Ashlight Case Files
The research carried into illustrated mysteries for younger readers. A document, a question, and the machinery underneath the story.
Visit Ashlight BooksBooks built on the documents
The record, the official story, and the holes between them.
We read what the institutions wrote at the time, when their own men were digging and nobody was expected to check. We quote it exactly, with the page. Then we ask the only question that matters: where is it now?
Exhibit 1
True Record is the adult research imprint of True Earth. We follow the documents into books, then carry the work into stories, maps, films and ways to learn.
Meet the wider world
The first investigation · First draft complete
The Giant Frame
Built from the Smithsonian's own mound reports, the newspapers that watched the bones packed and shipped to Washington, the director who had decided the answer before the first spade went in, and the oldest books in the world, which knew these people by name.
- Part one · The RecordPage 426. Forty thousand objects. Packed and forwarded. Measured in the ground.
- Part two · The SuspectThe director had already decided. The gatekeeper. The keepers. The humbug.
- Part three · The RaceThe remnant. "So tall that we reached only to his waist." The cave. The giant frame.
"There is a sentence on page 426 of a government book printed in 1894, and almost nobody has read it."
Read opening chapters →The True Record shelf
Follow the thread.
19 books in development
Five collections. One connected investigation.
Nineteen books. Pick the question you cannot leave alone.
Search titles & browse collections
Start with the record
The method, the missing bones, the language of law, and the institutions that keep the account.
00 / TRUE RECORDThe RecordOutlinedAbout the book
How to Read What They Wrote
Open a document alongside the book. Learn to follow a quotation, separate a record from an argument, and notice where a trail stops.
Hear when this book opens No. 0001 / TRUE RECORDThe Giant FrameFirst draft completeAbout the book
What the Smithsonian Measured, Printed and Never Explained
The Smithsonian mound reports, the measured skeletons, and the newspaper accounts of bones sent to Washington. Follow the objects from the ground to the collection.
Read opening chapters No. 01
02 / TRUE RECORDThe MaskOutlinedAbout the book
Person, Corporation and the Invisible Government, in the Law's Own Words
What the law means by a person, a corporation and a name. Read the definitions and the cases that gave those words their force.
Hear when this book opens No. 02
03 / TRUE RECORDThe Founding DecadesOutlinedAbout the book
Who Built the Keepers of the Record, 1840-1913, and Who Paid
The museums, academies and foundations established between 1840 and 1913. Follow the board lists and the people paying for the record.
Hear when this book opens No. 03Who runs the story?
Follow opinion, money and schooling back to the people who organized them.
06 / TRUE RECORDThe Invisible GovernmentOutlinedAbout the book
How Opinion Was Organized, in the Organizers' Own Words
Propaganda and public relations in the organizers’ own books. The machinery of opinion, described by the people who built it.
Hear when this book opens No. 06
07 / TRUE RECORDThe Money MachineOutlinedAbout the book
Who Makes the Money, and Who It Pays For
Banks, credit, foundations and the institutions they fund. Trace the creation of money into the creation of an official account.
Hear when this book opens No. 07
08 / TRUE RECORDWho Made School?OutlinedAbout the book
What the Builders of the Schoolhouse Said It Was For
Read what the school reformers and their funders said education was for, then follow their plans into the schoolhouse.
Hear when this book opens No. 08The years that moved
Calendars, buried streets, floods and the books carried through them. Who set the clock?
05 / TRUE RECORDThe First RunOutlinedAbout the book
How They Built the Timeline, 1540-1730
The calendar reformers and chronology makers of 1540–1730. Read how a common timeline was assembled, printed and taught.
Hear when this book opens No. 05
09 / TRUE RECORDThe ResetIn writingAbout the book
The Fairs, the Fires and the Palaces Built to Fall, 1851-1936
World’s fairs, city fires, changed street grades and monumental buildings marked for demolition. Follow the plans and the remains below today’s pavement.
Hear when this book opens No. 09
15 / TRUE RECORDThe Flood KeepersIn writingAbout the book
Who Was Warned, What They Put Away, and Where the Books Went
Flood warnings, buried books, pyramids and the people charged with preserving knowledge. Compare the accounts of what was saved and where it went.
Hear when this book opens No. 15
16 / TRUE RECORDWhat Year Is It?OutlinedAbout the book
The Reset Counted, and the Count We Were Given
The counts in the old records and the dates assigned to them. Follow the calendars and chronologies back to the people who set the years.
Hear when this book opens No. 16The world beneath the account
Dragons, the deep, the firmament, the space program and the inventors whose papers went missing.
04 / TRUE RECORDDragon BonesOutlinedAbout the book
How the Giants' Bones and the Dragons Became Dinosaurs
Old accounts of dragons meet the first printed bones and the new category called Dinosauria. Follow the specimens, the names and the reconstructions.
Hear when this book opens No. 04
11 / TRUE RECORDThe DeepOutlinedAbout the book
Who Carries the Plan Across the Resets
Underground places, old accounts of the world below, and the keepers said to carry knowledge through catastrophe. Follow each account to its source.
Hear when this book opens No. 11
12 / TRUE RECORDThe RealmOutlinedAbout the book
What Shape This Place Is, in the Oldest Words and the Keepers' Own Records
The old descriptions of earth, water and the heavens beside the observations a person can make. The book behind the realm’s maps and models.
Hear when this book opens No. 12
13 / TRUE RECORDThe StageIn writingAbout the book
The Space Program's Own Record, and Its Holes
The space program’s reports, images, objects and testimony. Follow the chain from what was shown to what can still be inspected.
