Myself, Theo and Theo head into the desert to meet a man named Don McKinney who owns a massive archive of George Van Tassel's recordings, photos, writing and even the original blueprints and models of The Integratron. In the last episode, Daniel Paul introduced us to Don, and we learned that he needed help digitizing his vast collection. I thought this was a great way for the show to use its resources to preserve paranormal history—and before we knew it, we were on our way to spend the week helping Don with his incredible collection. The full episode about our trip is available on the Otherworld Patreon. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the mission behind the visit to Don McKinney?
Welcome to the Otherworld Patreon. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. As you heard at the end of the recent episode, my interest in the Integratron ended up sending myself, Theo Schaefer, and Theo Krantz on an unexpected mission to meet this guy Don McKinney out in the desert and help him out digitizing and organizing his archive of George Van Tassel's belongings.
Ever since I first started the Patreon for Otherworld, I've always hoped that we could be doing more with this show than just telling spooky stories. And when I first met Don, I thought that maybe this could be a great way that we could use the resources of the show to not only help out Don, but also help preserve this incredible history.
I just really didn't like the idea of all this history sitting out there in the desert without it being fully backed up. So I flew out both of the Theos. We rented some equipment to professionally scan the negatives and photos, as well as what we needed to digitize the reel-to-reel tapes, and we headed out to meet Don.
This was really something we were just doing for the sake of it, but we recorded an episode right after we got back about the experiences we had out in the desert. We also play some clips from Don's archive in this episode. Additionally, I'll be posting a little mini-documentary that I filmed with Don while I was out there if you're interested.
So in this episode, you'll be hearing myself, Theo Schaefer, and Theo Krantz discuss our experience going out to meet Don. I want to thank all of you for being patrons of the show and enabling us to do stuff like this. I also want to thank... Theo and Theo for coming out with me on this strange journey.
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Chapter 2: Who is Don McKinney and what is his significance?
This is our experience with Don McKinney, the George Van Tassel archive, hundreds of reel-to-reel tapes, and many, many stray desert cats. This is a short preview of a full Patreon episode. If you want to hear the entire thing, it's available at patreon.com slash otherworld. You're listening to the Otherworld Patreon. By the way, I should just say right away, Don is awesome.
First reaction is that Don is super sick. I love meeting a true eccentric, like a real eccentric guy, and he definitely is. He took us around his house. He has many crafts and hobbies that he participates in, and it's very evident in the home. His house is decorated with really ornate woodwork that I think he did, and also leather work.
He does both of those, kind of carving Celtic designs into leather work, belts, things like that. But he has... like ceiling support beams that he carved in his home.
Yeah.
It did look like a boat to some extent. And then his, his wife, Dale, who you will eventually meet in the recording is like this amazing painter, but also into spooky stuff. She showed us a photo of a leprechaun. She took, I think it was a painting, a painting of a photo of a leprechaun.
Yeah. And she got really excited when we mentioned Eddie.
Oh yeah, she knew who Eddie Lenahan was. I name-dropped Eddie Lenahan on her, and I think I earned a lot of respect in that moment, which was really cool to be able to name-drop Eddie Lenahan. Yeah, Dale was great. Don's memory is not super strong. All the things that Don couldn't remember, she would remember. So anyway, we recorded most of our interaction there.
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Chapter 3: What unique artifacts are associated with George Van Tassel?
Go ahead and listen to that right now. This is us pulling up to the house and meeting Don for the very first time. Hey, how's it going? I'm Jack. Nice to officially meet you. We've been talking.
And who's this? Oh, that's Theo.
Chapter 4: What experiences did the team have while meeting Don?
My name is also Theo.
And is that short for Theodore?
It is for me.
I'm a Don and my dad was Don too, so I know how that feels.
Come on in. Cool. What I'm going to do is close this gate. Sure. Because there's stray dogs out here. Oh, wow. And they might chase the cat. Thanks for letting us come by. Oh, yeah. I'm telling you, I could use this help that you guys have happening here. Wow. What a beautiful home. Thank you. Thank you. Holy cow. Right here, this is Theo. Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm Jack. Theo and Jack.
Nice to meet you, Jack.
Theo and Theo. We got to show you the items first. And close that door because we keep the cats out of this room. Wow. This is the Integratron model. used to solicit donations by George. This is the ball and cross that Salgonda had on his pocket. Frequency equals one over time. George's artwork. The house under the rock.
The antenna on the rock to intercept thought transmissions from aliens and radio transmissions from airplanes. and George Van Tassel and SOGONDA. The other symbols are the universal language SOLEXMAL of George Van Tassel's interpretations from the space beings. And here's George here. Somebody did a painting of him. Le Frey was one of his friends.
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Chapter 5: How is the Integratron related to George Van Tassel's work?
This is the center of the Integratron.
The hub.
that all the rafters hooked to.
And these are various photographs of in progress.
His little Polaroids when he was first building it.
And here's George Van Tassel right here. And this is the Integratron during construction. This is an as-built that they used to actually build the Integratron. Actually this is why they're called blueprints because they were actually blue and they were actually prints. Howard Hess, College of Universal Wisdom, Los Angeles, California.
So we need archival plexiglass and frames for these to display these properly. $55,000 cash donation in a paper bag he gave George Van Tassel as startup money for the building of the Integratron.
He would fly out to have pie, Eva's pie, to come on in.
This is the kind of people I saw there in 1969 when I went there at a convention, and these were all regular people, working class people, and working class cars.
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Chapter 6: What type of archival materials are being preserved?
...recording it during a recording, and there's George Van Tassel. And these were people under the rock as witnesses to the re-transcribing, thought transference.
So before the channeling would take place under the rock, These people would sing hymns. They did something that made that channeling possible. And it was always 12 people. And it actually started, they got together, they didn't know anything about aliens at all.
They were practicing different sort of metaphysical ideas and experiments, and they were trying to make an ashtray move across the floor with their mind. And the alien being under the rock, I guess the UFO people thought, okay, these people are ready. We have something to tell them.
We have papers and effects.
That's an unpublished manuscript of his in there.
see this is filled with so many photos that it's just incredible there's these are george van tassels a lot of his personal effects and here's his wife who was a major part of his whole operation and the cook for the come on in we have these first edition books that George gave to donators.
Yeah, so he put out the proceedings. So everything that he was channeling, he was putting out like a newsletter. So everybody that subscribed to the newsletter and helped pay for things, they got one of the messages from the Golden Density. So all of the other channelings were from individual space people, except the Golden Density. And that's like, I don't know,
He explains how the Integratron works in this proceedings, and he kept a newsletter going for how many years, Dale? Oh, there's the Solex Mall. See? Solex Mall. I didn't know it had it in here.
So we had the little slips of the original channeled, the data and everything. I was just like, January 1952 or something, where he channeled that language.
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