GUY BALLARD IS ACCUSED OF STEALING MONEY

 

 

By Gerald B. Bryan

 

Into this Chicago “I AM” heaven, which the Ballards had so carefully prepared for themselves, entered the wicked serpent.

 

It did not tell the woman, as in the traditional story, but it seems that it did tell the Chicago authorities to taste and investigate the particular brand of apple sauce the Ballards were selling the good Chicago people.

 

It appears that the bailiff’s office particularly tasted of this apple concoction, and apparently thought it was too good to keep to themselves. So one evening, shortly after Mrs. Ballard’s “So what?” query, a duly appointed bailiff invaded the peace of the Chicago “I AM” heaven and publicly served Ballard with a summons to appear in court to answer certain charges.

 

The following morning the Chicago dailies ran big front page headlines about the suit.

 

The Chicago Herald & Examiner, on the morning of October 14, 1938, came out with a big two-inch headline, reading:

 

“WOMAN SUES ‘GREAT I AM.’”

 

Below was a large photograph of Ballard being served the summons, and there was nothing else on the front page with the exception of a description of this “I AM” suit. The photograph shows Ballard sitting at a desk in the lobby occupied with his favorite pastime of autographing books (freshly sold at $2.05 to $3.00 per copy), while his startled followers stand and gesticulate wildly around him in their efforts to prevent the bailiff from carrying out his duty of serving the papers.

 

Underneath the photograph it states that the “Accredited Messenger” was “served the summons despite pandemonium among the followers.”

 

Then on page three was the story, from which we quote in part: “In a stormy scene in the lobby of the Civic Opera House, Guy W. Ballard, ‘Accredited Messenger’ of the ‘Great I AM Presence,’ was served with a summons in a $10,906.55 suit last night. “Ballard was surrounded by a dozen or more of his followers in the Civic Opera lobby when C_____ read the summons. “Men and women shouted, tried to push the bailiff from the lobby. Others seized Ballard’s arm, and sought to draw him away. In a loud voice, C read the summons.”

 

Picture the scene. Here was a man who had publicly stated: “My earthly pilgrimage is finished . . . I am here in this atomic structure on extended time . . . nothing this human form can do can be recorded upon my life stream.”

 

And yet, here he was, in his own “I AM” heaven, having his own record read and recorded, and there was nothing he could do about it. Nor could his followers who crowded around him wildly decreeing and gesticulating.

 

The record follows in part, according to this bill which was filed in the Superior Court:

 

“Some time prior to and about the years 1923 or 1924 the plaintiff became acquainted with the defendant, Guy W. Ballard, who represented himself to be interested in and learned in said mysticism and occult arts and sciences.

 

“Through the mutual interest of said plaintiff and of said defendant, the said defendant obtained the confidence and trust of the plaintiff, and the defendant, abusing and taking advantage of said confidence and trust imposed by the plaintiff in the defendant, requested from the plaintiff and obtained from her advances of large sums of money . . . under various pretexts and reasons, such as personal loans for current expenses . . . etc., etc.”

 

Virtually all the Chicago newspapers that morning ran headlines and stories about this suit against the “Mighty I AM” — the name they dubbed Ballard.

 

The Chicago Tribune headed their story: “The Great I AM Runs Afoul of a Cynical Mystic.” The Chicago Daily News captioned their article: “Mundane Bailiff Invades Mystic Realm to Get Man.” the Chicago Daily Times styled theirs: “‘Great I AM’ Face to Face with Cash Suit.” The Chicago American said: “Woman Sues ‘I AM’ Leader for $10,000.”

 

We quote in part from the Chicago American article: “Miss_____, a little, gray-haired woman of about 60, is employed as a housekeeper . . . Her life savings, gleaned from her work as a servant for some of Chicago’s best known society families, were given to Ballard, she said today, to invest in what he called ‘The Cottonwood Trust’ to exploit ‘The Lake of Gold’ in California, supposedly a mining project.

 

“Loss of the $6,775 which Miss_____ says she entrusted to the ‘Mighty I AM’ before he left town, made her unable to bring criminal proceedings at that time. She visited the state’s attorney’s office, Miss_____ explained, but was told she would be required to post some money if a policeman were to be sent after the ‘Mighty I AM.’ She explained:

 

“‘But he had taken all my money and I didn’t have any left to put up to have him arrested.’

 

“The Ballards, she said, were well-known along the North Shore as far as Milwaukee, but more in servants’ quarters than in drawing rooms. She explained: ‘He had a very large following of North Shore servants when he was operating as ‘The Master.’ A lot of servants followed him.’”

 

Asked by one of the newspaper reporters if she had attended any of the Civic Opera House meetings, she retorted:

 

“I should say not! I was afraid I would lose my temper and would expose him right there!”

 

One of the Ballard decrees reads:

 

“Compel all that consciously opposes This Work in any way to annihilate itself and blast its own cause and effect from existence forever!”

 

Another one reads:

 

“Prevent the press, reporters, and all outer channels from making any false statements about this work . . . SILENCE everything of that kind throughout the world forever!”

