T.J. Laverne
author of supernatural historical fiction
The Hall of Records
In “Seven Whistlers,” Wyatt Mortimer reveals to the McGivney girls that his Uncle Spooky once met a man named Edgar Cayce—the “Sleeping Prophet.” In fact, Edgar Cayce was a very real person—even if the fictional character, Spooky, never crossed paths with him. Edgar Cayce, who was born in 1877, was a clairvoyant with purported psychic abilities. He spoke in his sleep, claiming to gain access to these psychic abilities while dreaming, thus making prophecies as he slept. He claimed many things while sleeping, including the assertion that he was reincarnated from a person who had lived on the lost continent of Atlantis.
If you’re not familiar with the mythology, Atlantis was a technologically advanced civilization of great wealth and power which existed sometime around 10,000 B.C. They conquered many lands, and for their greed they were punished by the gods, who sent a massive wave which plunged the whole civilization underwater. Some theorize that Atlantis was located on the island of Santorini, and was destroyed by a tsunami which occurred as the result of a volcanic eruption in 1600 B.C.
Others theorize that Atlantis was the basis for all ancient civilizations around the world. Before the island was destroyed, it is said that some Atlanteans were able to escape and scattered to the different continents, thus bringing Atlantean culture to all corners of the world. This is what Spooky believed, and what he was hoping to prove while he was still alive. Unfortunately, he never got the chance. Now, it is even more important that Wyatt carry on his uncle’s legacy and find the proof Spooky was looking for. Because a new group, called the Brownshirts, are looking to prove the opposite: that the technologically advanced race which lived on Atlantis are the ancestors of the “Aryan race,” thus proving their superiority to all other races.
According to his “inside knowledge,” Edgar Cayce prophesied that the Atlanteans, before their destruction, brought all of their treasures to two locations which he named the “Hall of Records”: one beneath the paws of the Great Sphinx in Cairo, Egypt, and one on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Since Spooky already searched the Hall of Records in Cairo and found nothing, it is Wyatt’s job to find the one on the Yucatan Peninsula.
I love linking all of my books together in strange, subtle ways, and there are links in “Seven Whistlers” to two of my previous novels: “Wandering Star” and “Phineas and Aurora.” In “Wandering Star,” the third book of the Puddle Jumper Trilogy, Leena time-travels to an Atlantis that could very well have stowed away the treasures in the Hall of Records. In the Hall of Records, as well as in Leena’s Atlantis, there is evidence of a melding of all the cultures and races around the world.
In “Phineas and Aurora,” Phineas and Aurora’s team of explorers find the Hall of Records beneath the Great Sphinx’s paws in Cairo, although no one strictly calls it the "Hall of Records," and remove its only treasure: The Book of Thoth. “Phineas and Aurora” took place in 1841. So, it’s very possible that the reason the Hall of Records which Spooky searched beneath the Sphinx’s paws in the 1920s is empty, is because Phineas and Aurora removed all of its contents, first. Isn’t it?
