A few months ago, my friend recommended that I read the autobiography of James Shelby Downard. I didn’t recognise the name, but it turned out that this Downard guy is a mysterious figure in the conspiracy theory world. It’s not that he was into mysterious topics (although he definitely was). His life, output and reputation are shrouded in uncertainty. I mentioned him recently in my post about Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger books. The reference to him in the first of these books is quite vague, and he’s only mentioned as Mr. Downard. Wilson describes hearing a tape recording of a conversation between Downard and Jim Brandon (aka William Grimstad, a notorious white supremacist). In this conversation (some of which can be heard here) Downard and Grimstad supposedly set out a theory about how the Illuminati are preparing the world for UFO contact. More than a decade later, an essay by Downard appeared in Feral House’s Apocalypse Culture. Apocalypse Culture is an infamous collection of essays from some of the most bizarre and disgusting fringes of society. Kill King 33, Downard’s essay, is one of the strangest pieces of writing in there. It basically blames the killing of JFK on the Freemasons. It’s an abridged version of a longer piece of writing that appeared in another Feral House book a few years later. The revised version of Apocalypse Culture replaces it with another essay by Downard, and Apocalypse Culture II features yet another essay by him. It was through these appearances that the work of Downard came to attention of mainstream conspiracists.

A few years after he died, Feral House published Downard’s autobiography. It such a bizarre piece of writing that it convinced some people that James Shelby Downard was actually a hoax perpetrated by Michael A. Hoffman II (his pal and collaborator) and Adam Parfrey. This doesn’t make sense to me as Robert Anton Wilson came across him well before these two collaborated. Also, I feel that if somebody was going to make up a person, they would put more effort into making things seem believable. The writing here is far too ludicrous for me to imagine that a person wanted me to believe it. How many 5 year olds would think of circumcising themselves to get out of a pickle? A lot of this book is made up of memories that were wiped from Downard’s mind as a young man which he later recalled. The way that he got these memories back isn’t clearly outlined, and most of them are so hazy and unbelievable that I suspect they were just dreams.

James Shelby Downard’s The Carnivals of Life and Death: My Profane Youth, 1913-1935

Unfortunately, while this book does touch on aspects of conspiracy theories, it doesn’t do so in a meaningful or interesting way. The enjoyment that comes from reading this text is derived solely from the surprise that an adult man could write such bizarre nonsense. I don’t normally summarize books chapter by chapter, but I have done so here for my own future reference and to save you from having to wade through this terrible, insane piece of writing. This is long, so if you’re only mildly interested and just want the craziest parts, I suggest just reading the bits I have highlighted. (I expect that doing so will convince you to carefully reread the whole thing.)

Chapter by Chapter Summary

Chapter 1
The author, a 5 year old boy, is kidnapped by the KKK after being arrested for smuggling alcohol. Goes on to kill KKK by blowing some up with dynamite and shooting others with gun he stole from a police officer. He later kills more men with dynamite.

Chapter 2
His mom makes him dress like a girl to go meet some men in a music shop. When be gets there he shoots one with a gun he had hidden in his outfit. Next day his mom sends him away with some other men. His gun is gone, so he packs a scissors for protection. The men poison him, but he spits it out. When he is left for dead, he gets an erection, so he takes out the scissors he has stashed in his outfit and circumcises himself. His screams of pain scare the bad men away. A few months later an old man tries to turn him into a golem by writing on his forehead with lipstick.

Chapter 3
Mom runs away with a “dirty greaser” named Count Eugenio, but she takes James with her. He is taken to Jekyll Island where he sees Alexander Graham Bell getting sucked off by a gambler. He later goes to a party where a man named “Cock Robin” chokes him in front of a cheering crowd. Cock Robin is shot dead shortly after. The KKK show up again and Alexander Graham Bell uses a machine to bring Cock Robin back to life. Then he gets sucked off by a klansman. Count Eugenio then takes James to some kind of toilet museum where James pisses all over the floor and walls. James will later see somebody cut off Count Eugenio’s bollocks and shove it down his throat.

