Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

Some people say they’d be more religious if the Bible wasn’t written on such old, thin, flimsy paper, while others cite the need for more pictures contained therein.

Well if that’s how you feel, we’ve good news for you. The Book Of Oahspe is only about 127 years old, and its packed full of pictures “drawn” by angels themselves.

John Ballou Newbrough wrote Oahspe: A New Bible, and first published it in 1882. Well we say he wrote it – but he claims something entirely different. According to him the book was written by his hand – but not under his control. We’ll let Wikipedia explain things:

“Newbrough, who wrote Oahspe on one of the first typewriters (which was a recent invention at that time), claimed that Oahspe was the result of angelic control, and was written through automatic writing on the typewriter. Oahspe also includes many drawings made by Newbrough, which are also said to be through angelic control.”

Oahspe was a cult hit too. It had many followers – one of which we told you about a few weeks ago – the woman who starved herself to death in a hotel room because the government wouldn’t build her spaceship. Now that’s dedication.

Some of Oahspe sounds like it could have come straight out of the Book of Genesis or something – like this excerpt;

“JEHOVIH said: By virtue of My presence created I the seen and the unseen worlds. And I commanded man to name them; and man called the seen worlds Corper, and the unseen worlds Es; and the inhabitants of Corpor, man called corporeans. But the inhabitants of Es he called sometimes es’eans and sometimes spirits, and sometimes angels.”

While other parts of it sound more like the catalogue of L Ron Hubbard. For instance, the book teaches that the biblically referenced star that glowed so bright on the night of Christ’s birth was actually a spaceship. Here’s the quote from Oahspe itself:

“When the birth was completed, the angels of heaven re-entered their starship and hastened back to paradise.”

Sounds pretty out there, right? But like we said, lots of people devoted their lives to this book, and according to what we just saw on a page of Amazon.com customer reviews, a lot of people still do. One such writes:

“Oahspe is more than a book. It is a way of life. Oahspe is filled with inspiration and spiritual truths. Oahspe is pronounced: O as in o’clock, AH as in father, SPE as in speak. Oahspe means SKY, EARTH and SPIRIT. Oahspe teaches man to recognize his oneness with the “infinite spirit of the universe”, and accept this infinite intelligence, as his guiding light and inspiration. Oahspe is a miracle in itself. It contains the highest ethical, moral and spiritual teachings. Oahspe answers many questions, explaining many profound myseries. It floods the mind of the new reader with “New Light” on subjects life and death. Oahspe is a Bible of advanced spiritual truth, universal light and knowledge….”

And there were lots of other quotes like that one. People, apparently, really love that thing. Would you like to read it? You can you know – and for free too. It’s online.

It’s not for us though – we’re far too busy. Why, on Thursday nights alone we’ve got five shows to watch. We really don’t have time for this ‘reading’ thing that’s become so cool of late.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!