Commentary on How American Media Portrays My People:
One Gypsy's Review of
"My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding"

UPDATE: AUGUST 23, 2014

Yes, this is the official home page of the group of people white folks call "Stephen King's Gypsies of Thinner".

However...

No, we do not know Stephen King, have never meet Stephen King, we do not represent Stephen King, we can not answer your questions about Stephen King, his books, or his movies. Or anything else. No we can not forward your letters to him. No, we have no clue where he lives or how to give you directions to see him.

We are in no way affiliated with Stephen King or anyone else.

"Stephen King's Gypsies" is just a slang term people call us, ever since the film crew was in town. We don't even know if Stephen King even knows who we are or if he is the one who sent the film crew here. 

Us having let the film crew in here is something we have regretted for years and had we known the trouble it would cause or that white folks would think it was an open invitation for ANYONE to walk up in here, we would never have let them come here at all.

For whatever reason, white folks think that because we are connected to Stephen King, therefore they can do whatever they want. It's very frustrating.

Our connection to Stephen King is brief. Very brief. A film crew invaded Old Orchard Beach in the mid1990s and set out to filming the area around Exit 5 out of Saco into Old Orchard. They said they were filming a Stephen King movie about Gypsies and wanted the real Gypsies of the area to be in the movie. They lined up a bunch of cars and drove them on and off the turnpike exit, then they drove around town filming the amusement park, and what they called the "Gypsy camps", they did a lot of screaming and yelling about the lack of fog and the fact that they had to bring in fog machines, and about 5 hours later they were gone. They hardly said a word to us and most barged around shouting orders and acting like rude white folks always act: rude.

Coming Soon!

That was it.

That is the extent of our "connection" to Stephen King and the filming of the movie Thinner.

A bunch of white men, running around screaming and yelling for five hours.

Only this and nothing more.

And because of this, we have hundreds of people tramping around our yard every summer, acting like they think this is a public park.

And then we get bombarded with questions about what we think of the book and the movie.We've never read the book or seen the movie and have no clue what it is about. This event was insignificant to us, until late 1997 when people started showing up on town asking to meet what they called "Stephen King's Gypsies from Thinner". It's a strange term and we don't necessarily like it. 

Our understanding of Thinner (based on what trespassers have told us) is that it does not portray Gypsies in a good light and is filled with stereotypes, so needless to say we are not comfortable with people calling us "Stephen King's Gypsies." We do not belong to Stephen King and therefore do not like the term. We are Scottish Gypsies.

I mean think about it: how would you like having a title like that slapped on your family? How would you like thousands of strangers roaming around your private property every year without your permission?

Published!

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

WHO WE ARE IS THIS:

Do remember: The Roma ARE NOT Gypsies and nor are the Travellers. And no amount of calling them Gypsies is ever going to make them Gypsies, and no amount of reality TV calling them Gypsies is ever going to make them Gypsies either. Why? Because the word Gypsy means: "The People who Lived among the egyptians" and guess what? The Roma did not live in Egypt any more than the Travellers did.  Neither group are Gypsies because neither group lived with the ancient Egyptians.

There actually is an actual RACE who are called Gypsies, and no they are NOT the Romas. It is highly offensive to the Gypsies for you to call yourself a Gypsy when a simple DNA test will prove you have no blood link to them at all.

Do note that Gypsies, Travellers and Romany are THREE separate groups.

There are millions of nomadic people who inaccurately are called (by themselves and by others) Gypsies.

I am a Gypsy.

I am NOT a Roma

Roma ARE NOT Gypsies.

I am NOT a Traveller

Travellers ARE NOT Gypsies either.

Few people realize that there is an ACTUAL RACE whose name is CORRECTLY called Gypsy.

And of course, because Gypsy is a race of people, they can be male or female, adult or child.

A race differs from a culture or ethnicity in that race has distinct physical features. For example: Gypsies have olive toned skin, most have dark hair and green eyes, most are very short and tend to be on the chubby side. The have high cheekbones and long noses. You can identify them to look at them, without seeing their cloths or habits, which therefor makes them a unique and distinct race.