Chapter 4
The gang move on. In one place they stay, James finds himself in a warehouse full of centipedes that are part of a mind control experiment. then his mother abandons him with a paedophile hotel-keeper, but James locks the paedo in a room, fills it with gas and then lights a match and throws it in. He then lives on the street with a coyote and eats cow shit.
He returns to try to kill the man he recently blew up, but the man actually sends a killer to get the boy first. The boy sets his pet rattlesnake on the killer and then beats him unconscious with a chunk of wood and steals his money. Mom comes back and says she took so long because she had been kidnapped.

Chapter 5
The KKK kidnaps the 7 year old narrator and his dad, and then they crucify the boy. Dad pulls the nails out and takes him home, but KKK kidnap him again and try to bum him, but his asshole is too small. They plan to cut his asshole to make it bigger, but their boss says no.
The narrator later tricks them into shooting each other by firing a cap gun in the air.
Days later, his mom tells him to go to scene of the shootout he caused to get a present. He doesn’t want to, but his mom forces him. When he gets there, another child gives him a dead cat in a box. He then attends a dinner in a Jewish family’s home, but he seems to suspect the food is poisoned so he throws it on the table, issues an anti Semitic remark and runs away.

Chapter 6
The Jewish man he insulted gets him a job at a local bar that is actually a front for a freemason’s hall. A man there takes a disliking to him so he tries to feed him to some carnivorous pigs. The kid befriends the pigs and sets them free and throws the skull of one of their victims through the bar’s window. The freemasons then conduct a trial to determine his guilt, but this is ended quickly when he takes out his willy and pees at the judge.
A man then tries to shoot him, but he fills the bar with gas and blows it up. After the explosion he sticks his pocket knife up the bad guy’s nose.
The freemasons are angry about this so they send a cowboy assassin to kill James, but James shoots him with a shotgun made out of a pipe and then smashes his face with a hammer and throws corpse over a bridge. This all happened when he was 8 or 9.

Chapter 7
The boy sees a snake charmer doing an act, betting people they cant lift his heavy snake. The boy gives the snake some meat and the snake is so thankful that it lifts itself onto this shoulders and makes it look like he is lifting it, much to the charmer’s chagrin.
A week later his mom sends him to the shop for cleaning fluid. He also buys a water pistol which he fills with said fluid. On his way home, the snake charmer threatens him with a real gun, so James shoots him in the eyes with the cleaner and stabs him in the belly. He then feeds him to the snake and opens a sewer drain so the snake can escape. He then goes into the charmers home, kisses another of his snakes and gives his Gila dragon an orgasm.
Three men jump out of a car and try to kill him on his way home, but he shoots 2 of them. He was 9 or 10 at this point.

Chapter 8
The klan and his mom plot to kill him again, but he sets them on fire. Then another man kidnaps him and tries to shoot him, but the kid shoots his eyeball out with his BB gun.

Chapter 9
He agrees to join the Order of DeMolay, a masonic youth group. His initiation ritual is held in a house owned by Count Cagliostro, and another boy tries to murder him with a ventriloquist’s dummy containing a spring loaded knife. He has a thick magazine stuffed down his shirt though, so he lives to get the dummy to stab the stabber. He then gets one of his mates to steal Cagliostro’s sword. Cagliostro, who may actually just be a man named Beppo, gets pissed so tries to kill James with a gun loaded with a needle bullet, but James shouts at Cagliostro that he is the devil and frightens him away.
Then he takes the needle bullet out of the gun and stabs Cagliostro with it before killing him by smashing his head with a telephone. His mom convinces him to go to the funeral, but he is kidnapped by Beppo’s friends to be buried alive with the corpse, but he stabs one of them and jumps out of the car.

Chapter 10
His teacher takes him on school tour and tries to abandon him, but he finds a way home. He electrocutes a pig-owner who was using his family’s faucet.

