Shortly after I started writing this column in 1987, I mentioned the cryptic "mark of the beast" (666) found in the Bible's Book of Revelation. I was writing about computer folklore, and I showed how this ancient mystery had become attached to a modern device.
Biblical scholars had pondered the apocalyptic images in Revelation for centuries without agreeing on their symbolism. Yet many people were convinced that computers clearly anticipated the Last Days, and were actually employing biblical symbols.For example, the European Economic Community's largest computer was supposedly nicknamed "The Beast." It was said to be programmed so that eventually it would have a listing of everyone on Earth.
Access codes required by some computers were said to require entering a series of 18 numbers - and 18 is the sum of six plus six plus six.
Another claim was that the Swedish government had implanted microchips containing three sets of numbers having six digits each under some citizens' skin. These could be read by electronic scanners and entered into computer data banks.
I closed my column by saying that I once had a computer glitch that caused random lines of 6s to appear on my screen, but that I hadn't feared that the devil was lurking behind the problem.
Boy, did I hear from readers! Most warned me not to treat such matters lightly. They said that we must learn to read the signs, for the end of the world was surely coming.
People sent me elaborate proofs, all totaling 666, to show that the Antichrist was really the pope or Adolf Hitler. Others wrote saying that John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger were actually two beasts who would soon be revealed in their true shapes.
Several called my attention to the six letters in each name of President Ronald Wilson Reagan, which seemed proof enough for them that the former president was the Antichrist.
Out of curiosity, I made a quick check of my current class lists and turned up another 666 name. And in an English Literature anthology I found poet Walter (6) Savage (6) Landor (6), who wrote pretty benign verses, but did have a sinister-sounding middle name.
A couple of readers sent me copies of Mary Stewart Relfe's paperback, "When your Money Fails: The `666 System' Is Here." This weird tract is crammed with examples of 666s on payroll checks, credit cards, product labels, serial numbers and almost anywhere else you look.
My favorite passage was Relfe's interpretation of one of the Apollo moon landings. "Apollo" has six letters, each of the astronauts' names also has six, the moon trip lasted six days, the spacecraft had six sections, the moon's gravity is 1/6 that of earth's, and so forth.
Relfe's own candidate for the beast was Anwar Sadat. She said that in 1975, when Sadat re-opened the Suez Canal to commercial navigation, he conducted the ceremonies on the deck of an Egyptian destroyer named October 6, which had the number 666 stenciled on its bow.
My mail on the subject eventually dwindled, but it picked up again in 1988 when I wrote a column about Procter & Gamble. I laughed at the notion that two 666s adorned the famous P&G logo showing the man in the moon and a starry sky.
Supposedly, the stars are clustered in the shape of three sixes, and the curls in the man's beard form another set of sixes if you view the design in a mirror.
The ensuing round of letters informed me that P&G truly WAS infiltrated by the devil, whether I believed it or not, and that 666 was still showing up in a whole range of places - everywhere from the stylized eagle design used by some U.S. government agencies to the Universal Product Code bar symbols.
At the risk of starting another flood of crazy mail, I'll say again that I view this 666 hysteria as paranoia abetted by oral tradition. In other words, I think it's just scary folklore.
And it doesn't scare me one little bit that the word count I pulled on the first draft of this column came out 666.
-"Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is now available from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to Prof. Brunvand in care of this newspaper.