Today I stumbled across Infiltration, a website which offers "a mix of the practice and theory of urban exploration in areas not designed for public usage". Basically, it's some sort of journal of trespassing, complete with hints, tips, and a ethics of "urban exploration". There is plenty of interesting stuff to read, but most interesting, I think, is his article on the exploration of an old Masonic temple. Many large cities have old, massive Masonic buildings, and a great number of them are decaying away as our membership shrinks.

The author, "Ninj" (?), explored the temple three times, the third being in the accompaniment of a reporter who penned a second article about the building which I've been unable to find online. It is not clear if it is done simply to make the story more exciting or if Ninj actually believes that Freemasons are some sort of ominous Satan-worshiping cult, but his article is littered with references like this:

The walls and chairs were dark, ornately carved wood, and the carpets, lighting and upholstery were all deep, blood red, creating what must've been a deliberately Satanic atmosphere. A series of tall wooden thrones rested on an elevated platform at the centre of the room, underneath the obligatory wooden carving of the eye in the pyramid.

Later in the article, he is actually surprised when their Masonic tour guide ends up being a real person with contemporary popular interests:

I can only guess how Susan Mason reacted to reading that she'd imported an infiltrator into her building, but about a week later I received a letter from Wallace McLeod telling me he'd enjoyed my website and would have talked to me more if he'd realized I was Ninjalicious!

Now, I realize that Freemasonry is fairly out-of-touch with popular culture, and that most folks are entirely ignorant of our real nature, despite all the efforts we've made to put ourselves in the public eye, but this author seems like a pretty clever guy. Would it really have hurt him to do a bit of research into the Craft? Some very cursory reading and maybe even a phone call or two would have really cleared up a lot of his murky notions, and I'm sure if he displayed even a tiny bit of curiosity he could have attracted the enthusiastic attention and conversation of some local Mason. He was right there with Bro. Wallace McLeod, for Pete's sake — a very well-known Masonic author and scholar. He had a great source of information in his grasp, but he let it go.

As I bemoaned a while back, this sort of ignorant misrepresentation is depressingly common on non-Masonic websites written by individuals in the demographic we should be trying the hardest to reach. These are intelligent, creative people who are just freakishly misinformed. I'm not an expert in public relations, but there has to be something we can do. Perhaps just directing folks to Ed King's excellent Anti-Masonry: Points of View page would be a good start. There are lots of great ideas out there for helping a lodge grow, such as WB Bransgrove's great article "Some Ideas for Growing a Lodge", but I don't see many great tips for contacting the individual who is badly-informed. Any ideas out there?