Chapter 11
Sister’s boyfriend introduces him to Arthur Rochford Manby, a con artist who later had his decapitated face eaten by a dog. His mom tells him to move out after he finds his dad living in an abandoned building. She gives him 75 cents and a shotgun and an address. When he gets there, he befriends a pack of wild boar outside. When he enters some men try to get him drunk and fuck a prostitute, but he runs away and sends his pigs to kill the men. Then as he is going through their pockets, the girl they tried make him shag comes and helps. She later tries to adopt him but it doesn’t work out.

Chapter 12
Mom throws hot coffee in two burglars’ eyes. A man in a quarry tries to kill him, so he hurts the man (presumably with a gun) and chains his buddies to a fence, fills the quarry with water and walks away.

Chapter 13
James goes to see a new oil pipe being laid. A man tries to kill him by shoving him into the pipe, so he shoots the man in the head with his “nigger shooter” (a slingshot). He is immediately taken to a house where another man sticks him in a wooden trap, but he escapes and forces the man into the trap where he probably dies.

Chapter 14
The KKK try to get him to join, but when they tell him to whip a black guy, he refuses. They try to kill him, so he shoots one of them dead and the rest run away. He then goes to free the black guy he didn’t beat from slavery, but he has to shoot the black guy’s boss to set him free.

Chapter 15
He finds a treasure chest but his friends basically steal it from him.

Chapter 16
A man asks James to look at his house. Initially his price is too high, but he drops it on the condition that Downard goes into his father’s tomb and takes some stuff out of it. When Downard gets there he finds the tomb booby trapped, so he steals the stuff inside out of spite.

Chapter 17
He looks through the stuff he looted from the grave. It’s mostly books attributed to him that seem to be written in a cipher. There is also a machine that he thinks might decipher them. He contacts the American government, but they are no help, and they actually steal one of his books, so he goes to JP Morgan’s house and gets a guided tour of his library.

Chapter 18
Downard writes to Franklin D Roosevelt because the government stole one of his books. The president apologizes and sends some secret service men over to collect everything Downard took out of the grave. He then sends Downard a cheque for a million dollars, but Downard’s dad won’t let him cash it.

Chapter 19
Downard befriends millionaire Mr. Proctor of Proctor and Gamble fame. Proctor borrows his book of cryptograms and when Downard asks for it back Proctor tells him to go to a pottery shop where 2 men show him a skeleton being cremated.
Proctor then tells him to meet him in graveyard but then doesn’t show up.
Downard’s da then brings him back to the pottery shop/crematorium where a man with a shotgun threatens to throw him into a fiery kiln. Downard runs to the car, grabs his shotgun and scares the bad man. The man’s workers then throw the man into the fire and burn him alive.
Downard never gets the book from Proctor back and deduces that it was part of an Illuminati scheme perpetrated by his own father.

Chapter 20
Downard visits another Downard’s house and claims to remember it from childhood. His mom tells him his dad has been lying to him because he resents what the klan did do him because of James. The book was written by Uncle Brad, but no further info on Brad is given.

Chapter 21
James starts a new school. One of the teachers sucks off the students. Downard exposes him at graduation ceremony.

Chapter 22
Mother and father are having trouble with some criminals who stole their house. They send Downard to a masonic lodge. The mason he meets tries to get him to hang a doll, but this makes Downard mad so he pushes the mason down the stairs and pisses in his face. He later meets a guy who tries to kill the president.

Chapter 23
Mom gets dad put into a nuthouse because he has started drinking too much. He tells Downard somebody will come to kill him, but then he hangs himself.

Chapter 24
Downard joins a military camp, but the guys in charge want to kill him so he gets discharged on purpose by deliberately getting caught sneaking out at night. As soon as he is discharged, he walks up to the Whitehouse, gives his name and the security let him in.

Chapter 25
He meets the president and both confess to being illuminati members to each other even though Downard is bluffing. The president then gets him a job at the the Bureau of Investigation but during training an Bureau of Investigation man points a gun at him so Downard shoots him.

