Dennis Wheatley - The Satanist

In the mid-1950s, while still in our 'teens, we had both become members of the Youth Corps of the Deutscher Bund, which was particularly strong in Chicago and was then rapidly expanding there, owing to the vigorous activities of a group of pro-Nazis. Lothar rapidly became prominent among them and by the time the war broke out in Europe, our age then being twenty-one, he was recognized as one of its leaders!

Naturally our sympathies were with Germany, but Lothar felt much more strongly on the matter than I did. He threw himself into a campaign aimed at giving Germany all the help that was possible; whereas my attitude was isolationist, and I maintained that as American citizens we ought to use such influence as we possessed to keep the United States strictly neutral.

In America the repercussions of Pearl Harbour were terrific. Isolationism disappeared overnight and almost to a man the people were behind the Government in its declaration of war on Japan. But in Chicago opinion was far from being so unanimous about the U.S. also entering the war against Germany. On this, for the first time in our lives, Lothar and I not only differed fundamentally, but quarrelled violently. I held that, although it might be distasteful to us, our duty lay in loyalty to the United States and, if need be, we must fight for the country in which we had been born and reared and under whose just laws we had been enabled to earn an honourable living. He held that blood counted for more than the accident of being born outside Germany, that in the triumph of the Nazi ideology lay the only cure for the decadence which infested the great democracies, and that it would be shameful to cling to our easy way of life instead of doing our utmost to help Hitler in his struggle. In short, the United States having declared war on Germany, he declared himself to be personally at war with the United States.

Of course, he was not such a fool as to say so openly, but he obtained exemption from continuing his lectures at the University on the excuse that he intended to join the U.S. Air Force, and shortly afterwards disappeared from Chicago.

The telepathic tie that united us kept me to some extent informed about him as, from time to time when I happened to think of him, I had visual images of his surroundings and people he was with. I felt certain that he had gone to South America and from there, via North Africa and Italy, succeeded in reaching Germany.

Then I saw him working on graphs and scientific data in one of many cubicles that formed a concrete warren underground. One night when I had just got off to sleep, I woke with a start to find myself actually with him. At least that is what it seemed like. He, or I, for I suddenly realized that my ego had got into his body, was lying flat on the ground in pitch darkness. But the darkness lasted only a second, then I was aware of a hideous din and blinding flashes momentarily lighting up the scene all round. I knew then that I was in the middle of an appalling air-raid and that he had been knocked out by blast. The flashes showed a flat countryside, broken only by some groups of hutments and several long mounds with concrete entrances. I was absolutely terrified, but I picked myself up, ran like a hare for the nearest bunker and threw myself inside. In my panic I tripped, went head over heels down the steep stairs and knocked myself out at the bottom.

When I came to I was back in bed in Chicago, feeling like death and with frightful bruises on my head and body. Next day I heard over the radio about the great air-raid on the German Research Works at Peenemunde, and I had no doubt at all that it was there that I had been. I can only imagine that in the instant Lothar passed out he sent a spiritual SOS to me and that on finding his body empty I entered and saved it.

On another night during the final phase of the war, Lothar called me to him. By then, of course, I had long-since realized that he was one of the scientists working on Long Range Rockets, as at times I had had brief visions of him both at work and taking his pleasure with several different German girls who had jobs at the Establishment. Owing to his hypnotic powers, few women could resist him; but his mind was always too much occupied with serious matters for him to become a slave to that sort of thing, and it has no bearing on what followed.

I think it was again fear that had caused him to call for me, but there was nothing I could have done to help him on this occasion, for he was fully conscious and I remained only an invisible presence by his side, sharing his desperate anxiety. The Russians had just surrounded the Station and entered it, and he was terrified that they would shoot him. But they didn't. They marched him off with a number of other scientists to a railway siding and they were all locked into cattle-trucks.

This experience had no more immediate effect on me than others when I had had mental pictures of Lothar in all sorts of situations, pleasant and unpleasant; but during the next few weeks I became unaccountably ill and suffered from bouts of acute depression. Normal grounds for depression I had none. On the contrary, I had every reason to be extremely happy as, only a few months earlier, I had married Dinah Charnwell, a lovely English girl with whom I was passionately in love, and I had no financial or other worries. The reason for my wretched state was undoubtedly my picking up Lothar's vibrations while, half-starved and desperately uncertain about his future, he was being transported as a prisoner by slow stages into Russia.

By midsummer I began to recover. Subconsciously I was aware that he was receiving better treatment, and not long afterwards, in a dream in which we met, he told me that he had become completely reconciled to putting his knowledge and abilities at the service of the Soviet Union.

I should make it plain that during all this time neither I, my family, nor anyone else with whom we were acquainted had heard from Lothar direct, or through any other source. Yet, when I did meet him again, on his coming to London in 1950, he confirmed that all I had learned of his activities through our psychic tie-up was substantially correct, and I found that in a like manner he had followed the general outline of what had been happening to me.

Of that visit of his to London I will postpone writing for the time being, as I am too tired to write much more for the moment. In due course I will include an account of it in a further passage of this document, since I intend to continue it as a record of the mental disturbances with which I have recently become afflicted. I will confine myself now to stating that I feel certain that Lothar is again in England, and that for some sinister purpose of his own he is endeavouring to dominate my mentality. But I will not allow him to succeed. I will not.

'Extraordinary story,' C.B. commented as he laid the document down. 'D'you think there's any truth in it, or that he's just got bats in the belfry?'

'It's true as far as I've been able to check up,' replied Forsby. 'I looked in at the Ministry of Supply before coming here and got them to show me the confidential report that was compiled on Khune when he applied to be taken on for the sort of hush-hush work he's still doing. Most of it was from American sources. It confirms what he says of his family and early life in Chicago, and that he had an identical twin named Lothar. It also confirms that Lothar disappeared from Chicago early in 1942, and states that as he was known to be a rabid Nazi it was suspected that he had left the U.S. with the intention of joining the enemy. The close association of the twins up to that time led the F.B.I, to keep our man under careful observation for a while, but they satisfied themselves that he and his family had lost touch with Lothar; so he was written off as a security risk and O.K'd. for employment in a Government Research Establishment. By the time our Ministry of Supply came into the picture he was married to an English girl, had taken British nationality, and the war with Germany was over; so, without hesitation, he was accepted for secret work.'