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Believers in the theory that Earth has a hollow, inhabitable core sometimes also believe in evil creatures called the Deros, which were su...

“Fate is by far the greatest mystery of all.” Pages Home Privacy Policy Friday, January 18, 2013 Underground Civilians: The Deros Believers in the theory that Earth has a hollow, inhabitable core sometimes also believe in evil creatures called the Deros, which were supposedly created through genetic engineering. Resembling demons, these creatures supposedly visit the surface of the earth to kidnap human beings, whom they then subject to a variety of tortures. They also supposedly wreak de¬struction on the inhabitants of Earth's sur¬face by using technologically advanced ma¬chines hidden in caves to alter weather, alter brain waves to cause mental illness,and case industrial,traffic,and other accidents. The idea of the Deros originated with Richard Sharpe Shaver, who, in 1943, told the editor of the magazine Amazing Stories that he had seen these beings; their name, he said, was derived from the words detri¬mental robots, though they were not actu¬ally robots but living creatures. According to Shaver, the creators of the Deros, whom he called the Titans, were beings as tall as 300 feet (91.4m) who had originally come from an ancient yet highly advanced civili¬zation called Lemuria, which had been lo¬cated on Earth's surface, but they had abandoned Earth for another planet roughly twelve thousand years ago, leaving the Deros behind. Shaver believed that the only hope for eliminating the Deros were the Teros, which were also created by the Titans and were heroic humanlike beings who, though small in number, were intent on fighting the Deros.Amazing Stories editor Raymond A. Palmer published many tales based on Shaver's supposed adventures in the hollow-Earth realm, not only in Amazing Stories but in its sister publication, Fantas¬tic Adventures, as well. (Shaver's name was on these stories, but they were actually. Until Richard Sharpe Shaver came along, nearly all nineteenth- and twentieth-century hollowearth proponents spoke of the inner world's inhabitants as members of an advanced, benevolent race whom it would be desirable for human beings to meet and befriend. Shaver, however, had another story to tell. Shaver technologized hell. In September 1943, in Chicago, Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer read a letter from a Barto, Pennsylvania, reader who claimed to know of an ancient alphabet from Lemuria, a continent said to have sunk in the Pacific Ocean thousands of years ago, taking a mighty civilization with it. (In fact, the idea of "Lemuria" was invented in the nineteenth century, first by biologist Ernst Haekel as a hypothetical home for the original Homo sapiens, then elaborated by Blavatsky in her imaginative "history" of the human race. There is no geological or biological evidence that such a place ever existed.) Palmer reprinted the alphabet in the January 1944 issue, and soon he and the reader, Shaver, were corresponding regularly. Shaver alleged that for years he was tormented by evil creatures known as "deros"-short for "detrimental robots" (who were not robots as the term is ordinarily understood but "robots" in the sense of being slaves to their passions). Deros were the degenerate remnants of the "Titans," the people of Lemuria, who 12,000 years ago were forced to escape into great caverns under the earth to avoid deadly radiation from the sun. (Some Titans, however, stayed on the surface, adjusted, and became the present human race. Others fled to distant planets.) Deros--demons in all but name and close to it even there-were sadistic idiots who had access to the advanced Titan technology, which they used to increase sexual pleasure during the orgies to which they were addicted. They also used the machines in marathon torture sessions on kidnapped surface people and also on the "teros" (integrative robots, who were not robots but good Titans who, though vastly outnumbered, were fighting the deros); they also employed the machines to cause accidents, madness, and other miseries in the world above the caves. Soon Amazing and its companion pulp Fantastic Adventures were filled with exciting and terrifying tales of the underworld. Most of these stories bore Shaver's by-line, but Palmer was writing them. The first, "I Remember Lemuria!", all 31,000 words of it, appeared in Amazing's March 1945 issue, and in the introduction Shaver told readers of his vivid memories of life as "Mutan Mion, who lived many thousands of years ago in Sub Atlan, one of the great cities of ancient Lemuria!" A flood of letters crossed Palmer's desk, some from individuals who claimed they, too, had met with the deros and barely lived to tell Amazing about it. Chester S. Geier, one of the magazine's regular contributors, started the Shaver Mystery Club as a way both of handling the mail and of "investigating" the "evidence" for the deros. Palmer and Shaver had caused quite a stir. Not all readers were happy about it, however. Many were furious; convinced that some sort of swindle was afoot, they feared that the Shaver mystery...