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jack_babalonIt is no secret that long before founding the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey began his career path to the dark arts as a carnie. Initially the future 'Black Pope' was employed as a common roustabout. He soon worked his way up to 'cage boy', astonishing the rubes with his big cat act, before eventually embarking on a musical career as an accomplished player of the calliope (that'd be the steam powered whistle-organ... not the muse of Epic Poetry). Some say he was taught the calliope by the Morning Star himself, when LaVey was able to correctly guess the First of the Fallen's age and weight at a show just outside Kansas City. Others that he mastered the steam powered whistle organ to simply taunt the pack of malnourished lions that vexed him during his cage boy gigs. But the truth is far stranger than that my friend and a lot uglier too. The truth is, is that LaVey mastered the calliope because without doing so he would have been driven mad by his ventriloquist puppet.
After an almost fatal, but certainly drunken, incident with the cats, LaVey quickly decided to focus his attentions on other career opportunities available within the nomadic lifestyle of the carnie. He tried his hand at mind reading, but found himself immensely bored and depressed when he found that he actually could. He tried snake handling, but the python was soon traded to an angry mob outside Wolf's Hollow, Arkansas. It was looking like LaVey would have to revive the big cat act but then, as fate would have it, he won a ventriloquist doll off a checkers-playing chicken in a game of poker. LaVey quickly discovered he had a natural talent for throwing his voice and his newfound dummy bore an uncommon resemblance to himself. It wasn't long before LaVey and "Lil Lavey" (as he anti-christened the doll) had themselves an act going.
The act was a curious affair to say the least. At first they were simple jokes and stale Vaudeville routines, but soon the doll began to openly heckle the crowd, taunting them for attending the more sordid acts provided by the carnival on Saturday nights while piously attending congregation the following morning. This was a troubling change of events, for the carnival in general as this more than once almost incited a riot, but especially for LaVey who found the dummy speaking clearly words he wasn't throwing. Against his master's will, the stage the dummy would begin reciting the works of Nietzsche, Mencken and that old chestnut of a Beast - Aleister Crowley. Whether treating the rubes to an impromptu lesson on the Superman, the Age of Horus Ascendant or the hypocrisy of their moral illusions, each show proved to be, if nothing else, quite an experience.
As bad as this was, the Lil LaVey began talking off stage as well. At night it would begin to speaking to him of "strange aeons" and gibberish phrases like - "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn". When LaVey would stow the doll away in his locker, he would wake the next morning to find it sitting at the foot of his bed, whispering to him the last words of the dream from which he woke up weeping. Soon the doll began to speak only in Enochian on stage, only to break back into English to predict the (uncannily accurate) times of various audience members' demise. LaVey attempted to rid himself of the doll. He would leave it behind when the carnival packed up its big tops only to find it inexplicably perched back on his bed when he awoke the next day. He destroyed the doll, utilizing methods involving axe, fire and being repeatedly stomped on by an elephant. All with the same result. And each day the dummy's voice began to sound a little more like him.
And each day, even when his duties took him away from his dummy, he began hearing it speak in his head. Chanting in languages that were ancient when the first dawn peered over the earth. Driven to the brink of madness, flirting with suicide and alcoholism, LaVey found his salvation by chance. Seeking refuge from the voice, LaVey wandered around the fairgrounds in a fugue state when he first heard it. A music unlike any other, a glorious cacophony of wailing steam and whistle. He followed this celestial harmony to a tent to discover the new calliope the carnival had picked up the day before. Each note blasted clear through LaVey's skull, diminishing and inevitably banishing the dummy's voice that plagued him those last few weeks. When he stumbled back eventually to his bed, he found the doll still stowed away in the locker and not a peep whisper from its wooden mouth.
It wasn't long before LaVey found himself mastering the calliope and regaining a previously tenuous hold on his sanity. Over the years and decades that followed, the dummy remained with LaVey for no other reason than the contempt the doll produced in the man. It has been rumored that he would often play entire concerts on his beloved calliope with only Lil LaVey for an audience. A music so tragically stirring that it caused the strong man to weep, the dog boy to shed and all the clowns to nod knowingly. Eventually though the doll was stolen from LaVey by a young man by the name of Bobby Beausoleil. From there it was given as a birthday gift to Charles Manson. After what some call an unfortunate PR move on behalf of the Manson Family, the doll was seized by the Police and later auctioned off, where it was purchased by a musician named Brian Jones who bequeathed it to his band mate Mick. Mick lost the dummy in an arm wrestling contest with Kenneth Anger, who lost it a few years later after an all night occult binge with fellow director John Waters .
In Dr. Reginald Blake's groundbreaking book - "You Talking to Me? A brief history of murderous ventriloquist dolls that gained sentience. " - Lil LaVey is credited with being responsible for throwing 'his' voice into many of the minds that continue to haunt the darker side of the pop culture psyche, including the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy and the Zodiac Killer. Of course it should be noted that Doctor Reginald Blake was shortly incarcerated in a prison for the criminally insane shortly after the publication of "You Talking to Me?"
Currently the whereabouts of Lil LaVey remain a mystery and it currently ranks as number 5 on the United Nation's black list of the most insanely dangerous occult artifacts of the 20th Century.
After an almost fatal, but certainly drunken, incident with the cats, LaVey quickly decided to focus his attentions on other career opportunities available within the nomadic lifestyle of the carnie. He tried his hand at mind reading, but found himself immensely bored and depressed when he found that he actually could. He tried snake handling, but the python was soon traded to an angry mob outside Wolf's Hollow, Arkansas. It was looking like LaVey would have to revive the big cat act but then, as fate would have it, he won a ventriloquist doll off a checkers-playing chicken in a game of poker. LaVey quickly discovered he had a natural talent for throwing his voice and his newfound dummy bore an uncommon resemblance to himself. It wasn't long before LaVey and "Lil Lavey" (as he anti-christened the doll) had themselves an act going.
The act was a curious affair to say the least. At first they were simple jokes and stale Vaudeville routines, but soon the doll began to openly heckle the crowd, taunting them for attending the more sordid acts provided by the carnival on Saturday nights while piously attending congregation the following morning. This was a troubling change of events, for the carnival in general as this more than once almost incited a riot, but especially for LaVey who found the dummy speaking clearly words he wasn't throwing. Against his master's will, the stage the dummy would begin reciting the works of Nietzsche, Mencken and that old chestnut of a Beast - Aleister Crowley. Whether treating the rubes to an impromptu lesson on the Superman, the Age of Horus Ascendant or the hypocrisy of their moral illusions, each show proved to be, if nothing else, quite an experience.
As bad as this was, the Lil LaVey began talking off stage as well. At night it would begin to speaking to him of "strange aeons" and gibberish phrases like - "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn". When LaVey would stow the doll away in his locker, he would wake the next morning to find it sitting at the foot of his bed, whispering to him the last words of the dream from which he woke up weeping. Soon the doll began to speak only in Enochian on stage, only to break back into English to predict the (uncannily accurate) times of various audience members' demise. LaVey attempted to rid himself of the doll. He would leave it behind when the carnival packed up its big tops only to find it inexplicably perched back on his bed when he awoke the next day. He destroyed the doll, utilizing methods involving axe, fire and being repeatedly stomped on by an elephant. All with the same result. And each day the dummy's voice began to sound a little more like him.
And each day, even when his duties took him away from his dummy, he began hearing it speak in his head. Chanting in languages that were ancient when the first dawn peered over the earth. Driven to the brink of madness, flirting with suicide and alcoholism, LaVey found his salvation by chance. Seeking refuge from the voice, LaVey wandered around the fairgrounds in a fugue state when he first heard it. A music unlike any other, a glorious cacophony of wailing steam and whistle. He followed this celestial harmony to a tent to discover the new calliope the carnival had picked up the day before. Each note blasted clear through LaVey's skull, diminishing and inevitably banishing the dummy's voice that plagued him those last few weeks. When he stumbled back eventually to his bed, he found the doll still stowed away in the locker and not a peep whisper from its wooden mouth.
It wasn't long before LaVey found himself mastering the calliope and regaining a previously tenuous hold on his sanity. Over the years and decades that followed, the dummy remained with LaVey for no other reason than the contempt the doll produced in the man. It has been rumored that he would often play entire concerts on his beloved calliope with only Lil LaVey for an audience. A music so tragically stirring that it caused the strong man to weep, the dog boy to shed and all the clowns to nod knowingly. Eventually though the doll was stolen from LaVey by a young man by the name of Bobby Beausoleil. From there it was given as a birthday gift to Charles Manson. After what some call an unfortunate PR move on behalf of the Manson Family, the doll was seized by the Police and later auctioned off, where it was purchased by a musician named Brian Jones who bequeathed it to his band mate Mick. Mick lost the dummy in an arm wrestling contest with Kenneth Anger, who lost it a few years later after an all night occult binge with fellow director John Waters .
In Dr. Reginald Blake's groundbreaking book - "You Talking to Me? A brief history of murderous ventriloquist dolls that gained sentience. " - Lil LaVey is credited with being responsible for throwing 'his' voice into many of the minds that continue to haunt the darker side of the pop culture psyche, including the Son of Sam, John Wayne Gacy and the Zodiac Killer. Of course it should be noted that Doctor Reginald Blake was shortly incarcerated in a prison for the criminally insane shortly after the publication of "You Talking to Me?"
Currently the whereabouts of Lil LaVey remain a mystery and it currently ranks as number 5 on the United Nation's black list of the most insanely dangerous occult artifacts of the 20th Century.