Talk:The Verne Club

The Verne Club ARG (also known as The Society of Extraordinary Readers ARG), is an ARG made by The Cabrera Brothers Company for their Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, Free Bundle Magazine. The ARG is centered around lore from several writers of the weird and fantastic genre, including H.P. Lovecraft, Jules Verne, and Robert E. Howard. The official home page for the ARG can be found here.

Human Sacrifice Photo

On July 13th, 2021, a user named "Wepemnofret" shared a post to "Paranormal Encounters" and the "Supernatural Encounters" sub on Reddit, claiming to have come across a photograph depicting a ritualistic human sacrifice dating from 50 years ago during a "system intrusion."

I know posting here might be a stretch, but... what the hell. My line of work involves breaking into different types of systems. I don't want to get too much into that. Here's the thing: I recently found this weird photo of what can only be described as an odd satanic ceremonial of some sort, with torches and all that crap. Naked people eating at a nice formal dining table inside a large cave. I will try to describe all this from memory since I can't access the photo for the time being. 

The cave was pretty large. I don't know a thing about caves, so to me, it was just a cave. A man and a woman are at the center of the picture. The man is your average Joe, but the woman was not all that bad. Around them is a group of six women, all naked too. There are shadows from people not in the photograph, so there might be more crazy nude women behind the camera too. Some of these women were in their sixties, others in their twenties and forties. Some were fat, others were slim, but they were all evidentially not in their best shape. I only mention this because if I simply say "naked people," one tends to picture instagram models, which was not the case here. They were all regular people. Besides dancing around the dining table, the women were doing "things" to each other. I will leave that to your imagination. 

There were like a dozen people or so, all wearing black robes and playing funny looking musical instruments in the background. Some had goat masks, others were just looking down, so their faces didn't show. Two were wearing a jester costume. Now, that was weird, but here's the really screwed up part. There was this thing sitting? crouching? next to the central two figures of the photo (the man and the woman). Picture a 200-pound slug the size of a man. That's what it looked like. Maybe it was a statue. Maybe it was a costume. I don't know what it was. It was this thing, this freaking ugly giant slug, sitting there with them. 

The photo was black and white, not the best quality but, checked authentic. It dated from around 30, 40 years ago or so, according to a guy I know. He's no expert, but he's a camera freak and the only other person who had a peek at the photo while I had it. Next to the dining table, there was a stone altar. Same height as the table, maybe a little taller. There was something on the altar, but I don't want to even hint at what was there. I've been doing this for a long time, seen many things people pay good money to keep hidden and trust me: I've seen weird, I know weird. But this? It gave me the creeps. 

If someone here knows about what type of ceremony this might be, DM me.

The next day the user makes a post to the History sub on Reddit, asking help to gather more information about "magic and rituals in pre-Columbian civilizations in South America." On the post, he shares a screen capture from a Brazilian history aficionado's blog featuring a group of tribal men wearing bizarre costumes. One of the costumes he acknowledges to be somewhat similar to what he found in the human sacrifice photograph he ran into:

Disclosure: I'm not a historian. I'm not even an aficionado. So keep in mind that I'm as layman as they come with this stuff.

What books or papers would you guys recommend when it comes to South American pre-Columbian civilizations and their relation with ritualistic magic? There is plenty about Mayans, but I'm having trouble finding anything about the rituals of the South American cultures.

My interest comes after seeing a photograph of a magic ritual being performed. Two participants wore a costume very similar to what the "onas" (aka the Selk'nam, or the Onawo) used for their initiation rituals.

Again, I am not a history buff. I was only able to find the similarity after googling "jester costume" for a few hours. I have already tried Amazon and there's not much about the Onas being translated to our language.