Three years ago I found this forum thread from a posting on Rense: I drove out of this world for 20 minutes. It began with a fascinating post from a woman who claimed to have driven her car on a rural road as the surroundings shifted to a bizarre alternate world and back. She seemed honest, the curious and supportive people on the forum seemed level-headed, and the disbelievers were the usual snide exclusionists. Then several (apparently) different people posted comments about a book called Proofs of My Return by John Palifox Key. Details in the book fit the woman's story! Allegedly Key had discovered a bunch of "portals," geographical places where you can slip through into parallel worlds, and he had published a book about it, which was now extremely rare. There were rumors that almost every copy had been destroyed to cover up the knowledge. One or two people suggested that this was silly paranoia, and that the book's contents were questionable, but they confirmed the book's existence. One guy offered thousands of dollars for a copy.

The whole operation was brilliant, and I salute the person or people who pulled it off. The names are especially good! I assumed the book was real, saved the link, memorized the title and author, and finally put a reference to it on my recommended reading page in May 2004. Then in early July, a guy emailed me and said he'd been researching the book and doubted its existence: all references were on the internet and less than four years old. Still uncertain, I adjusted my page to suggest the possibility that it was a hoax.

Then the hoaxers overreached. They should have ignored me. Instead, a guy using the obviously made-up name Lionel Zain emailed me to say the book was real, but not for sale, that it was suppressed, and that I could find a copy if I spent enough time at antiquarian bookstores and flea markets. And he sent a link to this site, "John Palifox Key and the search for Joey."

They were off their game. I had been convinced by the forum thread, but the "search for Joey" site was totally implausible -- not for the trippy content, which I was willing to accept, but for the style, obviously a creative writing project and not a report of honest experience. Then I looked again at the email: vague assurances but zero evidence, the "suppression" smokescreen, and the insulting suggestion that I should spend thousands of hours searching through uncatalogued shelves of books as a prerequisite for knowing that the book I'm seeking actually exists, and not the other way around! How dumb does he think I am?

I didn't know if "Zain" was a hoaxer or a victim, so I sent a nice response expressing doubt, and asked him if he'd ever seen a copy. A couple days later the reply came. He claimed to own a copy himself (leather-bound, of course, unrealistic for its presumed post-1950 publication date), but it wasn't for sale and, he implied, the book would never be for sale from any source that would publish a catalog, an online listing, or any kind of evidence. But with persistence it could be found, again, at "flea markets." What is a flea market anyway? A vague buzzword for a dusty anonymous place where you might find something valuable. And what real item is available in flea markets but has never once been sold on ebay?

I can't prove it's a hoax, but it walks like a hoax and it quacks like a hoax. They say exactly what they would say if they had made up the whole thing. And I wonder what the purpose is. Just so some sickos can laugh at people spending their lives searching flea markets for an item that never existed? Or maybe, like Carlos Castaneda, they feel that the line between experience and made-up stories is not that important, and that they're using a sort of literary device to reveal profound truths. It won't surprise me if, in a year or two, fake real copies of the book start appearing, artificially aged and selling for hundreds of dollars. Or maybe there'll be a paperback reprint of the lost original, like with H.P. Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon.

Some people still insist Lovecraft was writing about a real book, and I don't expect this little page to kill the Palifox hoax. People who choose to believe will tell themselves whatever stories they have to, to continue to believe, and Mr. "Zain," if he's enterprising, will make some money while doing no serious harm. Hey, I'll even offer to do a good rewrite of the text before Proofs of my Return is published. Of course I'll insist that it's fictional, but I would say that, wouldn't I ...