Gypsy is a racist term when it is used to describe Romas, Travellers, hippies, carnival people, boatmen, or ANY other group of nomads who are not by DNA blood ACTUAL Gypsies.

Travellers come in English, Welsh, and Scottish, in addition to Irish, though the Irish Travellers are the most common, most liberal, and most likely to be seen by outsiders.

The Welsh and English Travellers are far fewer population wise, and tend to be more secretive. While the Scottish Travellers are the smallest group, and also the most reclusive type of Traveller.

Travellers are the most likely to travel cross the country, though many are now settled.

Travellers are white people (often blond or redhaired) of Celtic (Roman/Italian) descent.

Romany are more reclusive then Travellers, thus why you see Travellers more often then Romany. Some Romanies still travel, but many are now settled. There are dozens of sub-groups or types of Romany, each with their own culture, and name.

The Romany are brown/tan people with dark hair and dark eyes, they are of Indian/Hindi descent and many groups still speak and dress in various Indian/Hindi derived languages. They settled in Romania for a few centuries, thus how they came for be called Roma/Romany. Many of them later settled in Spain and adopted Spanish language and habits  into their culture, thus why many today speak Spanish and are Catholic.

Gypsies are the most reclusive of all. RARELY having contact with outsiders. They also don't travel. ALL Gypsies are settled farmers. TRUE Gypsies (the actual race, not the slang "lifestyle" term that gets slapped on other races) are listed on the registry of Endangered Indigenous Peoples. There are fewer then 2,000 confirmed to still be alive as of the last census count in 2012. 

The Gypsies are often called "The Scottish Gypsies" because Scotland was their most recent extended stay location. They are also often mistaken for Scottish Travellers, who have no relation to them at all.

The Gypsies originated in Iran, in Persia, during the time of King Darius (the king mentioned in the Bible, who put Daniel in the Lion's Den). The Gypsies descent from Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego of the Bible. (Not them directly, but from the priests of the order they created.) According to the stories, after the "Lion's Den" incident, King Darius made Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego high priests in his court. While there, they founded a "secret order of priests" known as The Brotherhood of The Magi (aka The Wise Men at Jesus birth in the New Testament.)

The Magi, under the rule of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were seen by the people of Persia as powerful wizards and soothsayers, known for telling the future, divination, interpreting dreams, and speaking one on one with the spirits of the dead. They were also noted for their outlandish red, blue, and purple silk robes heavily embroidered with silver and gold sun, moons, and stars. This is where the myth that Gypsies are "magical" or have "psychic powers" came from. (And boy is that a myth I wish would go away! Yie!  Every week, I have to deal with some American walking up to me and saying: "So I heard you were a Gypsy. Can you sense anything about ____. What do you see happening about ____" It's incredibly annoying and frustrating how many people think the word Gypsy is interchangeable with psychic or witch. But it's our starting out as a branch of the Brotherhood of the Magi that started that stereotype, and no matter how hard we try to explain to people we are not born psychic, Americans simply refuse to accept or believe that. 

When King Darius' empire fell, The Brotherhood of the Magi gathered up their families and fled to Mongolia. In Mongolia they were (centuries) later captured by the Vikings and lived as "slave shaman" to the Vikings. They eventually escaped and ended up in Scotland, where they assimilated into the Pictish society.

When the Celts (Romans/Christians of Constantine) invaded Britania and killed most of the Picts, the Brotherhood of Magi once again took their families and fled back to Egypt. They lived in Egypt for centuries, where they became known as "the Gypsies" which meant: The people Who Lived Among the Egyptians.

In the 1400s they attempted to go back to Scotland and were chased by the Celts to Germany. During this short time in the British Isles, the Irish called them both "The Little People" and "The Leprechauns". Because they are very short, most of their women not much over 5'1" and most of their men under 5'9" and because of the elaborate curly toed red silk beaded shoes they made (the word Leprechaun means "shoe maker").

