butter Church. It’ll call to you, too… if you’re ready.

The Old Stone Butter Church called from a rise, where it stands on Comiaken Hill keeping forlorn watch over Canada’s Cowichan River estuary and traditional lands of the Khowutzun First Nations People on British Columbia’s southern Vancouver Island. It’s stood fifteen decades—the Old Stone Butter Church—and it’s built to withstand fifteen more.

They handcrafted the Old Stone Butter Church with local basalt and sandstone—they being Khowutzun workers and Christian settlers paid with churned butter from the priest’s dairy herd. A half-pound of butter for a day’s laying stone. Fair trade, you could say, for those confirmed in Catholic faith and those cautiously caring their indigenous values.

It called to me on a November day when Quamichan winds blew plate-sized, golden maple leaves from soaking-wet branches, and browned evergreen needles fell from hulking firs mixed with over-protective cedars. I parked at the hill’s base along Tzouhalem Road. Step by slippery step over leaf-covered moss, I ascended the flagstone pathway, unsurely gripping the iron pipe handrail and passing a gauntlet of tree-bark faces independently judging my passage.

The Old Stone Butter Church loomed above, silhouetting what’s left of its classic cruciform architecture—masonry walls with embedded buttresses and a high-pitch, split-shake roof matching the backdrop of a gray fall sky. Its tired facade of vacant gothic window frames and a long-gone wooden front door gave a sad look compared to what was a once-thriving, nineteenth-century pretense happily beckoning parishioners within.

Outside, overgrowth of green salal and red salmonberry elbowed the church’s rock structure, inviting that sacred place back within the fold of nature’s harmony. Beyond the church, in a grassy field, a lone concrete cross marked the resting space of an elder in eternity, amid a grazing flock of wet, woolly sheep. And overhead, a ruling osprey screeched, outshouting the mass of raven and crow disciples perched below.

I stopped at the open doorway. It still called—the Old Stone Butter Church. Now louder… and longer… with its clear and definite message.

Shifting foot to foot, I surveyed the open vestibule and peered through cold, lonely dampness beyond the rotting jack arch that once welcomed worshipers to the warmth within. What is it? A move forth. What does the church want of me? With short and calculated steps, I crossed the narthex threshold and passed between the light and the dark.

I shivered, yet sweated. My sixty-year-old eyes adjusted to the dim, and they scanned the nave where bench rows once sat a gathered assembly under the pious approval of a scissor-vault ceiling. The floor—it was solid—like some form of mixed concrete pressed from the earth and emitting a gaseous odor not like old eggs but more as old soul.

Daylight shafted through openings that stained glass once filled and an oak door once barred. In ethereal twilight, I saw how a generation of vandals desecrated the old church making mockery of its teachings through graffiti sprayed in yellow and blue and red and black-upon-white with two offensive letters acting as parentheses enclosing the hallowed entrance—one a block-lettered “S” topped with a circular halo, the other a “B” crowned by devil horns.

I turned, facing the crossing leading to the apse and the altar. More graffiti defaced this sanctuary and some brute force had ripped rocks from the transcept, callously throwing them about with no regard for the past and what this sacristy symbolized.

I hear it shut—the vestibule door. It wasn’t a shove. Certainly not a slam. It was a solid and securing sound coinciding with a reassuring temperature change where the chill subsided as the light manifested from dismal dim to calming clarity. I looked back, and I watched as the circular window space above the now-present, paneled oak door turned from a clearing sky to a marvelous consecrational cross consumed with an enlightened rose-colored glow.

To my right and to my left, the gothic arches morphed into leaded stained glass windows of sun-filtered images showing Christian stories from Testaments new and old. Around me, the pews transformed, becoming clear-grained fir boards waxed to a shine with their backs holding leather-bound books filled with good words. Below, the gritty floor transpired into turquoise and lavender and emerald mosaics telling their version of millennia’s history.

And ahead, a crucifix appeared beyond the crossing, before the chancel, mounted on the east wall above the now-formed, maple-wood pulpit draped in a ruby cloth with virginal white braids. Radiant light illuminated the old rugged cross from the cedar-paneled barrel vault—the full-sized cross supporting an exquisite supernatural figure cruelly spiked through the wrists and ankles—His face a balanced chastity of agony and ecstasy, perfectly representing the sins of the incarnate here on earth and the resurrected world of salvation far beyond our prison of mortal comprehension.