 

Nevertheless, despite the alleged power of these decrees, the reporters and the press would not be silenced. The next morning there followed further revelations about Ballard’s “Lake of Gold.” We quote from the Chicago Herald & Examiner of October 15 in an article headed, “Sought in Gold Swindle; Cult Leader Begs Faith”:

 

“. . . Many other persons were known to have invested money. Blue sky authorities said these investors lost $200,000, some estimates going as high as $500,000. An investigator sent to look at the California property of the company reported title to the land was doubtful and that not more than $5,000 had ever been spent there. There was a rough board building, he said, but no evidence of mining machinery.”

 

This article further stated:

 

“All that was needed, investigators say they were told, was to drain the lake and take out the precious metals with scoop shovels.” This “Gold Lake” project in California which Guy Ballard and his associates sold to credulous people was a happening of a dozen years or more ago, and was preceded, as we have seen, by his gold-seeking adventures upon mountain tops. But all this was really only the beginning of Ballard’s sensational gold-mine career — a mere preliminary skirmish, as it were, before the real campaign.

 

Since then he has really become proficient in manufacturing gold mines, and he makes them bigger and better all the time. When once one puts his hand to the plow, or rather his mind to the great task of manufacturing gold mines on a mass production basis, there is no turning back. He has to make new, bigger, and better gold mines, or else the shortcomings of the old ones will be too apparent to those who signed on the dotted line.

 

It is not surprising, therefore, to find that a few years later the lone California “Gold Lake” blossomed into three marvelous Colorado “Gold Mines.” And in Ballard’s book the great Saint Germain tells about them.

 

 “This body of ore,” said the great Master, referring to the second one of the mines, “contains over twenty million dollars in gold, clear and above all operating expenses.” (p. 40, M.P.)

 

But fortunately for Saint Germain’s “patented” gold claim and Ballard’s “deeds” placed in his hands, the unbelieving Commissioner of Mines of the State of Colorado is quite skeptical about the matter, as will be discovered in the following letter received from the Commissioner himself, dated March 15, 1937, at Denver:

 

“I know of no marvelous mine in Colorado owned by one Daniel Rayborn, and I know nothing of G. W. Ballard . . . We frequently hear of ‘Mystic’ mines in Colorado and other states, and people have spent years and years looking for them, but I have never heard of one that has been found. I look upon them as fakes; in fact, I know it is a fake pure and simple.”

 

The three marvelous, though hypothetical, gold mines having served their particular purpose in luring buyers for their book (why else should they be there?), the Ballards turned their attention to manufacturing out of whole cloth a new sort of gold mine. Not even the genie in Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp could have ever thought of it.

 

This is the way of it. For years the Ballards have been telling their audiences about the dangerous “Gas Belts” which are supposed to lie under some of our most populous cities and which, they say, are the cause of earthquakes. Many of the susceptible ones in these cities became extremely jittery over the “Gas Belts” under their feet and joined the cult to protect themselves — for only the Ballard “decrees” could save these cities from utter destruction.

 

That of course was very much in line with the cult’s usual procedure in psychologizing their people through fear, but in this case they went a step further and combined another mainspring of human action.

 

It was to Mrs. G. W. Ballard, co-originator and prime mover of the cult, that the idea first came. In her efforts to “Save America” from these earthquakes —which they said were “long past due”— she conceived the brilliant idea of changing all these restless “Gas Belts” into “pure metallic gold!”

 

That was a stroke of genius which naturally did not go unrewarded, for who wouldn’t want to join a movement which would guarantee to change ordinary sewer gas, or its deeper-lying relative, into pure metallic gold?

 

To get “saved” and “rich” at one time is motive enough for anybody. So a gas-converting decree was drawn up by the decree-maker of the establishment, Mrs. G. W. Ballard, and the blessed, gold-loving students shouted it from coast to coast in their heroic efforts to “Save America” — a nation which already has more gold stored away in the ground than it knows what to do with, some $20,000,000,000 worth!

 

To date, latest news from the decreeing front indicates that the I AM-ers have not been successful in accomplishing their great alchemical feat, for their high command, Mrs. G. W. Ballard, still speaks of the earthquake danger. The “gas” menace, therefore, is still with us, an ever-present worry in the I AM-ers’ troubled world. The luring of the Ballard hopeful by means of the bright yellow metal still continues, but always it is the new and not the old “gold mine” to which attention is called.

 

Guy Ballard, shortly after his old stock-selling activities in his “Lake of Gold” project bobbed up in Chicago, stated to his Los Angeles audience:

 

“In India there are five great mountain peaks,” and referring to one of these peaks, he added: “There is gold enough in that one peak to a hundred times pay the debts of the world. I know this to be true.” (p. 28, March 1939, V.)

 

Despite all his assurance of debt-paying gold in India the Chicago papers wouldn’t let Ballard’s old “Lake of Gold” in California alone. He tried his best to switch the minds of people off to a gold-studded mountain peak in far-away India, but this fabulous “Gold Lake” which had suddenly reappeared out of his past was a bit more real to the scores of people who had lost their lifesavings in it. It had to be explained in some way, and in the following chapter we will see how the Ballards made answer to it.

 

 

 

(Psychic Dictatorship in America, chapter 20)