In the 1500s they tried to return to Scotland again, this time being captured by the British loaded onto a ship and marooned in the New World in about 1530. They settled in land that is now known as Old Orchard Beach, Maine, and lived among the Native American peoples. In the 1640s they were given a land grant by King George. In 1911 they legally bought the land from the American government (I still have the original receipt). In 1996 Stephen King's film crew decided to film the movie Thinner on their land. 

Today in 2015, the Gypsies still live on the land they have been on since 1530 and still wear the old Persian style heavily embroidered silk robes, and are still seen by locals as powerful psychics, known for telling the future, divination, interpreting dreams, and speaking one on one with the spirits of the dead... even though we don't do that sort of thing at all these days. Much of our culture and traditions remain virtually unchanged for centuries. Because of the way we dress and look and because of our extremely olde style "Arabian" fundamentalist traditions, they are often mistaken by outsiders as being Muslim.

This one little TINY group of people from Persia, is the ONLY group that is truly and correctly the race called The Gypsies. If you were not born into this group, you are not a Gypsy, no matter what you look like, how you dress, what your hobbies are, or how much you travel. These people did live among the Egyptians for many centuries and they were named Gypsies by the Egyptians, and no other group on the planet has the right to use the word "gypsy" to describe who they are.

The Roma are NOT Gypsies.

The Travellers are NOT Gypsies.

Hippies are NOT Gypsies.

Only the small sub-group of the Persian Brotherhood of the Magi (aka The Magicians) who lived for many centuries in Egypt, and were named by the Egyptians as Gypsies, can truly and correctly lay any claim to the title of Gypsy.

We are not comfortable with people calling us "Stephen King's Gypsies." We do not belong to Stephen King and therefore do not like the term. We are Scottish Gypsies.

I repeat:

WE HAVE NO AFFILIATION WITH STEPHEN KING!

"Stephen King's Gypsies" is just a slang term people call us, ever since the Thinner film crew was in town.

We do not know Stephen King,.

We have never meet Stephen King.

We do not represent Stephen King.

We can not answer your questions about Stephen King, his books, or his movies.

 We have no idea how to forward your fan mail to Stephen King. Please don't give it to us.

We are in no way affiliated with Stephen King or anyone else.

PLEASE: Do not come to our land and bombard us with questions about Stephen King. We are unable to answer any of your questions regarding Stephen King, his books, his movies, his life, or anything else. We do not know him, do not represent him, and are in no way affiliated with him.

We are the Scottish Gypsies of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, please stop calling us "Stephen King's Gypsies". Stephen King does not own us. We do not belong to Stephen King. Stephen King does not represent us.  As far as we know, he doesn't even know us. My understanding of the situation is that they filmed the movie here at Exit 5 out of Saco to Old Orchard, because they wanted the movie to be filmed in a "real Gypsy town".

And please try to stop confusing the Scottish GYPSIES of Old Orchard Beach, with the Scottish TRAVELLERS of Old Orchard Beach. they are two COMPLETELY SEPARATE groups with totally different cultures, coming from completely different bloodlines.

The Scottish Gypsies (US) are by surname: Googins, O'Rourkes, McDuffie', Murphey, Ricker, & Allen

The Scottish TRAVELLERS (THEM) are by surname: Atwater, Hall, Jergan.

How much of this info has a paper trail that can be proven, and how much is word of mouth passed down over the years? The paper trail (which includes birth record, death records, marriage certificates, deeds, grants, recipts, and other documents) goes from the current era Maine back to 1500's Scotland. The info from 1500's Scotland, back to Bible times, is passed down word of mouth and while some details can be found in historic documents, many can not be and are unknown as to how accurate they actually are. From 1648 to today, their exists a meticulously kept file of documents and nearly every member of the Googings/Ricker/Allen clan can be traced from 1648 to today. The parts about the Vikings, Mongolians, Sicians, and Persians, is word of mouth, passed down granny to grandchild, has no paper trail that we are aware of and at the moment is neither proven nor disproven.

