Topic: Deros

Brad Steiger reminisces about meeting Ray Palmer, the influential editor of Amazing Stories and founder of Fate magazine. They discussed the "Shaver Mystery," involving Richard Shaver's claims of a subterranean slave race called the Dero. Steiger links these accounts to ancient Hindu and Roman mythologies regarding civilizations living within the Earth's crust.

The hosts discuss the origins of the Santa Claus legend as a possible folk memory of a "helper" figure coming from the North Pole. Swartz connects this to the darker figure of Krampus and the "Shaver Mystery" involving malevolent underground beings known as Deros. They suggest these modern fairy tales may be sanitized versions of more complex subterranean realities.

The conversation shifts to the "Shaver Mystery" published by Ray Palmer in pulp magazines like Amazing Stories. Richard Shaver claimed to receive signals from an underground civilization of "Deros" or detrimental robots. Fred Chrisman was a frequent letter writer to these publications, claiming his own encounters with these entities in Burma.