The secret society of journalists using a mysterious phrase to prank editors
In short: In the summer of 1965, a police reporter wrote a particularly purple passage about a tragic shooting. Instead of being reprimanded, his colleagues turned the phrase into a secret society, launching a decades-long mission to sneak a specific, meaningless sentence into print without being caught.
The Order of the Occult Hand began as an inside joke among American journalists. The catalyst was Joseph Flanders, a police reporter for The Charlotte News, who in the summer of 1965 described a tragic incident involving a millworker named Freddie Lee Harr. Flanders likened the occurrence to an "occult hand" shifting each pawn into position before—tragedy. The incident involved a man who unexpectedly arrived home after a bomb threat had interrupted his night shift. This unexpected return was the catalyst for the reporter's dramatic description.
His peers, finding the text amusing, established the Order to honour his feat. Original members included R. C. Smith, Stewart Spencer, and John Gin. A banner was even given to Flanders, showing a crimson hand emerging from a violet cloud. Despite efforts by editors to remain vigilant, the phrase continued to slip into print and even reached jazz magazine Down Beat.
The Order's secrecy was maintained for decades, spreading through media like "a cough in a classroom." However, the group's anonymity ended in 2004 when James Janega of the Chicago Tribune published an investigation. While some, like Paul Greenberg, eventually confessed to the mischief, the Order's spirit remains; in 2006, Greenberg announced that the group had chosen a new secret phrase and resumed its stealth operations. The group's existence was eventually revealed by the Charlotte News when it ceased publication in 1985. This occurred long before the formal investigation by the Chicago Tribune.
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