William Dudley Pelley(1890-1965)

Founder and head of the nativist, ultra-right-wing and anti-Semitic American political organization The Silver Legion of America, nicknamed the "Silver Shirts," founded in Asheville, NC, in 1933 and disbanded in 1940. He was active in Hollywood and New York film circles from 1921 until 1929, at which date he became a publisher of metaphysical magazines with strong political flavor. His closest friends during those years were Lon Chaney, William Boyd and Neil Hamilton.

"Call it the Hereafter, call it Heaven, call it Purgatory, call it the Astral Plane, call it the Fourth Dimension, call it What you will. Whatever it is - and where - that human entities go after being released from their physical limitations, I had gone there that night."

• (recounting the "seven minutes of Eternity" he had in California on a

May night in 1928 when he left his body and bathed in an ornate pool "among jolly, worthwhile people".)