Richard Sharpe Shaver

Early Life and the Voices

Richard Sharpe Shaver (October 8, 1907 – November 5, 1975) was an American writer and artist who became one of the most influential (and controversial) figures in shaping modern UFO and paranormal mythology. Born in Pennsylvania and later living in Wisconsin, Shaver worked as a welder in a noisy Ford factory during the 1930s. It was during this period that he claimed to first hear strange voices—telepathic communications warning him of a vast, sinister civilization dwelling beneath the Earth's surface.

Shaver's account was never a simple story of chance contact. Rather, he portrayed the underground world as an active, malevolent threat to surface humanity. These voices, he insisted, came from the subterranean dwellers themselves, beings he would later identify as the "Deros"—a term he coined to refer to "detrimental robots," a degenerate humanoid race possessing ancient, unfathomable technology. Alongside them existed the "Teros," a benevolent counterpart, but the Deros dominated the narrative as sadistic, telepathic aggressors responsible for much of humanity's suffering.

The Shaver Mystery Phenomenon

In March 1945, Amazing Stories magazine—then edited by the visionary Ray Palmer—published Shaver's "I Remember Lemuria," a sprawling narrative that blurred the line between science fiction and claimed firsthand testimony. Palmer's editorial framing presented the story as fundamentally true, despite its appearance in a pulp magazine. The publication triggered an unprecedented cultural response: between 1945 and 1949, tens of thousands of letters flooded Amazing Stories from readers attesting to the reality of Shaver's claims. Readers reported hearing identical voices, encountering evidence of underground tunnels, experiencing mysterious illnesses attributed to "Dero ray guns," or witnessing humanoid creatures in caverns.

The Shaver Mystery's scope expanded dramatically across subsequent issues. Shaver's mythology described a primordial Earth civilization called Lemuria (or Mu)—an advanced society that fled the planet after catastrophic environmental collapse, leaving behind technological inheritances and two divergent populations. The Deros, living in vast subterranean networks, allegedly used telepathic mind-rays to torment, seduce, and control surface dwellers, manifesting as accidents, illnesses, wars, and serial killings. By 1946, circulation of Amazing Stories reached nearly 250,000 copies, largely driven by reader fascination with the Shaver Mystery.

Controversy and Cultural Impact

The phenomenon was not without fierce opposition. Within science fiction fandom, organized letter-writing campaigns protested the dominance of Shaver Mystery content in Amazing Stories. Critics dismissed the entire enterprise as a calculated hoax designed to boost circulation and sales. Harlan Ellison allegedly pressured Palmer into admitting the stories were a "publicity grabber," though Palmer hotly denied this equated to calling them false—a linguistic distinction that crystallized the unresolved tension between whether Shaver genuinely believed his claims, Ray Palmer orchestrated an elaborate fiction marketed as fact, or some hybrid of delusion and opportunism occurred.

Regardless of the truth underlying Shaver's testimony, his cultural impact proved immense. The Shaver Mystery created a template for blending pulp fiction aesthetics with paranormal claims, for channeling reader experiences into collective mythology, and for linking underground/alien civilizations to ongoing human manipulation. This prototype directly preceded the modern UFO phenomenon, which exploded into public consciousness via Kenneth Arnold's sighting in 1947—just two years after "I Remember Lemuria" appeared. Some UFO historians credit Shaver's underground civilization narrative as a foundational myth that shaped how the emerging UFO culture conceptualized non-human intelligence and cosmic intervention.

Shaver's ideas influenced major science fiction and speculative authors, including Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison, and resonated deeply within emerging paranormal subcultures. His proto-UFO mythology—emphasizing hidden alien bases, mind-control technology, benevolent and malevolent species, and secret knowledge suppressed by authorities—became a template for decades of UFO conspiracy theories, hollow-earth speculation, alien abduction narratives, and techno-paranoid ideology. His work is sometimes cited as an early influence on Scientology's cosmology.

Shaver died in Arkansas in 1975, his legacy contested: to skeptics, a fascinating example of mass delusion and pulp sensationalism; to paranormal researchers and UFO historians, an early witness to genuine contact with non-human intelligence.