Richard Moss
As mentioned in the previous episode, I recently purchased a large box of 1970s UFO paperbacks from a thrift store. Each of these books was carefully imprinted by a custom stamp in blue ink with the words “From the Library of Richard Moss”.
Naturally I was intrigued. Who was Dick Moss? As the inheritor of his library I wanted to know the man and his work, if he’d done any, in the field of UFOlogy. I assumed he was dead, as that’s how most collections come to live in thrift stores. I once found about 30 snap button cowboy shirts each with the name Herman written in blue marker on the tag – a truly wonderful old man habit that doesn’t seem to be done much anymore – starting in the Medium section and going all the way to XXL. I figured Herman had either eaten himself into oblivion or wasted away from cancer or a Romanian curse like that guy in Stephen King’s book, Thinner.
Anyway, I Googled Richard Moss, expecting to find an obituary, but instead found four short newspaper articles from Duluth, Minnesota’s newspaper of record, Duluth News Tribune.
They were intriguing.
The first was dated June 6th, 1977.
Local Man Reports UFO Over Lake Superior
Richard Moss, a native Duluth resident and sophomore at the University of Minnesota Duluth, has reported an encounter with an Unidentified Flying Object while fishing on Lake Superior late Friday night.
Moss told authorities that a “large, metallic saucer-like craft” hovered 100 yards above his small boat for 3 minutes at 11:35 PM before “vanishing”.
Mr. Moss was alone at the time and there are no other witnesses.
Duluth Police are investigating the report, but declined to comment, as did Mr. Moss.
This is the third UFO sighting reported in Duluth since January.
The second, from August 22nd, 1995
Duluth Resident Holds UFO Symposium
Richard Moss, owner of Moss Antiques in Duluth, has organized a UFO Symposium to be held at the Holiday Inn Banquet Hall this Saturday, August 26th from 10 AM to 7 PM.
Speakers include authors and UFO researchers Brad Steiger and Stanton Friedman, among others, as well as various UFO experiencers.
Tickets are $10 and can be purchased at the door.
The third, from September 9th, 2010
Richard Moss, owner of Moss Antiques, Reported Missing
Richard Moss, longtime proprietor of Moss Antiques in Duluth, was reported missing yesterday. According to his landlord, Oswood Bolrick, owner of Harwood Apartments, where Mr. Moss was a resident, he checked in on his tenant on September 6th, as he had not received the rent check.
“He’d never been late on rent before, so I wanted to make sure there wasn’t nothing wrong,” Mr. Bolrick said.
He reported that Mr. Moss’s mailbox was full and mail was accumulating beneath it.
”I was worried. Don’t know the guy well, but he seemed nice and has been here a long time. I knew he had the shop, so I went to check there, and it looked like he hadn’t been there a while either, so I called the police.”
Richard Moss is described as a 52 year old Caucasian male with short, gray hair, glasses, and a mustache.
Local authorities ask that any leads should be called in immediately.
They are investigating but declined to comment further.
And the fourth, from three weeks later.
Owner of Moss Antiques Found
Richard Moss, owner of Moss Antiques in Duluth, has been found.
Authorities have confirmed that Mr. Moss called them from his home phone and reported that he was alive and well. He said he had read of his disappearance in the paper.
No further details were available at the time of publishing.
Next I searched for Richard Moss on Facebook, expecting to find nothing.
There are several Richard Moss’s but only one in Duluth. His photo was a too close, unflattering, shot from below selfie of a blank faced old man with a gray mustache and dated spectacles. The top of his head was cut off.
There was no other information, but this had to be the guy.
I sent him this message:
Mr. Moss, I came across your collection of UFOlogy books at my local Saver’s and felt compelled to speak to you. I’m in Fargo, but willing to come to Duluth on any weekend you might be free. I won’t take much of your time and need no accommodations. Please let me know when and where and I’ll be there.
And then I heard nothing for six days.
On the seventh day, I got the following message.
Moss Antiques, 10 AM, June 27th.
And so I was off to Duluth. It’s a beautiful city, equal parts blue collar, rugged nature, and college town, and I figured if this meeting was a wash I’d at least have a nice vacation.
I packed next to nothing, booked a room in the cheapest motel I could find – the Starlite, it was called, $40 a night, cash at the desk, next to a Hardee’s (the employee I spoke with noted this like it was a feature) – and set off.
I pulled up to the one story motel at 11 PM on Friday. There were a few other battered cars in the parking lot, but the Starlite was clearly not doing the business it maybe did when it was built in, let’s say, the 50s.
I checked in, got settled in my room – not much, but not bad – and fell asleep four pages into one of Dick Moss’s UFO books.
In the morning, I googled Moss Antiques, 4 blocks away, and set off on foot. It was in a charmingly rundown shopping district in row of brick storefronts, between a diner and a place that sold outdoor goods.
I was 10 minutes early and according to the sign on the door the place wasn’t open on Saturdays, so I knocked, which felt weird, but Richard Moss was at the door in a moment. I think he’d been behind it waiting for me.
“Reid, I presume? Got ID?”
“Yes,” I said, a bit taken aback but ready for weirdness and happy to oblige.
Apparently satisfied that I was who I said I was, he let me in to the dimly lit, musty store, and retreated to a back room.
He looked old, much older than his 62 years, but unremarkable. Short, a bit hunched, bald, but for some grey fuzz around the sides and a trim grey mustache, pale skin dotted with liver spots, dressed in a tucked in button down oxford shirt, pressed khakis, and padded, beat up loafers.
I followed him past old lamps, dolls, toys, knickknacks in glass cases – nothing remarkable about his shop either.
He sat at an old oak desk, piled with papers, and I sat across from him, on a chair I had to clear off and pull from the corner.
He stared at me for a full minute, unblinking. I stared back, wanting him to start. I was starting to imagine his skin subtly undulating when he finally spoke.
“You found my books” he said, almost a sigh.
“I did. I was extremely excited to find them. A banner day at the thrift store. Why’d you get rid of them?”
“Why? I needed to move on with my life. Will you excuse me for a moment?”
He rose from his chair with an old man groan, stretched his whole body, like a cat, shook his head as though trying to wake from a dream, cracked his jaw, and shuffled out the open door. He shut it behind him.
This was very weird, but that’s what I’d come here for.
I sat, thinking this over. This guy was acting odd, but so was I. Why did I come here? What did I expect to learn? He doesn’t owe me anything, I just bought his old books, so I should just stay patient and accept what comes. If this guy was really abducted by aliens – or thinks he was, anyway – it’s probably affected him in ways I can’t even imagine. But why did he even agree to meet me, if he’s so over all of this?
And then I felt something . . . shift, somehow. I can’t explain exactly what it was, just a feeling in the air. The vibe, maybe, though I’m hesitant to use that word. Where there had been nothing, now there was a palpable anxiety. Not just in me – I’m used to that, but around me.
I was beginning to squirm a bit, feeling hotter and hotter and there was a knock at the door and I began to turn around, startled, and that’s the last thing I remember, before waking up in my bed, fully clothed, at the Starlite Motel.
I felt groggy, confused, but unhurt. I looked at the clock, it said 3 AM. I opened the window shade and it definitely looked like that was an accurate account of the time. On a hunch, I went to my phone to check the date. June 29th.
I was missing a full day. I racked my brain for any memory of what had happened. There was a flash of a tentacle and maybe a . . . smiling, vaguely sexy alien woman? So I shut it down. I wasn’t hurt. I could block out these memories. I’d blocked out – not worse, but pretty bad. I had a good life at home and didn’t need this.
Maybe Dick Moss was right. It was time to put this whole UFO thing behind me.
I packed up my few things, and went home, never to speak of any of this again.
But then there was the dream, always this, every night:
I’m on an operating table in a dark room, with a bright light shining in my face. I can hear Richard Moss’s voice coming from somewhere I can’t place, almost in my head. He’s apologizing, but his voice is cold, uninflected.
I can see vague movement in the dark behind the light. The shapes are, to quote noted racist, HP Lovecraft, unspeakable.
Sometimes I get a quick glimpse of my elementary school gym teacher, Mr. Disher wearing a tophat and blowing a whistle with a mouth full of deviled eggs, but I think that’s just my regular dream life intruding on a repressed memory.
And then the light goes out and I’m awake, sweating and panicked.
Every night.
I couldn’t live like this. I had to confront what had happened to me.
So I did the only thing I could think of and took Whitley Strieber’s lead – I had recently read Communion, about his own abduction experience – and sought out a hypnotherapist to retrieve my blocked memories.
The man I found, through a quick google search, was named Darnold Bumber. I picked him because he was the only one that advertised hypno-regression and he had a fun name. I called his office, and he picked up the phone. No secretary. I liked that.
I told him that I wanted to regress to just a month prior and he said he could do that, didn’t ask any questions, and I made appointment for later that same day.
His office was located in a dated strip mall, between a vape shop called, mystifyingly, Sports Vape, and a pizza place I’d never heard of – Popolino’s.
The only indication that this was the right place was some lettering on the glass door which read, Bumb ypnotherapy – some of the letters had worn off years ago and hadn’t been replaced.
A bell jingled as I opened the door, but wasn’t necessary as Dr. Bumber was lying on a couch only four feet, staring up at the ceiling and puffing on a vape pen. The small room was slightly hazy and smelled of something like Mike and Ike candy.
He popped off the couch immediately, nimble for his significant girth, releasing a cloud of sticky sweet vapor from the small, theoretical mouth under his great, bushy white mustache. I was encountering a lot of white mustaches lately.
He was somewhere in his sixties and looked so much like Richard Moss in a clownish fat suit that I was momentarily anxious.
“I apologize for my claustrophobic accomodations,” he said. “This used to be the waiting room, but I’ve sublet what used to be my office to Sport Vape for their overstock and moved everything in here. They’ve got wonderful products, and I’m free to help myself. Do you vape?”
I told him I did not. He seemed a bit mystified, but moved on.
“Shall we get started?” he said, sitting on a folding chair next to the couch.
“Sure,” I said. “Don’t you need to ask me some questions?
“Just the date and location of the memory you’d like to recover. But first we must make something clear.”
“Okay.”
“This is all a figment of your imagination.”
“What?”
“This, all of this, me this office, your journey here, your entire life, your bodily self. Imagination. You’re just a consciousness projecting reality. You projected me saying all of that.”
“I. I’m sorry, what?”
“It doesn’t really change anything. It’s not as though you can stop feeling like this is all real and important or there’s anything else for you to experience, but it might be reassuring to know that you are the one true consciousness and everything else emanates from you.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I don’t. There’s no me to know it. You know it and you’re revealing it to yourself now.”
“Huh. Is this some psychological trick to ease my trauma?”
“If you project it that way, I suppose. Listen, I’m just a facet of you. Same as your parents and grandparents and teachers and wife and kids and every person and thing you’ve ever seen or touched. Like I said, it doesn’t really change anything. It’s all real and important to you and that’s not going to change unless you kill yourself, in which case all of this existence will simply vanish momentarily until your consciousness conjures up a new reality, probably instantaneously. Are there other existences, other projecting consciousnesses that you don’t know about? You have no way of knowing that, and as such, neither do I.”
“This is a lot of heavy information.”
“Yeah. Do you still want to do this regression? You’ll only be further manifesting a memory, just like you manifested the absence of a memory.”
“No, I suppose there’s no point.”
“Well then, I guess we’re done here. Are you sure you don’t want to vape?”
“Well, I suppose I might as well, given what you’ve just told me.”
“True. I’m currently puffing on the mike and ike flavor, but, of course, you can manifest whatever you’d like.”
“Ummm . . . I’ll take the smell of my teenage bedroom.”
“Sorry, we don’t have that.”
“But . . . “
“I’m kidding! Just a second.”
He disappeared into what used to be his office – what I had projected what used to be his office to be, I guess – and came back a moment later with a state of the art vape pen and a vial labeled “Teenage Bedroom”.
He showed me how to fill the pen and then handed it to me. I took a puff, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t taste like incense, sweat, cheap cologne, and me, with a slight undertone of marijuana.
“Huh,” I said. “I guess that proves it.”
“I guess it does.”
“Well, manifest you around, I suppose,” I said, and we both laughed and laughed and laughed.
The end
A PODCAST, BUT ALSO ART.