Friend, it’s good to see you. It’s nice to know you care.”

The voice was around me. Not over, not under, not behind, nor ahead. It was everywhere within and without me. It was not male. It was not female. The best I can describe—a neutral voice with the feminine intelligence and majestic confidence of Meryl Streep and the beautiful baritone authority of Morgan Freeman. It was the voice of the Old Stone Butter Church.

 

“You… you called…” Humbly, I responded. I wasn’t scared nor alarmed. Not surprised or astounded. It felt natural to accept and submit, realizing some profound life change was occurring—I was entering an epiphany—and I was duty-bound to listen. “Why? Why have you called?”

Because you are ready.” The voice was matter-of-fact. Straight-to-the-point. Kind of like Spock.

“Ready for… what? I… I don’t understand.” Perplexity stifled my speech.

When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.” The church’s voice confidently quoted a proverb. “You are ready to accomplish a task for me. I’ve called to instruct you.”

It was instinct to find the mouth—to look at the lips—that uttered my calling. I looked aside, viewing a black cast iron stove now convecting heat waves with the sensual smell of burning coal. Candle flickers accented gas lamps, allowing an ideal taste of comfort with glory. Only a parish remained to assemble, and this virtual reality of a bygone era would be consciously complete.

“How can… What can… I possibly do?”

I need your help spreading a message.” The church was clear and concise, but firm. “To connect with people like yourself who are ready to receive the message. Several messages, actually, wrapped into one.”

“I… I… I’ll do what I can.”

An apprehensive urge overwhelmed me. I’m not Catholic, not baptized or raised in the faith. And I’m not a practicing Christian, but I had an instant respect for this church’s voice. There was something here I’d missed in my life. Now, coming into a period of retirement and retrospection, it was time. Time to listen. Unconsciously, I knelt at the crossing—genuflecting, I’m told they call it—and I opened my mind.

I’ll outline my message…” The church paused, as if reflecting upon itself. “First, a bit of my background… how I came to present the physical state you walked to… how I lost tangible dignity but retained the inner strength and self-respect you see now.”

I stood, turning about and taking in a marvelous blend of tradition, order and décor. How something, someone, of such splendor could be so maliciously neglected seemed incomprehensible. And, how a bastion of civilization like a carefully crafted church could miraculously survive, despite infernal attempts to destroy it. Clearly, there was an answer in the message I was about to pass on.

I had ten years of good run.” The church mused. “My builders were mixed. Local native people and immigrant Europeans. It’s much like how the country, the continent, was civilized… if you choose to use that term. But, like all organizations, there has to be mutual respect for every culture, faith, and belief involved. That’s a grounded principle in every society, regardless if Christian based, traditional native, or any type of religion based on history, doctrine and decent human principles. That didn’t happen with me, now called the Old Stone Butter Church.”

I detected emotion. The voice reminisced as if struggling to resolve the past and conform to, yet help shape the present and future. I listened.

My decline began with a culture clash. Mistrust and suspicion. As you saw, my crafters had considerable skills and built my structure soundly with what they had. Rock. Wood. Mortar. They appointed me with handsome glass and hand-wrought iron. They built me as they saw fit, according to one-sided specifications. That was the Christian spectral view. Not the vision of spirituality from the Khowutzun people who have their own teachings to be respected.”

“What happened?” I was enthralled. “How did you fall into such shamble?”

After ten years, the division between Caucasian settlers and indigenous landowners became unbearably stressed. Intolerance, by some in my Christian congregation, of native beliefs and values… not all by any means… forced my aboriginal followers to evict the parish from their lands. Oh, there were falsehoods spread of me being haunted and possessed by dark forces, but the reason… the truth… remains as often is… cultures are ignorantly disrespectful of each other despite a clear interconnectedness, and universal value, of all humanity.”

“And?”

They stripped me of possessions… leaving me to stand bare… a witness to the world of religious strife and the resilience to represent truth for those wishing to find it. They… the Christian parishioners… took my stained glass windows, my oak doors, my pews, my altar, and my beloved crucifix away to a new location on non-native land and erected a new church to represent their clique. I remained empty… the Old Stone Butter Church… a vulnerable victim to vandals.