Chapter 26
On a Bureau of Investigation mission, Downard goes to the docks to get work from mafia. They say they wont hire him because he looks weak, so he lifts a large man over his head to prove strength. He gets the job and steals some whiskey from a boat. Then he goes back to the Bureau of Investigation who send him on a secret mission to Cuba. When he gets there he buys a gun and meets an old school friend who tells him the Cuban police are going to kill him. Then he meets a man who pulls down his pants and shows him a castration scar. Several cars then drive by Downard and the men inside all try to shoot him, but he shoots each one dead.
He tells a story of how when he was a kid he used to feed some alligators and walk on their backs to burp them. Once he lured a bully into their cage and they ate him.
He kills some more Cuban police officers and meets another member of the secret society of benevolent castrati. He bribes a government official who puts him on a boat with an Obeah priestess who takes him to Haiti. From there he gets boat back to the USA.

Chapter 27
Downard buys a Bugatti but some men hit him in the back of head and take him to a military hospital where they wipe his memory with a mind control machine that gives him seizures and orgasms. He is allowed to escape after a while but he is then abducted again and poked with a syringe full of something. He loses his memory but somehow gets home.

He attends a few colleges but leaves because the people are weird. Has  a meeting with military personnel but shortly thereafter passes out. When he comes to, he has a hiccupping fit so he goes to the doctor. The doctor vigorously fingers his asshole. No harm done. He says the doctor did this to stimulate his pudendal nerve. I don’t know why a doctor would do that to a person with the hiccups.

Chapter 28
In Memphis, Downard goes to a sex circus where he sees a woman, probably a witch, having sex with strangers. He leaves before she fucks a dog, but he is more disturbed by the fact that she “fucked and sucked a negro”. The next day he goes to another sex circus with the same girl sucking and fucking strangers, but this time he leaves when they bring a pony in to fuck her.
He tries to stop these sex circuses from happening with help from his Bureau of Investigation buddies, but they wipe his memory.

Chapter 29
He trades a million dollar certificate for an old shotgun and some other crap, but people dupe him out of his prizes except for a fancy archery bow.

Chapter 30
He gets a job on a Greek ship but discovers there are illegal immigrants locked in the hold. He sets them free and they take control of the ship. Both the men working on the ship and the men in the hold are referred to as greasers. I was a bit confused. I know that Mexicans and Greeks had a greasy reputation, but one of these men is referred to as a “chink-greaser”. I guess all foreigners were greasers.

Chapter 31
He goes to watch a boxing match and visits a fencing club and a concert. The Greek calls him and asks him to work on the ship again.

Chapter 32
A famous socialist asks Downard to retrieve some books by an author with the same name as Downard, but when he gets to the place with the books, the door is booby-trapped. He turns off the electricity to the booby trap, gets books and then goes back and punches the socialist in the face. Military guys offer him a job but he gets suspicious because the interview for the job is in the woods. At the second interview for this job, he shoots somebody. He gives the books that somebody with his name wrote to the Skull and Bones society.

Chapter 33
The books by “him” are science, telepathy and prophecy books. He has another job interview, but when he gets there the interviewer attacks him with a needle. He gets the needle and injects the other lad with it. This chap dies. Then he finds the lad who sent him to that interview and punches his face for him. He joins a secret carnival society who try to kill him, but he outsmarts them, steals their chickens and gives them to a black man. He goes to a party in Florida but it turns out to be a gunfight, so he flees.

Chapter 34
He joins a new college and pranks the dean by releasing some chickens into his garden. He finds some old stuff with his name on it of which he has no memory. He would have been about 23 or 24 at this point, but the book ends here.

This book covers the first 23 years of the author’s life, but James Shelby Downard lived until he was about 83 (dates of his birth and death vary by a few years online), and I am sure he had plenty more adventures before he died. I don’t know if I could stomach reading about many more of them though. This book took a lot of effort to read. It’s entertaining to take a look into the mind of a crazy person, but this is a lengthy, dense tome, and it took me more than 2 months to get through it.

Another book of his writings recently appeared, but I don’t think that it’s a continuation of his life story. I have been making my way through some of Downard’s essays recently, and I will do a separate post on them in the near future.