The history of the Atwater side of the family (The Scottish Travellers, who are only In-Laws and NOT blood relatives, and are only relatives because one of their daughters married one of the sons of The Scottish Gypsy clan in 1973) unfortunaly has no paper trail past the 1820s, and two of their claims to fame (sir Fransic Drake and David Atwater of Atwater Castle in Kent, England) have been proven to be outright hoaxes, both of which were made up by David Henery Atwater and his son Richard Merlin Atwater.

What part of the Atwater family history can be proven? Only this:

David Henry Atwater was the first LDS/Mormon baptism in Saco Maine, and he and the Marr family did found the first LDS/Mormon Ward in the state of Maine, The Saco ward in 1952, later renaming it the Cape Elizebeth Ward, when it moved to it's own building. His son, Peter Atwater, was a bricklayer and did make the bricks to build said building, and his daughter Jeannie atwater was the first person in Maine to be baptised in an official Utah approaved church building (rather then outdoors in a river).

David's mother was in fact the daughter of a pirate named Captain John Drake, who did terrorize Nova scotia and Maine coasts in the late 1700s with a junk rigged ship with sails dyed blue from blueberries, HOWEVER, this was NOT his real name, he was NOT related to Sir Francis Drake, and there are no records to say what his real name was before he changed it to Drake. The Drake side of the Atwater line ends here in the mid 1700s. Without knowing John Drake's real name, there is no way to trace the rest of the line.

The name Atwater first shows up in the Scottish Traveller family in the 1640s, HOWEVER, there is nothing to indicate they are related to David Atwater of the castle in Kent. Their family tree does not connect back to his. The ONLY evidance we can find that they were connected to him at all, was a refence to the fact that on the castle grounds was an orchard, and at one point in the 1600's the Atwaters let a band of "Gypsies" stay on their band for a few months, while said Gypsies worked for the castle, harvesting the fruit crops. The Atwater clan, showed up in this same time period, claiming to be from Scotland, but also claiming to be the children of David Atwater of Kent, England. 

Near as we can tell, one of two things happened:

1: The Gypsy clan, to honour the man who was kind to them, named their next born male baby after him (including to give him the same last name). This is not an uncommon practic in Traveller families I have personally known, and very possibly what happened.

2: One of the daughters on the Gypsy clan, did in fact give birth to a son by David Atwater of Kent, but it being illegitimate, David Atwater of Kent, never acknowledge, or possibly never knew of the child and thus his family had no record of it. Unless the child was a result of rape, it is highly unlikely that such a child would have been born, given the strict taboos Travellers (and Gypsies) have against muddying up the blood line. a half blood child would likely have been shunned and NOT given it's father's name.

It is more likely the first option happened, because it is the tradition of this particular clan of Scottish Travellers to name their children after people they revere, thus why they currently have more then 30 living male members, all named David Atwater.

While the Atwaters are quick to spin lots of (often very wild) tales of their family tree, ONLY the facts listed above, have been proven. No paper trail has ever been found to support any of their other claims.

It is important to note here that David Henry Atwater, was a gangster in the 1920s. He was the driver for one of Honeyfitze's Old Orchard Beach to Canada connections. He went blind due to a bad batch of moonshine, thus ending his rum-running career. Bitter from having gone blind, David Henry Atwater, became a VERY VIOLENT wife beating, child abuser, who forced his first wife (my Kickapoo Grammy Eva) (he was a polygamist) to have THREE abortions, by tieing her down and beating her in the stomach until the baby was dead. Because their dog, like her better then him, he boiled it and forced feed it to her. THIS is the TRUTH behind the infamous SAINTLY LDS/Mormon high priest and patriarch David Henry Atwater of Saco, Maine and Ogden, Utah.

David Henry Atwater, to cover up his connections to having once been one of Honeyfitze's rum-running drivers, REINVENTED his ENTIRE family history, including to INVENT the story that his grandfather John Drake was the great-great grandson of Sir Francis Drake. 