Hear when this book opens No. 13
14 / TRUE RECORDThe Buried InventorsOutlinedAbout the book
The Men Who Said the Medium Carries Power, and Where Their Papers Went
Tesla, Reichenbach, Keely and others who worked with the medium. Follow their experiments, patents and surviving papers; the apparatus has its own bench at True Energy.
Hear when this book opens No. 14Before the words were settled
Read across the witnesses, translations and margins to see what moved between the old page and the familiar one.
17 / TRUE RECORDThe Restored TextFirst draft completeAbout the book
What the Editors Changed, Where the Stories Came From, and What the Old Words Say
A reading across old witnesses, translations and editorial notes. The investigation asks what changed in the biblical text, where its stories came from, and what its older words carry.
Read opening chapters No. 17
18 / TRUE RECORDThe Restored New TestamentIn writingAbout the book
What the Witnesses Disagree About, Who Changed What and When, and the Words That Moved
The endings, missing passages, variant words and manuscript disagreements of the New Testament. Follow each change through the witnesses and the printed editions.
Hear when this book opens No. 18Then, put it together.
The capstone. The individual investigations become one sequence.
10 / TRUE RECORDThe OperationOutlinedAbout the book
How the Record Was Rewritten, Step by Step
The series brought together: the people, institutions and steps in our reconstruction of how the record was rewritten. Read after the individual investigations.
Hear when this book opens No. 10No books match that search. Try “bones”, “money” or “text”.
Looking for the Tartaria blueprint or the Dome books? Visit the original True Earth shelf →
Exhibit 1 · Page 426
The Smithsonian measured a giant. In its own book.
Thomas, Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1894, p. 426. Kanawha County, West Virginia, Mound 21.
Same report, p. 427. Their word: giant.
"…in the remains of a bark coffin, a skeleton, measuring 7½ feet in length and 19 inches across the shoulders, was discovered."
"By each hand of this giant frame were three unused black flint lance heads."
Our reading
Nineteen feet down in a mound thirty-five feet high: a timbered vault, a coffin of black walnut bark, six heavy copper bracelets on each wrist, a copper gorget on the breast, six unused blades laid three by each hand. That is not a mistaken mastodon. It is a funeral, for a man the Smithsonian's own agents measured at seven and a half feet and called a giant.
The same book boasts, on page 22, that its forty thousand specimens are "so carefully marked and numbered that by reference to the catalogue any article can easily be found."
Where is he now? The report does not say.
How we work
Four rules, every page.
01
The record
Quoted exactly, with the book, the page and the year. Set apart on the page, so you always know what is a document.
02
The reading
Our argument, said plainly and with conviction. Never dressed up as a quote, never hidden inside one.
03
Where is it now?
Every chapter follows the thing it describes until the trail breaks, and writes down where it broke.
04
Every original, kept
We save a copy of every page we cite, with a checksum, and tell you where to read the public original.
A record is
only the beginning.
A page becomes an investigation. An investigation becomes a book. The same work can become a child’s mystery, a place to explore, a scene to watch, or a choice to practice.
01 / The source
The research library
Old maps, reports, patents, manuscripts and the original pages behind the books. This is where the work begins, and where every trail returns.
Open the first exhibitMaps & simulations
Places from the research become maps. Ideas about the realm become models you can explore and observations you can compare.
In development
The Margin
An animated short taking the text investigations into the edges of the page: a blank, a changed word, an editor’s note.
Pilot in development
The Next Act
Twelve sessions drawing on old wisdom traditions. Reading, a workbook, and a practice to carry into the next ordinary decision.
First teaching edition in development
Before the Bell
The learning work becomes a playable story inside First Node: supplies to share, promises to keep, and choices with consequences.
Playable prototype in development
The original True Earth collection
Where the
work began.
Before the numbered True Record investigations came the original True Earth manuscripts: the realm, the buried engineering culture, and the body within it.
These earlier works have their own shelf. The numbered series above develops the newer research, one trail at a time.
Tartarian Tech BlueprintManuscript
The original long manuscript on the buried engineering culture: architecture, resonance and the city as apparatus.
Rise and FallBook draft
Civilizations, their remains, and the pattern of building and erasure.
The Dome UnveiledBook draft
An earlier book-length exploration of the realm and its enclosing firmament.
The Dome BreakersBook draft
The companion draft to The Dome Unveiled.
Faking the Moon LandingBook draft
The earlier moon-landing manuscript; the newer document-led space investigation is The Stage.
Destroying Professor DaveBook draft
An earlier response manuscript on the competing accounts of the realm.
The Unveiled Body · Core TruthsOutline
The first body-and-terrain volume in the original True Earth collection.
The Unveiled Body · Deep FreedomOutline
The second body-and-terrain volume in the original True Earth collection.
One family.
Each with its own work.
True Earth holds the realm. True Record follows its documents. The neighboring brands carry the work into their own worlds.
- True Earth
- The realm, its history and its buried engineering culture.
- True Record
- The adult research books. You are here.
- Ashlight Books
- Illustrated stories and Case Files for younger readers.
- True Energy
- The apparatus, the experiments and the measurement bench.
- True Eira
- Books and resources for healing, consciousness and personal growth.
The list
New records, as we file them.
When a page is pulled, a thread is tied or a book opens, the list hears first. Follow the investigations, the original True Earth collection, and the stories and experiences growing from them.