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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Fayette Factor

http://www.lorencoleman.com/fayette_factor.html

A mass UFO sighting this week in Lafayette, Colorado reignites The Fortean "Fayette Factor". For those unfamiliar with the term, I suggest following the above link to the article written by author Loren Coleman or continue reading the reprint below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/25/lafayette-ufo-sighting-dr_n_840522.html

Fresh Fascination Focuses on the Fayette Factor

March 17, 2004
by Loren Coleman

The Fayette Factor has been examined for years by collectors of Forteana, but recent attention may be the highest in years.

One of the first to think about this special name and its link to phenomenal events was William Grimstad, who would write of it in his essay, "Fateful Fayette," (Fortean Times No. 25, Spring 1978).

Since then, several items on this lexilink between Fayette (as well as its related forms - Lafayette, La Fayette, Fayetteville) and high strangeness have been published. In his book, Weird America (New York: EP Dutton, 1978), Jim Brandon (a pen name for Bill Grimstad) mentioned several Fayette hot spots but did not dwell on them. In exchanges with Bill, a small group of Forteans discussed the Fayette Factor privately throughout the late 1970s. It was not until Brandon's The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit (Firebird Press, 1983) and Mysterious America (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983) that more in-depth analyses of the Fayette "coincidences" seriously occurred. These examinations were followed by updates and other comments in Mysterious America: The Revised Edition (NY: Paraview, 2001), and Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (NY: Paraview, 2002), Furthermore, the appearance of widely available material on the Fayette Factor started routinely being posted online during the 1990s.

Attention to other links to other locations, such as my discovery that LaGrange is also an associated hot name, apparently due to the fact the name Chateau de LaGrange was the French home of the Marquis de Lafayette, evolved during the last twenty years of writings on the subject.

The cities, towns, and counties across the United States, which are the Fortean hotspots linked to the Fayette Factor, are tied to the renamed Masonic lodges and affiliated sites that the Marquis de Lafayette visited on his grand tour of the country in 1824-1825. His visits were highly ritualized happenings, in which he is involved with laying many cornerstones. The locations where he is taken to visit are a virtual roadmap of the "special places" in this land. For example, in 1825, The Marquis de Lafayette, on board the ship (please note!) "Enterprise," visited the Cahokia mounds, and the significant Bloody Island, which then was so large that half of the Mississippi flowed east of it. (Intriguingly, Lafayette returned to France in 1825, on the day after his birthday, demonstrating a keen eye on the calendar and a desire to celebrate September 6th in America.)

Many Masonic locations have been linked beyond the easily recognized Lafayette name to a broader Freemasonry focus to mystic events and violent happenings. Some are very subtle. One man's journey, Lee Harvey Oswald, from his office across from Lafayette Square, New Orleans, would lead to the most infamous Masonic sites in the country. This vivid example of deathly weirdness is Dealey Plaza, where JFK was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Dallas' Dealey Plaza is the location of the state of Texas's first Masonic temple.

This extended harmonic game appears to have many Lafayette and Masonic meditations.

Like everything else, there are cycles of interest in the Fayette Factor. We appear to be in a high phase of interest right now. In the UFO Roundup newsletter, Volume 9, Number 6, February 11, 2004, editor Joseph Trainor did a flashback column on "The Fayette Factor," which Jeff Rense of Rense.com, Wisconsin Fortean Richard Hendricks of The Anomalist, and other websites have reproduced.

Now, due to all of this 2004 publicity on the Fayette Factor, it has been mentioned in the mainstream media outright, a highly unusual situation. Richard Hendricks discovered that a Kentucky newspaper published the following short comment, based almost entirely on Trainor's revisiting the issue:

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Sunday, Mar 14, 2004
The Lexington Herald-Leader
Lexington, Kentucky

'The Fayette factor'

It was already notable for being a Friday the 13th. But some saw more in the Adams Lane shootings that day.

Two days before the shootings,-Ufoinfo.com, a Web site devoted to the paranormal, republished a tract about "the Fayette factor" -- what some describe as the abnormally high incidence of paranormal events that occur in places named for the Marquis de Lafayette, a founding father and Freemason.

On Feb. 11, the Web site published examples of Fayette Factor events -- haunted houses in Fayette, Mo., and Fayetteville, N.C. Bigfoot monsters in Lafayette County, Ark., and Fayetteville, Tenn. The slashing of Abraham Lincoln's secretary of state, William Seward, in Lafayette Square -- AKA "Tragedy Square" -- on the same night the president was assassinated.

And then there's the really eerie one: On July 3, 1977, a fellow named Gary Rock set fire to his cabin in Fayetteville, Pa. When firefighters arrived, he shot two of them, killing one and wounding the other. He also killed a neighbor.
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Should we be surprised in a year in which a sniper haunts the Fayette County, Ohio interstate, or Lafayette, Louisiana's St. Paul School Social Sciences Fair had juniors Chris Brown and Robert Egnatchik placing first in anthropology with "Bigfoot" that the whole Fayette Factor would be getting
conscious press attention?

The Marquis de Lafayette died 170 years ago on May 20th, but the Fayette Factor remains alive, well, and hot in 2004.

3 comments:

Christopher Darren Horn said...

Think i'll be keeping a close watch on the news in Lafeyette, Indiana and Lagrange, Indiana. LOL. Cool post!

FilmNoir23 said...

Yes, me too Christopher! Thanks...btw, I was actually born in Fayetteville, NC.

little dynamo said...

"Attention to other links to other locations, such as my discovery that LaGrange is also an associated hot name"

fayetteville in arkansas is a 'fortean' spot, can confirm

unsurprising on LaGrange -- its cousin, LaGrande, which flops the masonic 'g' into a 'd' is likewise loaded

La Grande in eastern oregon e.g., is a scottish rite/new order stronghold -- an old railroad town, union pacific, with more than three 'unworthy craftsmen' about, doubtless

ok

ray