In the 1970s David Henry became friends with John Applewhite and helped him to found what would go on to become Heaven's Gate, of the HaleBop mass suicide fame. David's sons are still today in 2015, ACTIVE members of Heaven's Gate and are waiting for yet another comet (WormWood) to come take them away.

By the 1980s David had become a Dragon (a type of priest like leader in the Ku Klux Klan). Today most of David's sons and many of his male and female grandchildren are members of the Loyal white Knights of the KKK.

By the 1990s David was actively protesting at the Salt Lake Temple claiming that the LDS prophet was a false prophet, and that he was the TRUE prophet of God. by the time of his murder at age 100 years and 14 days old, he was close to claiming that he himself was God reborn. He was killed by one of his daughter's husbands, who tied him to a chair, then pushed the chair down the stairs into the basement, where he was found by another daughter, 3 days later.

David's favorite colour was neon, day glow pink and it was the only thing he would wear. He was famous for his pink zoot-suits and fedoras. At his funeral, everybody wore pink instead of black, and he was buried in a custom built gold trimmed pink metalflake coffin that cost $10,000 to have made.

Unfortunately, The Atwater Clan has a LONG history of avoiding the government, not keeping records, refusing to get social security numbers, and changing their names frequently (often multiple times a year) as a way to avoid the law. They also have a HUGE history with credit card fraud, embezzlement, loan scams, identity theft, piracy, bootlegging, illegal gun hoarding, violence, KKK activity, UFO cults, and a connection to 5 separate mass murder suicide events. They are listed by the FBI as one of the most wanted crime families in America (The FBI calls them The Scottish Traveller Crime Family of America). It is because of their vast waves of crime, that they change their names often, AND change the details of their family history frequently, resulting in very little of the family history they currently recite being anything close to the truth. 

It is the Atwater Clan that pretty much single handedly destroyed the reputation of Gypsies and Gypsy-like groups everywhere.

The ONLY connection the Scottish Travellers have to the Scottish Gypsies is that one of the Atwater girls married one of the Allen boys, resulting in us now having Atwater IN-LAWS.

For the first two decades of our knowing the Atwaters we tried to get along with them, but their hysterical fighting, shoot outs with police, hoarding of guns and stolen credit cards, their sword fights in the street, and their cutting all the copper pipes out of all our neighbors houses, and finally planting acres of marijuana on our neighbor's land, resulted in us severing all ties to them and shunning them.

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

The movie Thinner does NOT accurately represent who we are, how our culture is, or how our people act.

Please repeat after me: It is just a movie. It is not real.

Thinner is a FICTIONAL movie. It is not based on FACTS. 

In the past decade since the release of the movie Thinner, hundreds of people have come to "visit" (trespass on) our farm. Most of them are just piss-pants happy to see the real Gypsies that were "featured" in the movie. Those people are fine, we don't mind them.

HOWEVER, there have also been quite a few "religious fanatics" who have come up in here, with vengeance, violence, and hate. On October 18, 2006, one of them put a grease fryer bomb in our house and tried to kill me, my family, and my pets, because ha said "God told" him to kill us "evil Satanic witches".

We are not evil.

We are not Satanic.

We are not witches.

Please stop  lying and spreading those nasty false rumors about us.

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

We are Christians.

Most of us are LDS/Mormons. Some are Pentecostals, some are Baptist, some are Seventh Day Adventists,  some are Calvinist.

Until 2006, we attended Church every Sunday. We only stopped because of the nasty rumors that started being spread about us, after the release of the movie Thinner, which resulted in members of our church, people whom had been our friends and neighbors for 40+ years, throwing rocks at us in the church parking lot, smashing the windows out of our cars in the church parking lot, cutting the brake lines off our cars in the church parking lot,, slashing our tires...CHRISTIANS...good upstanding Christians, doing these things, on Sunday, at the church, on Smith Lane, in Saco, Maine. We stopped attending church because we could not afford to buy new windshields, tires, and brakes lines every single week.

I used to landscape that church. I donated all those plants, the flowers, the bushes. I planted them all. When the roof needed repairs, it was my family that volunteered and did that work. When the janitor called in sick, it was my family that volunteered to clean the church, wash all those windows, vacuum all those floors, scrub all those seats and tables.

