David Hatcher Childress


David Hatcher Childress is an American author, and the owner of Adventures Unlimited Press, a publishing house established in 1984 specializing in books on unusual topics such as ancient mysteries, unexplained phenomena, alternative history, and historical revisionism. His own works primarily concentrate on pseudoarchaeological and pseudoscientific topics such as Atlantis and Lemuria, pole shifts, the hollow earth, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact, suppressed technology, Nikola Tesla, free energy, UFOs and ancient astronauts, anti-gravity, vimana aircraft, and secret societies including the Knights Templar. More recently, he has written on time travel and cryptozoology phenomena such as the yeti and sasquatch. Childress refers to himself as a "rogue archaeologist".

Biography

Born in France to American parents, and raised in Colorado and Montana, United States, Childress went to University of Montana–Missoula to study archaeology, but left college in 1976 at 19 to begin travelling in pursuit of his archaeological interests. After several years in Asia and then Africa, Childress moved in 1983 to Stelle, Illinois, a community founded by New Age writer Richard Kieninger; Childress had been given one of Kieninger's books while touring Africa. Childress chronicled his explorations in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s in his Lost Cities and Ancient Mysteries series of books.
Childress's first book, A Hitchhikers Guide to Africa and Arabia, was published in 1983 by Chicago Review Press. In 1984, Childress moved to Kempton, Illinois, and established a publishing company named Adventures Unlimited Press, which is a sole proprietorship. His company published his own works and then those of other authors, presenting fringe-scientific theories regarding ancient civilizations, cryptozoology, and little-known technologies. In 1992, Childress founded the World Explorers Club, which occasionally runs tours to places he writes about, and publishes a magazine called World Explorer.
Childress has appeared on NBC, Fox Network, Discovery Channel, A&E, and History, to comment on subjects such as the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and UFOs. Since first entering the industry in 1984, Childress has been involved in two lawsuits regarding publishing; one, concerning the Kennedy assassination, failed after expiry of a statute of limitations and the other, involving an unpublished master's thesis about UFOs written in 1950, was settled out of court. Childress writes humorously about these suits in his 2000 autobiography A Hitchhiker's Guide to Armageddon. Childress has been interviewed on several radio programs.

Reception

Patrick D. Nunn a professor of geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast has noted that Childress is a proponent of pseudoscientific claims such as the lost continent Mu and megaliths on the Pacific islands built by levitation. Nunn has written that "the disappearance of Mu is very convenient because it means that theorists like Childress can say what they like and appear convincing to people who are comparatively uninformed, as many naturally are, of the huge body of scientific information on Pacific geology and cultures."
Historical archaeologist Charles E. Orser has criticized Childress's writings:

Publications

Childress's company has published nearly 200 books over the course of two dozen years. Childress himself has authored and co-authored over a dozen books, from his first in 1983 to his most recent in 2013. His influences include Erich von Däniken, Thor Heyerdahl, and Charles Berlitz.

Author or co-author