In Summary

A quick recap, as promised last night.  I'll try not to be too verbose in the interest of getting to the point.  Brevity is whit, after all, but it's hard, because there are a lot of details and I can never be sure which of them are important.

Growing up, my parents were divorced.  My mother was an ex-Catholic-turned-atheist and my father was... eccentric.  My mother had primary custody of me, but I saw my dad for a weekend every few weeks.  When I was fourteen, he disappeared off of the face of the Earth, leaving behind a lot of unanswered questions.

My dad had a very diverse set of spiritual beliefs, and I've never been able to classify them.  I initially went to the message board /X/ to share some of his more peculiar beliefs (and stories about and experiences with him) from when I was little, in the hopes that they could help shed some light on where his ideas came from.

The best descriptions that they came up with were that he is "eclectic," a "general occultist," and that he drew his ideas on spirituality from many sources, and didn't follow a specific path or religion.  However, some people later pointed out trends implicating him with Thelema, a kind of occult practice founded by Aleister Crowley.  (Much debate ensued as to what degree of involvement he held, and several practitioners of Thelema graced us with their insight.)

Included among the many things he left behind is a strangely expansive list of properties around New England and even as far West as Nebraska.  Many of these properties were abandoned before he even disappeared, and my mother and I knew nothing of them.  His own finances were also something of a mystery.  The lawyer I've been talking to about his accounts tells me that his funds primarily came through a suspicious landscaping company and from World War II bonds bought in his name long before he was born.

I also have a number of his old possessions on hand, including books, journals, and knick-knacks, with more in a security box at the local bank.  The journals are not particularly lucid or helpful, but have given some clues as to what was going through his head before he went missing.  There are a number of references to "C" which I'm still not sold on any one explanation of, but the prevalent theories seemed to be that it stood for either Corona or Choronzon.  Also unaccounted for are an "A" and a "B".

For more details, see the first post on this blog, which contains the original thread and discussion.

Now, for things I have to do in the near future, and commitments I've made towards working this out:

--I've promised to make scans of the pages of his diaries.  I've reiterated that they are largely mundane, uninteresting, and incomprehensible, so I will try only to scan the pages I think actually contain content of interest.

--On Sunday there is going to be a memorial service.  I'll get a chance to talk to some of my dad's relatives, from whom I have been estranged.  Furthermore, some of his old friends might show up... some of whom were almost certainly involved in his spiritual beliefs and activities.

--Later this week I will be press-ganging a friend or some friends into accompanying me on a road trip out to some of my dad's properties, in the hopes of discovering further hints as to why he owned them and what happened to him.

I think that that is a pretty accurate summary of everything so far.  It is not a very detailed account, but again, there's more information available via the first post.

As for my part in all of this, mostly I am just looking for some closure.  While this is certainly a pretty strange story, it is easy to jump in and see conspiracies and lurking danger and glamorous secrets behind every corner.  And while I am sort of hoping that that's what I find, I have a realistic sense of what to expect.