“This is a shameful story.” I felt a throat lump, a sense of pity, yet profound curiosity. What do you want me to do?

But, they didn’t take my spirit…

“…no…”

“… and you’re wondering what I want you to do. I need to confide before revealing my message. There is nothing holy about me. I’m just a human-built old rubble block, but I’m symbolic of a timeless truth. You don’t need me as a physical building to worship in or pray to. You can do that anywhere, and that’s what today’s masses are discovering… what they’re seeking. But most haven’t received the message, yet they’re ready. Many describe themselves as ‘Nones’. That being they don’t subscribe to any set religion.”

“Yes.”

These are the ones I want to reach. It’s not that they’re atheist or agnostic, and they’re not so indoctrinated in religious dogma that they can’t be reached. No. Most Nones are too busy with life’s concerns to stop and reflect on what’s really important… what the core truth is in mortal existence and how I… an old relic… can help them ground.”

“I follow your past. And think I understand where you’re going.” I stayed fast, waiting for revelation. “But why call on me?”

Because you are one of the most powerful people in society. Your kind has always been the most influential. The most persuasive force.”

“What? How am I powerful? I’m not an emperor, a politician… business tycoon. And I’m by no means an entertainment or religious icon.”

Remind me of what you do for a living.”

“I’m… I’m a writer. I write books. Articles. Web pages. Do op-eds for the HuffPost. Like, whatever pays the bills.”

Precisely. You’re a scribe. Scribes have always been the most powerful force in humanity. Emperors? Politicians? Tycoons? And religious icons and pop-entertainers? They come and they go and they’re at the mercy of scribes. They beg scribes for exposure… favorable, if they can get it. Otherwise, they fall at the scribes’ peril. Not at a foe’s sword but at a scribe’s quill.”

“You want me to write for you?” I wasn’t sure. “I am… honored… privileged… what is your message… how do you want my approach?”

Getting my word out has never been easier. But The church calculated. “Telling it properly is the challenge. Today, you, the scribe, have unlimited access to the masses. You have your blog and website. You have social media platforms. You have connections with mainstream media you’ve built through years of credibility as a respected scribe. People will listen to you. If you present my message in a way they understand, it will help them function in the world as productive and contributing society members. And they will spread it through word of mouth… rather, today, word of mouse.

“Word-of-mouse…”

It starts with something being in it for them… especially the vulnerable Nones who have limited grounding or conviction in conventional spiritual health and worship-prescribed happiness.”

“What should I tell them?”

Start my message by reassuring people that no religion has a monopoly on truth. But, most of the world’s religions have universal core concepts in their doctrine. Your human nature… it’s the cyclical nature of the universe… like the Khowutzen people knew and taught. You move forward from birth to death, after which you go back where you came from. It’s what you do unto, with, and for others during your earthly life now that matters. Not stocking-up self-important spirituality for some later event. As a side note, the concepts of heaven and hell are what you make for yourself while you exist here in human form.”

I nodded. There was no need for note taking.

There is no limit to your human potential, but there is a limit to the time you have in your ethereal lifespan. It’s incumbent for you to use your precious time as wisely as you can. That means enlightening… knowing… your internal world of health and welfare so you can help others to help themselves. That’s my core message… it’s your purpose. Know yourself and be healthy in yourself. Then help others to help themselves. Build your placid world not with vain material assets… ultimately, build your internal peace with placid external relationships. Doing so… you make yourself and others… happy. And you don’t need a church for that.”

The church said no more. I heard what was in it for the Nones and the Scribes. It was now time to go.

Its candles and lamps extinguished. Its coal stove went out. Its stained glass turned back to open sky, and its oak front door released. Its pews were gone as was its crucifix holding the representation of human divinity. And its smell… the smell of old soul… returned.

I left the Old Stone Butter Church with a purpose—a purpose I suppose was there all along. I’ve new-found happiness and reinvigorated spiritual health. My mission is sharing the message with those receptive to hearing timeless truth. Now, I’m at my keyboard with the power of the internet—billions of interconnected souls potentially at my reach—and I start by scribing these words:

It called to me—the Old Stone Butter Church. It’ll call to you, too… if you’re ready.