I cooked for EVERY church super. I cooked for every bake sale and fundraiser the children and youth did.

Many of the men in my family are bricklayers: guess who HAND MADE every single brick, and laid them down, and built that building.

It is horrible that Americans, because they saw some movie, think that gives them the right to come up in here and falsely accuse us of being evil, Satanic, or witches.

And this is how you treat us, because you saw something you didn't like is some stupid, fictional movie?

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

Some people have the nerve to come here to yell at us and call us squatters and thieves, kidnappers, baby stealers, murderers, cannibals,  scam artists, pickpockets, and all other manner of nonsense.

How many people do you know, who have to keep copies of the deed to their land on them, just so they can prove to the steady, constant stream of trespassers that they own the land and are not squatters? 

How many? Tell me that. So far everyone I've asked, has said they wouldn't even know how to get a copy of their and had never seen it.

Do you have any idea what it is like to have to live with hysterical white folks trespassing on your land every day, just so they can blame you for things you had no part in or and accuse you of things you never did, simply because of the race you were born as?

You'd think we were runaway black slaves from the Civil War era, the way white folks come up in here going on and on with their hatred for Gypsies.

We are the Googings family. We have lived on this land since the 1530s. King George (whom my cat Georgie is named after) gave us a land grant in the 1640s.  In 1911 my great-grandfather George Ricker legally bought the land from the American government.  He paid $100 for it (I still have the original receipt) which in 1911 was a lot of money for a 3/4 acre lot of land. His daughter Helen Ricker-Allen inherited it when he died. My father inherited on my behalf (because I was 8 years old) when she died.  We are not squatters, we own this land legally and since the 1530s my family has never lived anywhere else.

And all the white folks with their false accusations about scam artists, pickpockets, and all other manner of nonsense. It's horrific the stuff white folks come up with to say to us.

We are farmers. From 1821 until 1983 this was a full scale poultry farm,. We had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of chickens. We provided eggs for most of the state of Maine during that time. We were the FIRST no-kill egg farm in the country. 

I am by profession an author and artist. From 1996 to 2011, I was also an Avon Sales Representative, as was my mother before me, and my grandmother before her.  From 2006 to 2011 I was a sales associate at Macy's. I stopped selling Avon and working at Macy's because my health no longer permitted me to do that much walking around town. We are not thieves or scam artists or any of those other horrible things people have said about us.

Please stop  lying and spreading those nasty false rumors about us.

It's mean.

It's hateful.

And it hurts.

And you wouldn't like it if someone did it to you?

How would you like it is steady lines of trespassers tramped around your yard tossing horrific false accusations about you and your family in your face?

You wouldn't want people doing it to you so why do you think it's okay to do it to us?

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

Please try to remember that the movie Thinner, is FICTION. It is NOT based on actual facts. It does NOT represent who we are. Please remember that it is just a movie, not a documentary.

Normally we Gypsies keep to ourselves and do not share any information about our culture with outsiders. HOWEVER, because there has been so much confusion as to who we are, what we do, and how we live, caused indirectly by the filming of a movie in our town,  we have decided that the only way to restore order, balance, and peace for our people and in our home, is if we open our culture to the world and allow the outsiders to see once and for all, what Gypsy life and culture, is REALLY like.

Because of this, I am starting a project, to write a book, about the history of our people, who we are, and why we are here, and why we keep to ourselves. And as there are many stereotypes about our people, I would also like, if outsiders would send me their questions about Gypsies and I will answer those as well.

This is the story behind the Scottish Gypsies of Old Orchard Beach, Maine and their connection to Stephen King's The Thinner:

This book was unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

already published:

Click on image to go to each book's Amazon page.

Or CLICK HERE to see the series page.

The Aricle is a excerpt from the book "How We Gypsies See The Americans"

These books were unpublished by a civil rights violating court order issued by the Old Orchard Beach Town Hall. Read more about it here.

coming soon: