#The Great Amherst Mystery

[dailyunsolvedmysteries]

The Great Amherst Mystery

In the latter half of the 19th century, in a little town called Amherst in Nova Scotia, a woman named Esther Cox was beset by what she claimed were poltergeists. Esther lived in a house with her sister and her family. After Esther had been nearly killed by a male friend of hers, who may have suffered a psychotic break, her house began to be haunted. After spending some time at another sister’s house in a nearby province because of her failing health, Esther returned to Amherst, whereupon the hauntings began again. After the poltergeists threatened to burn down the house, Esther moved in with another family, whose house became haunted as well. Part-time actor Walter Hubbell moved in with Esther, as he was also an occasional paranormal investigator. He investigated the house for a number of weeks, eventually writing a popular book about his experiences, in which he claimed to have seen floating objects as well as attacks on Esther by unseen forces. To date, no explanation has been given, though some who’ve investigated the stories believe it was all a hoax by Esther.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Emil Ferris’s long-awaited “My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book Two”

NEXT WEEKEND (June 7–9), I'm in AMHERST, NEW YORK to keynote the 25th Annual Media Ecology Association Convention and accept the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity.

Seven years ago, I was absolutely floored by My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, a wildly original, stunningly gorgeous, haunting and brilliant debut graphic novel from Emil Ferris. Every single thing about this book was amazing:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/06/20/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-a-haunting-diary-of-a-young-girl-as-a-dazzling-graphic-novel/

The more I found out about the book, the more amazed I became. I met Ferris at that summer's San Diego Comic Con, where I learned that she had drawn it over a while recovering from paralysis of her right – dominant – hand after a West Nile Virus infection. Each meticulously drawn and cross-hatched page had taken days of work with a pen duct-taped to her hand, a project of seven years.

The wild backstory of the book's creation was matched with a wild production story: first, Ferris's initial publisher bailed on her because the book was too long; then her new publisher's first shipment of the book was seized by the South Korean state bank, from the Panama Canal, when the shipper went bankrupt and its creditors held all its cargo to ransom.

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters told the story of Karen Reyes, a 10 year old, monster-obsessed queer girl in 1968 Chicago who lives with her working-class single mother and her older brother, Deeze, in an apartment house full of mysterious, haunted adults. There's the landlord – a gangster and his girlfriend – the one-eyed ventriloquist, and the beautiful Holocaust survivor and her jazz-drummer husband.

Karen narrates and draws the story, depicting herself as a werewolf in a detective's trenchcoat and fedora, as she tries to unravel the secrets kept by the grownups around her. Karen's life is filled with mysteries, from the identity of her father (her brother, a talented illustrator, has removed him from all the family photos and redrawn him as the Invisible Man) to the purpose of a mysterious locked door in the building's cellar.

But the most pressing mystery of all is the death of her upstairs neighbor, the beautiful Annika Silverberg, a troubled Holocaust survivor whose alleged suicide just doesn't add up, and Karen – who loved and worshiped Annika – is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Karen is tormented by the adults in her life keeping too much from her – and by their failure to shield her from life's hardest truths. The flip side of Karen's frustration with adult secrecy is her exposure to adult activity she's too young to understand. From Annika's cassette-taped oral history of her girlhood in an Weimar brothel and her escape from a Nazi concentration camp, to the sex workers she sees turning tricks in cars and alleys in her neighborhood, to the horrors of the Vietnam war, Karen's struggle to understand is characterized by too much information, and too little.

Ferris's storytelling style is dazzling, and it's matched and exceeded by her illustration style, which is grounded in the classic horror comics of the 1950s and 1960s. Characters in Karen's life – including Karen herself – are sometimes depicted in the EC horror style, and that same sinister darkness crowds around the edges of her depictions of real-world Chicago.

These monster-comic throwbacks are absolute catnip for me. I, too, was a monster-obsessed kid, and spent endless hours watching, drawing, and dreaming about this kind of monster.

But Ferris isn't just a monster-obsessive; she's also a formally trained fine artist, and she infuses her love of great painters into Deeze, Karen's womanizing petty criminal of an older brother. Deeze and Karen's visits to the Art Institute of Chicago are commemorated with loving recreations of famous paintings, which are skillfully connected to pulp monster art with a combination of Deeze's commentary and Ferris's meticulous pen-strokes.

Seven years ago, Book One of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters absolutely floored me, and I early anticipated Book Two, which was meant to conclude the story, picking up from Book One's cliff-hanger ending. Originally, that second volume was scheduled for just a few months after Book One's publication (the original manuscript for Book One ran to 700 pages, and the book had been chopped down for publication, with the intention of concluding the story in another volume).

But the book was mysteriously delayed, and then delayed again. Months stretched into years. Stranger rumors swirled about the second volume's status, compounded by the bizarre misfortunes that had befallen book one. Last winter, Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston published an article detailing a messy lawsuit between Ferris and her publishers, Fantagraphics:

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/fantagraphics-sued-emil-ferris-over-my-favorite-thing-is-monsters/

The filings in that case go some ways toward resolve the mystery of Book Two's delay, though the contradictory claims from Ferris and her publisher are harder to sort through than the mysteries at the heart of Monsters. The one sure thing is that writer and publisher eventually settled, paving the way for the publication of the very long-awaited Book Two:

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/my-favorite-thing-is-monsters-book-two

Book Two picks up from Book One's cliffhanger and then rockets forward. Everything brilliant about One is even better in Two – the illustrations more lush, the fine art analysis more pointed and brilliant, the storytelling more assured and propulsive, the shocks and violence more outrageous, the characters more lovable, complex and grotesque.

Everything about Two is more. The background radiation of the Vietnam War in One takes center stage with Deeze's machinations to beat the draft, and Deeze and Karen being ensnared in the Chicago Police Riots of '68. The allegories, analysis and reproductions of classical art get more pointed, grotesque and lavish. Annika's Nazi concentration camp horrors are more explicit and more explicitly connected to Karen's life. The queerness of the story takes center stage, both through Karen's first love and the introduction of a queer nightclub. The characters are more vivid, as is the racial injustice and the corruption of the adult world.

I've been staring at the spine of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters Book One on my bookshelf for seven years. Partly, that's because the book is such a gorgeous thing, truly one of the great publishing packages of the century. But mostly, it's because I couldn't let go of Ferris's story, her characters, and her stupendous art.

After seven years, it would have been hard for Book Two to live up to all that anticipation, but goddammit if Ferris didn't manage to meet and exceed everything I could have hoped for in a conclusion.

There's a lot of people on my Christmas list who'll be getting both volumes of Monsters this year – and that number will only go up if Fantagraphics does some kind of slipcased two-volume set.

In the meantime, we've got more Ferris to look forward to. Last April, she announced that she had sold a prequel to Monsters and a new standalone two-volume noir murder series to Pantheon Books:

https://twitter.com/likaluca/status/1648364225855733769

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/01/the-druid/#oh-my-papa

[displayheartcode]

wip tag

thank you,@thenicestthingiveseen and @takearisk-ao3 for tagging me!

List the titles of your top five priorities for WIP updates (link your fics for new readers!)

An upcoming scene, event, or detail in each fic that you're looking forward to writing

Bonus: make a poll for your followers to vote on which top 5 WIP they are most excited to see an update on!

Then tag 10 writer friends!

for the first time in a while, sans any inbox prompts, i have no fic wips. wild. anyway -

THE MIDWEST HORROR IDEA: a half-vampire collides with a figure from his past at college, creating new risks as they explore the Bridgewater Triangle with their friends. [Adult, supernatural/horror, M/M main romance, still has no outline and only vibes]

DARK ACADEMIA GHOST IDEA: a young girl returns to her boarding school after surviving a near-death incident, but learns that the place is haunted by vengeful ghosts who want to use her. [YA, mystery/occult, F/F main romance, has an outline]

SIR ORFEO RETELLING: a photojournalist is trapped inside a gothic manor with a cursed soldier and his very good dog as something old lurks beneath the land. [New Adult, romantasy/gothic, queer M/F main romance, somewhat outlined]

SPARROW SHORT STORY SEQUEL: the continuing adventures of a grumpy witch and her possessed crush in Brooklyn [New Adult, paranormal romance, queer M/F main romance, somewhat outlined]

LESBIAN TAM LIN: three girls are drawn into the mystery of their town that forces them into a dangerous reenactment [YA, urban fantasy, F/F main romance, first draft is around 50k words]

what i'm looking forward to -

anything, really. i've dabbled with horror, and as a fan of buffy the vampire slayer and supernatural, it's great to dive deep into the genre. it's one-part love letter and one-part exploration of monsters and trauma! i'm also craving more disabled queer romances!!!!!!!

other than waiting to see how many people realize that i borrowed heavily from amherst college for the setting, i want to show why i love the trope Came Back Wrong. it's a metaphor for mental health, a tool to explore characterization, a way to haunt yourself!

i love twisting tropes, especially when it comes to gender! the usual romantasy archetypes are turned around - the girl is dark-haired and tormented while the guy is young and naive

i'm excited to explore more of the magic because i've drawn a lot from diasporic practices. i have growing sources about plant use, exorcisms, and more! i love research!!!!!!!!!

i wrote this draft back in...2019. it was my first full story in ages, and a lot has changed since. i know if i look at it with clearer eyes, it would read like holly black fanfic...

tagging: open to all!

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Last September, while working at his desk in Philadelphia, Samuel R. Delany experienced a mysterious episode that he calls “the big drop.” His vision faded for about three minutes, and he felt his body plunge, as if the floor had fallen away. When he came to, everything looked different, though he couldn’t say exactly how. Delany, who is eighty-one, began to suspect that he’d suffered a mini-stroke. His daughter, Iva, an emergency-room physician, persuaded him to go to the hospital, but the MRI scans were inconclusive. The only evidence of a neurological event was a test result indicating that he had lost fifteen per cent of his capacity to form new memories—and a realization, in the following weeks, that he was unable to finish his novel in progress, “This Short Day of Frost and Sun.” After publishing more than forty books in half a century, the interruption was, he told me, both “a loss and a relief.”

For years, Delany has begun most days at four o’clock in the morning with a ritual. First, he spells out the name Dennis, for Dennis Rickett, his life partner. Next, he recites an atheist’s prayer, hailing faraway celestial bodies with a litany inspired by the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza: “Natura Naturans, system of systems, system of fields, Kuiper belt, scattered disk, Oort cloud, thank you for dropping me here.” Finally, he prepares oatmeal, which he faithfully photographs for the friends and fans who follow him on Facebook. Every so often, when the milk foams, he sees Laniakea—the galactic supercluster that’s home to Earth.

In the stellar neighborhood of American letters, there have been few minds as generous, transgressive, and polymathically brilliant as Samuel Delany’s. Many know him as the country’s first prominent Black author of science fiction, who transformed the field with richly textured, cerebral novels like “Babel-17” (1966) and “Dhalgren” (1975). Others know the revolutionary chronicler of gay life, whose autobiography, “The Motion of Light in Water” (1988), stands as an essential document of pre-Stonewall New York. Still others know the professor, the pornographer, or the prolific essayist whose purview extends from cyborg feminism to Biblical philology.

There are so many Delanys that it’s difficult to take the full measure of his influence. Reading him was formative for Junot Díaz and William Gibson; Octavia Butler was, briefly, his student in a writing workshop. Jeremy O. Harris included Delany as a character in his play “Black Exhibition,” while Neil Gaiman, who is adapting Delany’s classic space adventure “Nova” (1968) as a series for Amazon, credits him with building a critical foundation not only for science fiction but also for comics and other “paraliterary” genres.

Friends call him Chip, a nickname he gave himself at summer camp, in the eleventh year of a life that has defied convention and prejudice. He is a sci-fi child prodigy who never flamed out; a genre best-seller widely recognized as a great literary stylist; a dysgraphic college dropout who once headed the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and an outspokenly promiscuous gay man who survived the aids crisis and has found love, three times, in committed, non-monogamous relationships. A story like Delany’s isn’t supposed to be possible in our society—and that, nearly as much as the gift of his writing, is his glory.

It took several months to persuade him to meet. Delany has polemicized against the face-to-face interview, reasoning that writers, who constitute themselves on the page, ought to be questioned there, too. He warned in an e-mail that a visit would be a waste of time, offering instead a tour of his “three-room hovel” via Zoom: “No secret pile will be left unexplored.” Yet a central theme in his work is “contact,” a word he uses to convey all the potential in chance encounters between human beings. “I propose that in a democratic city it is imperative that we speak to strangers, live next to them, and learn how to relate to them on many levels, from the political to the sexual,” he wrote in “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue” (1999), a landmark critique of gentrification which centered on his years of cruising in the adult theatres of midtown Manhattan.

His novels, too, turn on the serendipity of urban life, adopting the “marxian” credo that fiction is most vital when classes mix. Gorgik, a revolutionary leader in Delany’s four-volume “Return to Nevèrÿon” series, rises from slavery to the royal court in an ancient port city called Kolhari, where he learns that seemingly centralized “power—the great power that shattered lives and twisted the course of the nation—was like a fog over a meadow at evening. From any distance, it seemed to have a shape, a substance, a color, an edge. Yet, as you approached it, it seemed to recede before you.”

In January, Delany finally allowed me to visit him at the apartment complex that he now rarely leaves. A hulking beige structure near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, it looms like a fortress over the row houses of the Fairmount. I crossed a lobby the length of a ballroom and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. As I walked down the hallway, I noticed a small man behind a luggage trolley taking my picture. It was Delany, smiling in welcome with his lively brown eyes and strikingly misaligned front teeth.

[A Delightful portrait of my favorite Science Fiction writer]

[3rdeyeblaque]

Today we venerate Benjamin Rucker aka Black Herman on his 134th birthday 🎉

Heralded as the greatest magician in U.S. history, Black Herman was brilliant for his fusion of performance magic with occultism & superstition, and his strong Separatist & militant Pan-Afrikan ideologies (Marcus Garvey x Booker T. Washington). He proclaimed that it was his mission to promote Black Power.

Born in Amherst, VA, as a teen, Black Herman learned the art of illusions from his mentor, Prince Herman. They ran a medicine show, performing magic tricks to attract curious passersby to their "Secret African Remedy". When Prince Herman, 17yr old Rucker was determined to carry on the show; this time using only magic. He then took on the name of, "Black Herman"; in honor of Prince Herman & as an homage to Alonzo Moore, the famous Black American magician who was known as the "Black Herrmann".

In Harlem, Rucker established himself as a pillar of the community. He was often seen in Garvey’s massive Harlem parades & is believed to have offered Garvey spiritual counsel. He befriended preachers, intellectuals and politicians, many of whom met at his home for a weekly study group. He was an Elk, a Freemason, and a Knight of Pythias. He used his success to make loans to local Black businessmen/organisations, established scholarship funds, & performed for free to help churches pay their bills. He expanded his wealth by purchasing a printing plan to establish a monthly magazine, "Black Herman’s Mail Order Course of Graduated Lessons in the Art of Magic". He acquired real estate, bought shares in two cotton plantations, gave personal consultations, & started herb/root gardens in a dozen cities.

Black Herman famously claimed that he was immortal & directly descended from Moses of the Bible. He asserted that our people could elude Klansmen & their descendants by escaping the limitations of mortality & simply outliving them. He'd also sell protective talismans to combat racism. He inserted his Afrikan heritage into his performances. One of his specialties included the “Asrah levitation.” He'd produce rabbits & doubled the amount of cornmeal in a bowl. Many of his tricks were "secrets taught by Zulu witch doctors". Some of his tricks were parallel to miracles from the Christian bible. He'd cast out demons from his assistant or brother hidden amongst the audience, then offer a special tonic for sale & offer a psychic reading address their “problems”.

Yet none compared to his most famous act of all, "Buried Alive". He would be interred in an outdoor area called "Black Herman's Private Graveyard", in full view of his audience. He'd slow his pulse by applying pressure under his arm, & pronounced "dead" on the spot by a local "doctor". As the coffin was lowered into the ground, Herman would slip out unnoticed. For days, people would pay to look at the grave, buidling the suspense over the fate of Black Herman. When the time was up, the coffin was exhumed with great drama and fanfare, and out walked Herman to lead his audience into the nearest theater, where he performed the rest of his show.

Eerily enough, his must famous act foreshadowed his own death in 1934 in which he collapsed on stage due to a massive heart attack that many audience members took to be part of his act. After the crowd refused to believe that the show was indeed over, Black Herman's assistant had his body moved to a funeral home. The crowds followed. Finally, his assistant decided to charge admission as one final farewell & homage to Black Herman's legacy. People came and went by the thousands; some even brought pins to stick into his corpse as proof of his death. His burial made front page news in Black newspapers across the country. Today, Black Herman rests in the Woodlawn Cemetery in NYC.

In 1925, he published a book, ghostwritten by a man named Young entitled, "Secrets of Magic, Mystery, and Legerdemain"; a semi-fictionalized autobiography that offers directions for simple illusions, advice on astrology & lucky numbers, & bits of Hoodoo customs and practices.

"If the slave traders tried to take any of my people captive, we would release ourselves using our secret knowledge." - Black Herman during his rope escape routine.

We pour libations & give him💐 today as we celebrate him for his love & service to our community/people & for his legacied contributions to Hoodoo Culture & History.

Offering suggestions : read his literary works, libations of whiskey/rum, Pan African flag, coins & paper money

‼️Note: offering suggestions are just that & strictly for veneration purposes only. Never attempt to conjure up any spirit or entity without proper divination/Mediumship counsel.‼️

[birdie-24-05]

[Mentions of sexual assault]

The Great Amherst Mystery was a notorious case of reported poltergeist activity in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada between 1878 and 1879. It was the subject of an investigation by Walter Hubbell, an actor with an interest in psychic phenomena, who kept what he claimed was a diary of events in the house, later expanded into a popular book. The case was dismissed as a hoax by skeptical investigators.

The Amherst Mystery centred on Esther Cox, who lived in a house with her married sister Olive Teed, Olive's husband Daniel and their two young children. A brother and sister of Esther and Olive also lived in the house, as did Daniel's brother John Teed.

According to Hubbell's account, events began at the end of August 1878, after Esther Cox, then aged 18, was subjected to an attempted sexual assault by a male friend at gunpoint. This left her in great distress, and shortly after this the physical phenomena began. There were knockings, bangings and rustlings in the night, and Esther herself began to suffer seizures in which her body visibly swelled and she was feverish and chilled by turns.[clarification needed] Then objects in the house took flight.

The frightened family called in a doctor. During his visit, bedclothes moved, scratching noises were heard and the words "Esther Cox, you are mine to kill" appeared on the wall by the head of Esther's bed. The following day the doctor administered sedatives to Esther to calm her and help her sleep, whereupon more noises and flying objects manifested themselves. Attempts to communicate with the "spirit" resulted in tapped responses to questions.

he phenomena continued for some months, and became well known locally. Visitors to the cottage, including clergymen, heard banging and knocking and witnessed moving objects, often when Esther herself was under close observation. In December Esther fell ill with diphtheria. No phenomena were observed during the two weeks she spent in bed, nor during the time she spent recuperating afterwards at the home of a married sister in Sackville, New Brunswick. However, when she returned to Amherst the mysterious events began again, this time involving the outbreak of fires in various places in the house. Esther herself now claimed to see the "ghost", which threatened to burn the house down unless she left.

In January 1879 Esther moved in with another local family, but the manifestations around her continued and were witnessed by many people, some of whom conversed with the "ghost" by questioning and rapped answers. Some were curious and sympathetic; others believed Esther herself to be responsible for the phenomena, and she met with some hostility locally. Esther was frequently slapped, pricked and scratched by the "ghost", and on one occasion was stabbed in the back with a clasp knife. Interest in the case grew as the news spread, and in late March Esther spent some time in Saint John, New Brunswick, where she was investigated by some local gentlemen with an interest in science. By now, several distinct "spirits" were apparently associated with Esther and communicating with onlookers via knocks and rappings. "Bob Nickle", the original "ghost", claimed to have been a shoemaker in life, and others identified themselves as "Peter Cox", a relative of Esther's, and "Maggie Fisher". After the visit to Saint John, Esther spent some time with the Van Amberghs, friends with a peaceful farm near Amherst and then returned to the Teeds' cottage in the summer of 1879, whereupon the phenomena broke out again. It was at this point that Walter Hubbell arrived, attracted by the publicity surrounding the case, and moved into the Teed cottage as a lodger to investigate the phenomena.

Hubbell spent some weeks with Esther and her family, and reported having personally witnessed moving objects, fires and items appearing from nowhere and claimed that he saw phenomena occur even when Esther herself was in full view and obviously unconnected with them. He also claimed to have witnessed attacks on Esther with pins and other sharp objects, and to have seen her in several of her fits of extreme swelling and pain. He communicated with the various named "spirits" by rapping, and listed three others: "Mary Fisher", "Jane Nickle" and "Eliza McNeal", who were also manifesting themselves as part of events.

With Hubbell's professional help, Esther Cox embarked on a speaking tour, attracting audiences who paid to see her and hear her story. However, she met with some hostile reactions and, after she was heckled one night and a disturbance broke out, the attempt was abandoned. She returned to Amherst once more, working for a man named Arthur Davison, but after his barn burned down he accused her of arson and she was convicted and sentenced to four months in prison, although she was released after only one. After this, the phenomena ceased for good. Esther Cox subsequently married twice, having a son by each of her husbands. She moved to Brockton, Massachusetts with her second husband and died on 8 November 1912, aged 52.

I both love and hate this!

[hellsitesonlybookclub]

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 5-6

CHAPTER V

I KNOW the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

THE June morning shone, the last petals of the wild-cherry blossoms lay dew-covered on the grass, robins were about their brisk business on the lawn. Doremus, by nature a late-lier and pilferer of naps after he had been called at eight, was stirred to spring up and stretch his arms out fully five or six times in Swedish exercises, in front of his window, looking out across the Beulah River Valley to dark masses of pine on the mountain slopes three miles away.

Doremus and Emma had had each their own bedroom, these fifteen years, not altogether to her pleasure. He asserted that he couldn't share a bedroom with any person living, because he was a night-mutterer, and liked to make a really good, uprearing, pillow-slapping job of turning over in bed without feeling that he was disturbing someone.

It was Saturday, the day of the Prang revelation, but on this crystal morning, after days of rain, he did not think of Prang at all, but of the fact that Philip, his son, with wife, had popped up from Worcester for the week-end, and that the whole crew of them, along with Lorinda Pike and Buck Titus, were going to have a "real, old-fashioned, family picnic."

They had all demanded it, even the fashionable Sissy, a woman who, at eighteen, had much concern with tennis-teas, golf, and mysterious, appallingly rapid motor trips with Malcolm Tasbrough (just graduating from high school), or with the Episcopal parson's grandson, Julian Falck (freshman in Amherst). Doremus had scolded that he couldn't go to any blame picnic; it was his job, as editor, to stay home and listen to Bishop Prang's broadcast at two; but they had laughed at him and rumpled his hair and miscalled him until he had promised.... They didn't know it, but he had slyly borrowed a portable radio from his friend, the local R. C. priest, Father Stephen Perefixe, and he was going to hear Prang whether or no.

He was glad they were going to have Lorinda Pike—he was fond of that sardonic saint—and Buck Titus, who was perhaps his closest intimate.

James Buck Titus, who was fifty but looked thirty-eight, straight, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted, long-mustached, swarthy—Buck was the Dan'l Boone type of Old American, or, perhaps, an Indian-fighting cavalry captain, out of Charles King. He had graduated from Williams, with ten weeks in England and ten years in Montana, divided between cattle-raising, prospecting, and a horse-breeding ranch. His father, a richish railroad contractor, had left him the great farm near West Beulah, and Buck had come back home to grow apples, to breed Morgan stallions, and to read Voltaire, Anatole France, Nietzsche, and Dostoyefsky. He served in the war, as a private; detested his officers, refused a commission, and liked the Germans at Cologne. He was a useful polo player, but regarded riding to the hounds as childish. In politics, he did not so much yearn over the wrongs of Labor as feel scornful of the tight-fisted exploiters who denned in office and stinking factory. He was as near to the English country squire as one may find in America. He was a bachelor, with a big mid-Victorian house, well kept by a friendly Negro couple; a tidy place in which he sometimes entertained ladies who were not quite so tidy. He called himself an "agnostic" instead of an "atheist" only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelicism of the professional atheists. He was cynical, he rarely smiled, and he was unwaveringly loyal to all the Jessups. His coming to the picnic made Doremus as blithe as his grandson David.

"Perhaps, even under Fascism, the 'Church clock will stand at ten to three, and there will be honey still for tea,'" Doremus hoped, as he put on his rather dandified country tweeds.

"You ought to get rid of that fellow, Ledue," urged Doremus's son Philip, the lawyer.

The only stain on the preparations for the picnic was the grouchiness of the hired man, Shad Ledue. When he was asked to turn the ice-cream freezer he growled, "Why the heck don't you folks get an electric freezer? He grumbled, most audibly, at the weight of the picnic baskets, and when he was asked to clean up the basement during their absence, he retorted only with a glare of silent fury.

"Oh, I don't know," considered Doremus. "Probably just shiftlessness on my part. But I tell myself I'm doing a social experiment—trying to train him to be as gracious as the average Neanderthal man. Or perhaps I'm scared of him—he's the kind of vindictive peasant that sets fire to barns... . Did you know that he actually reads, Phil?"

"No!"

"Yep. Mostly movie magazines, with nekked ladies and Wild Western stories, but he also reads the papers. Told me he greatly admired Buzz Windrip; says Windrip will certainly be President, and then everybody—by which, I'm afraid, Shad means only himself—will have five thousand a year. Buzz certainly has a bunch of philanthropists for followers."

"Now listen, Dad. You don't understand Senator Windrip. Oh, he's something of a demagogue—he shoots off his mouth a lot about how he'll jack up the income tax and grab the banks, but he won't— that's just molasses for the cockroaches. What he will do, and maybe only he can do it, is to protect us from the murdering, thieving, lying Bolsheviks that would—why, they'd like to stick all of us that are going on this picnic, all the decent clean people that are accustomed to privacy, into hall bedrooms, and make us cook our cabbage soup on a Primus stuck on a bed! Yes, or maybe 'liquidate' us entirely! No sir, Berzelius Windrip is the fellow to balk the dirty sneaking Jew spies that pose as American Liberals!"

"The face is the face of my reasonably competent son, Philip, but the voice is the voice of the Jew-baiter, Julius Streicher," sighed Doremus.

Davy Greenhill and his hero, Buck Titus, wrestled in the hardy pasture grass. Philip and Dr. Fowler Greenhill, Doremus's son-in-law (Phil plump and half bald at thirty-two; Fowler belligerently red-headed and red-mustached) argued about the merits of the autogiro. Doremus lay with his head against a rock, his cap over his eyes, gazing down into the paradise of Beulah Valley—he could not have sworn to it, but he rather thought he saw an angel floating in the radiant upper air above the valley. The women, Emma and Mary Greenhill, Sissy and Philip's wife and Lorinda Pike, were setting out the picnic lunch—a pot of beans with crisp salt pork, fried chicken, potatoes warmed-over with croutons, tea biscuits, crab-apple jelly, salad, raisin pie—on a red-and-white tablecloth spread on a flat rock.

The picnic ground was among a Stonehenge of gray and lichen-painted rocks, fronting a birch grove high up on Mount Terror, on the upland farm of Doremus's cousin, Henry Veeder, a solid, reticent Vermonter of the old days. They looked through a distant mountain gap to the faint mercury of Lake Champlain and, across it, the bulwark of the Adirondacks.

But for the parked motorcars, the scene might have been New England in 1885, and you could see the women in chip hats and tight-bodiced, high-necked frocks with bustles; the men in straw boaters with dangling ribbons and adorned with side-whiskers—Doremus's beard not clipped, but flowing like a bridal veil. When Dr. Greenhill fetched down Cousin Henry Veeder, a bulky yet shy enough pre-Ford farmer in clean, faded overalls, then was Time again unbought, secure, serene.

And the conversation had a comfortable triviality, an affectionate Victorian dullness. However Doremus might fret about "conditions," however skittishly Sissy might long for the presence of her beaux, Julian Falck and Malcolm Tasbrough, there was nothing modern and neurotic, nothing savoring of Freud, Adler, Marx, Bertrand Russell, or any other divinity of the 1930's, when Mother Emma chattered to Mary and Merilla about her rose bushes that had "winter-killed," and the new young maples that the field mice had gnawed, and the difficulty of getting Shad Ledue to bring in enough fireplace wood, and how Shad gorged pork chops and fried potatoes and pie at lunch, which he ate at the Jessups'.

And the View. The women talked about the View as honeymooners once talked at Niagara Falls.

David and Buck Titus were playing ship, now, on a rearing rock—it was the bridge, and David was Captain Popeye, with Buck his bosun; and even Dr. Greenhill, that impetuous crusader who was constantly infuriating the county board of health by reporting the slovenly state of the poor farm and the stench in the county jail, was lazy in the sun and with the greatest of concentration kept an unfortunate little ant running back and forth on a twig. His wife Mary—the golfer, the runner-up in state tennis tournaments, the giver of smart but not too bibulous cocktail parties at the country club, the wearer of smart brown tweeds with a green scarf—seemed to have dropped gracefully back into the domesticity of her mother, and to consider as a very weighty thing a recipe for celery-and- roquefort sandwiches on toasted soda crackers. She was the handsome Older Jessup Girl again, back in the white house with the mansard roof.

And Foolish, lying on his back with his four paws idiotically flopping, was the most pastorally old-fashioned of them all.

The only serious flare of conversation was when Buck Titus snarled to Doremus: "Certainly a lot of Messiahs pottin' at you from the bushes these days—Buzz Windrip and Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin and Dr. Townsend (though he seems to have gone back to Nazareth) and Upton Sinclair and Rev. Frank Buchman and Bernarr Macfadden and Willum Randolph Hearst and Governor Talmadge and Floyd Olson and—Say, I swear the best Messiah in the whole show is this darky, Father Divine. He doesn't just promise he's going to feed the Under-privileged ten years from now—he hands out the fried drumsticks and gizzard right along with the Salvation. How about him for President?"

This young man, freshman in Amherst the past year, grandson of the Episcopal rector and living with the old man because his parents were dead, was in the eyes of Doremus the most nearly tolerable of Sissy's suitors. He was Swede-blond and wiry, with a neat, small face and canny eyes. He called Doremus "sir," and he had, unlike most of the radio-and-motor-hypnotized eighteen-year-olds in the Fort, read a book, and voluntarily—read Thomas Wolfe and William Rollins, John Strachey and Stuart Chase and Ortega. Whether Sissy preferred him to Malcolm Tasbrough, her father did not know. Malcolm was taller and thicker than Julian, and he drove his own streamline De Soto, while Julian could only borrow his grandfather's shocking old flivver.

Out of nowhere appeared Julian Falck.

Sissy and Julian bickered amiably about Alice Aylot's skill in backgammon, and Foolish scratched himself in the sun.

But Doremus was not being pastoral. He was being anxious and scientific. While the others jeered, "When does Dad take his audition?" and "What's he learning to be—a crooner or a hockey-announcer?" Doremus was adjusting the doubtful portable radio. Once he thought he was going to be with them in the Home Sweet Home atmosphere, for he tuned in on a program of old songs, and all of them, including Cousin Henry Veeder, who had a hidden passion for fiddlers and barn dances and parlor organs, hummed "Gaily the Troubadour" and "Maid of Athens" and "Darling Nelly Gray." But when the announcer informed them that these ditties were being sponsored by Toily Oily, the Natural Home Cathartic, and that they were being rendered by a sextette of young males horribly called "The Smoothies," Doremus abruptly shut them off.

"Why, what's the matter, Dad?" cried Sissy.

"'Smoothies'! God! This country deserves what it's going to get!" snapped Doremus. "Maybe we need a Buzz Windrip!"

The moment, then—it should have been announced by cathedral chimes—of the weekly address of Bishop Paul Peter Prang.

Coming from an airless closet, smelling of sacerdotal woolen union suits, in Persepolis, Indiana, it leapt to the farthest stars; it circled the world at 186,000 miles a second—a million miles while you stopped to scratch. It crashed into the cabin of a whaler on a dark polar sea; into an office, paneled with linen-fold oak looted from a Nottinghamshire castle, on the sixty-seventh story of a building on Wall Street; into the foreign office in Tokio; into the rocky hollow below the shining birches upon Mount Terror, in Vermont.

Bishop Prang spoke, as he usually did, with a grave kindliness, a virile resonance, which made his self, magically coming to them on the unseen aerial pathway, at once dominating and touched with charm; and whatever his purposes might be, his words were on the side of the Angels:

"My friends of the radio audience, I shall have but six more weekly petitions to make you before the national conventions, which will decide the fate of this distraught nation, and the time has come now to act—to act! Enough of words! Let me put together certain separated phrases out of the sixth chapter of Jeremiah, which seem to have been prophetically written for this hour of desperate crisis in America:

"'Oh ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves together to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem.... Prepare ye war... arise and let us go up at noon. Woe unto us! for the day goeth away, for the shadows of the evening are stretched out. Arise, and let us go by night and let us destroy her palaces. ... I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am weary with holding it in; I will pour it out upon the children abroad, and upon the assembly of young men together; for even the husband with the wife shall be taken, the aged with him that is full of days.... I will stretch out my hand upon the inhabitants of this land, saith the Lord. For from the least of them even unto the greatest, every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest, every one dealeth falsely... saying Peace, Peace, when there is no Peace!'

"So spake the Book, of old.... But it was spoken also to America, of 1936!

"There is no Peace! For more than a year now, the League of Forgotten Men has warned the politicians, the whole government, that we are sick unto death of being the Dispossessed—and that, at last, we are more than fifty million strong; no whimpering horde, but with the will, the voices, the votes to enforce our sovereignty! We have in no uncertain way informed every politician that we demand—that we demand—certain measures, and that we will brook no delay. Again and again we have demanded that both the control of credit and the power to issue money be unqualifiedly taken away from the private banks; that the soldiers not only receive the bonus they with their blood and anguish so richly earned in '17 and '18, but that the amount agreed upon be now doubled; that all swollen incomes be severely limited and inheritances cut to such small sums as may support the heirs only in youth and in old age; that labor and farmers' unions be not merely recognized as instruments for joint bargaining but be made, like the syndicates in Italy, official parts of the government, representing the toilers; and that International Jewish Finance and, equally, International Jewish Communism and Anarchism and Atheism be, with all the stern solemnity and rigid inflexibility this great nation can show, barred from all activity. Those of you who have listened to me before will understand that I—or rather that the League of Forgotten Men—has no quarrel with individual Jews; that we are proud to have Rabbis among our directors; but those subversive international organizations which, unfortunately, are so largely Jewish, must be driven with whips and scorpions from off the face of the earth.

"These demands we have made, and how long now, O Lord, how long, have the politicians and the smirking representatives of Big Business pretended to listen, to obey? 'Yes—yes—my masters of the League of Forgotten Men—yes, we understand—just give us time!'

"There is no more time! Their time is over and all their unholy power!

"The conservative Senators—the United States Chamber of Commerce— the giant bankers—the monarchs of steel and motors and electricity and coal—the brokers and the holding-companies—they are all of them like the Bourbon kings, of whom it was said that 'they forgot nothing and they learned nothing.'

"But they died upon the guillotine!

"Perhaps we can be more merciful to our Bourbons. Perhaps— perhaps—we can save them from the guillotine—the gallows—the swift firing-squad. Perhaps we shall, in our new régime, under our new Constitution, with our 'New Deal' that really will be a New Deal and not an arrogant experiment—perhaps we shall merely make these big bugs of finance and politics sit on hard chairs, in dingy offices, toiling unending hours with pen and typewriter as so many white-collar slaves for so many years have toiled for them!

"It is, as Senator Berzelius Windrip puts it, 'the zero hour,' now, this second. We have stopped bombarding the heedless ears of these false masters. We're 'going over the top.' At last, after months and months of taking counsel together, the directors of the League of Forgotten Men, and I myself, announce that in the coming Democratic national convention we shall, without one smallest reservation—"

"Listen! Listen! History being made!" Doremus cried at his heedless family.

"—use the tremendous strength of the millions of League members to secure the Democratic presidential nomination for Senator— Berzelius—Windrip—which means, flatly, that he will be elected— and that we of the League shall elect him—as President of these United States!

"His program and that of the League do not in all details agree. But he has implicitly pledged himself to take our advice, and, at least until election, we shall back him, absolutely—with our money, with our loyalty, with our votes... with our prayers. And may the Lord guide him and us across the desert of iniquitous politics and swinishly grasping finance into the golden glory of the Promised Land! God bless you!"

Mrs. Jessup said cheerily, "Why, Dormouse, that bishop isn't a Fascist at all—he's a regular Red Radical. But does this announcement of his mean anything, really?"

Oh, well, Doremus reflected, he had lived with Emma for thirty-four years, and not oftener than once or twice a year had he wanted to murder her. Blandly he said, "Why, nothing much except that in a couple of years now, on the ground of protecting us, the Buzz Windrip dictatorship will be regimenting everything, from where we may pray to what detective stories we may read."

"Sure he will! Sometimes I'm tempted to turn Communist! Funny—me with my fat-headed old Hudson-River-Valley Dutch ancestors!" marveled Julian Falck.

"Fine idea! Out of the frying pan of Windrip and Hitler into the fire of the New York Daily Worker and Stalin and automatics! And the Five-Year Plan—I suppose they'd tell me that it's been decided by the Commissar that each of my mares is to bear six colts a year now!" snorted Buck Titus; while Dr. Fowler Greenhill jeered:

"Aw, shoot, Dad—and you too, Julian, you young paranoiac—you're monomaniacs! Dictatorship? Better come into the office and let me examine your heads! Why, America's the only free nation on earth. Besides! Country's too big for a revolution. No, no! Couldn't happen here!"

CHAPTER VI

I'D rather follow a wild-eyed anarchist like Em Goldman, if they'd bring more johnnycake and beans and spuds into the humble cabin of the Common Man, than a twenty-four-carat, college-graduate, ex-cabinet-member statesman that was just interested in our turning out more limousines. Call me a socialist or any blame thing you want to, as long as you grab hold of the other end of the cross-cut saw with me and help slash the big logs of Poverty and Intolerance to pieces.

Zero Hour, Berzelius Windrip.

HIS family—at least his wife and the cook, Mrs. Candy, and Sissy and Mary, Mrs. Fowler Greenhill—believed that Doremus was of fickle health; that any cold would surely turn into pneumonia; that he must wear his rubbers, and eat his porridge, and smoke fewer cigarettes, and never "overdo." He raged at them; he knew that though he did get staggeringly tired after a crisis in the office, a night's sleep made him a little dynamo again, and he could "turn out copy" faster than his spryest young reporter.

He concealed his dissipations from them like any small boy from his elders; lied unscrupulously about how many cigarettes he smoked; kept concealed a flask of Bourbon from which he regularly had one nip, only one, before he padded to bed; and when he had promised to go to sleep early, he turned off his light till he was sure that Emma was slumbering, then turned it on and happily read till two, curled under the well-loved hand-woven blankets from a loom up on Mount Terror; his legs twitching like a dreaming setter's what time the Chief Inspector of the C.I.D., alone and unarmed, walked into the counterfeiters' hideout. And once a month or so he sneaked down to the kitchen at three in the morning and made himself coffee and washed up everything so that Emma and Mrs. Candy would never know.... He thought they never knew!

These small deceptions gave him the ripest satisfaction in a life otherwise devoted to public service, to trying to make Shad Ledue edge-up the flower beds, to feverishly writing editorials that would excite 3 per cent of his readers from breakfast time till noon and by 6 P.M. be eternally forgotten.

Sometimes when Emma came to loaf beside him in bed on a Sunday morning and put her comfortable arm about his thin shoulder-blades, she was sick with the realization that he was growing older and more frail. His shoulders, she thought, were pathetic as those of an anemic baby.... That sadness of hers Doremus never guessed.

The wise Emma was happy when he was snappish before breakfast. It meant that he was energetic and popping with satisfactory ideas.

Even just before the paper went to press, even when Shad Ledue took off two hours and charged an item of two dollars to have the lawnmower sharpened, instead of filing it himself, even when Sissy and her gang played the piano downstairs till two on nights when he did not want to lie awake, Doremus was never irritable—except, usually, between arising and the first life-saving cup of coffee.

After Bishop Prang had presented the crown to Senator Windrip, as the summer hobbled nervously toward the national political conventions, Emma was disturbed. For Doremus was silent before breakfast, and he had rheumy eyes, as though he was worried, as though he had slept badly. Never was he cranky. She missed hearing him croaking, "Isn't that confounded idiot, Mrs. Candy, ever going to bring in the coffee? I suppose she's sitting there reading her Testament! And will you be so kind as to tell me, my good woman, why Sissy never gets up for breakfast, even after the rare nights when she goes to bed at 1 A.M.? And—and will you look out at that walk! Covered with dead blossoms. That swine Shad hasn't swept it for a week. I swear, I am going to fire him, and right away, this morning!"

Emma would have been happy to hear these familiar animal sounds, and to cluck in answer, "Oh, why, that's terrible! I'll go tell Mrs. Candy to hustle in the coffee right away!"

But he sat unspeaking, pale, opening his Daily Informer as though he were afraid to see what news had come in since he had left the office at ten.

He, who understood himself abnormally well, knew that far from being a left-wing radical, he was at most a mild, rather indolent and somewhat sentimental Liberal, who disliked pomposity, the heavy humor of public men, and the itch for notoriety which made popular preachers and eloquent educators and amateur play-producers and rich lady reformers and rich lady sportswomen and almost every brand of rich lady come preeningly in to see newspaper editors, with photographs under their arms, and on their faces the simper of fake humility. But for all cruelty and intolerance, and for the contempt of the fortunate for the unfortunate, he had not mere dislike but testy hatred.

When Doremus, back in the 1920's, had advocated the recognition of Russia, Fort Beulah had fretted that he was turning out-and-out Communist.

He had alarmed all his fellow editors in northern New England by asserting the innocence of Tom Mooney, questioning the guilt of Sacco and Vanzetti, condemning our intrusion in Haiti and Nicaragua, advocating an increased income tax, writing, in the 1932 campaign, a friendly account of the Socialist candidate, Norman Thomas (and afterwards, to tell the truth, voting for Franklin Roosevelt), and stirring up a little local and ineffective hell regarding the serfdom of the Southern sharecroppers and the California fruit-pickers. He even suggested editorially that when Russia had her factories and railroads and giant farms really going—say, in 1945—she might conceivably be the pleasantest country in the world for the (mythical!) Average Man. When he wrote that editorial, after a lunch at which he had been irritated by the smug croaking of Frank Tasbrough and R. C. Crowley, he really did get into trouble. He got named Bolshevik, and in two days his paper lost a hundred and fifty out of its five thousand circulation.

Yet he was as little of a Bolshevik as Herbert Hoover.

He was, and he knew it, a small-town bourgeois Intellectual. Russia forbade everything that made his toil worth enduring: privacy, the right to think and to criticize as he freakishly pleased. To have his mind policed by peasants in uniform—rather than that he would live in an Alaska cabin, with beans and a hundred books and a new pair of pants every three years.

Once, on a motor trip with Emma, he stopped in at a summer camp of Communists. Most of them were City College Jews or neat Bronx dentists, spectacled, and smooth-shaven except for foppish small mustaches. They were hot to welcome these New England peasants and to explain the Marxian gospel (on which, however, they furiously differed). Over macaroni and cheese in an unpainted dining shack, they longed for the black bread of Moscow. Later, Doremus chuckled to find how much they resembled the Y.M.C.A. campers twenty miles down the highway—equally Puritanical, hortatory, and futile, and equally given to silly games with rubber balls.

Once only had he been dangerously active. He had supported the strike for union recognition against the quarry company of Francis Tasbrough. Men whom Doremus had known for years, solid cits like Superintendent of Schools Emil Staubmeyer, and Charley Betts of the furniture store, had muttered about "riding him out of town on a rail." Tasbrough reviled him—even now, eight years later. After all this, the strike had been lost, and the strike-leader, an avowed Communist named Karl Pascal, had gone to prison for "inciting to violence." When Pascal, best of mechanics, came out, he went to work in a littered little Fort Beulah garage owned by a friendly, loquacious, belligerent Polish Socialist named John Pollikop.

All day long Pascal and Pollikop yelpingly raided each other's trenches in the battle between Social Democracy and Communism, and Doremus often dropped in to stir them up. That was hard for Tasbrough, Staubmeyer, Banker Crowley, and Lawyer Kitterick to bear.

If Doremus had not come from three generations of debt-paying Vermonters, he would by now have been a penniless wandering printer... and possibly less detached about the Sorrows of the Dispossessed.

The conservative Emma complained: "How you can tease people this way, pretending you really like greasy mechanics like this Pascal (and I suspect you even have a sneaking fondness for Shad Ledue!) when you could just associate with decent, prosperous people like Frank—it's beyond me! What they must think of you, sometimes! They don't understand that you're really not a Socialist one bit, but really a nice, kind-hearted, responsible man. Oh, I ought to smack you, Dormouse!"

Not that he liked being called "Dormouse." But then, no one did so except Emma and, in rare slips of the tongue, Buck Titus. So it was endurable.

[myhauntedsalem]

The Great Amherst Mystery

Famous poltergeist case which took place in 1878-79 in Amherst, Nova Scotia. The focus of the case was 18-year-old Esther Cox, who lived in the overcrowded Teed home with her sister Jennie, her other sister Olive and her husband Daniel Teed, her brother William, Daniel Teed’s brother John and the two Teed boys.

About a week after Esther’s boyfriend, Bob MacNeal, tried to rape her at gunpoint, scratching noises were heard in Esther’s bedroom and she screamed to her sister Jennie that there was a mouse in the bed with her. As Jennie rushed to her aid, she saw a cardboard box move by itself- and of course, no mouse was found. The next night, Esther’s face turned bright red and her body swelled to twice its normal size. While Esther cried that she was dying, a loud booming noise was heard outside.  A few days later, Esther was still alarmingly swollen. Her bedsheets were torn off her while she was sleeping and thrown at John Teed, who immediately left the home, swearing never to return. The rest of the Teed family sat on Esther’s sheets to try to keep them in place. When the local doctor visited to examine Esther, plaster flew off the walls and chillingly, the words “Esther Cox, you are mine to kill!” appeared on the wall above her bed. When the doctor prescribed morphine the next day, he was hit by a volley of potatoes, which struck so hard that he was actually knocked across the room.

Loud noises continued for weeks and the lurid story hit the newspapers. A local minister witnessed a bucket of cold water come to a boil while sitting on the kitchen table. Esther fell into a trance and told that Bob MacNeal had tried to rape her. Jennie proclaimed that the haunting was Bob’s fault and the poltergeist began rapidly knocking on the walls as if in agreement. In future messages the ghost wrote on walls, it would often sign itself “Bob”. 

When Esther caught diptheria, the haunting ceased but it started back up again when she recovered. She got a job at a restaurant owned by a neighbor, but while she was at the restaurant, she was hit on the head with a scrubbing brush, oven doors clanged open and things stuck to her like she was a magnet. She was given special shoes with glass soles in an attempt to reduce some of the phenomena but she said the shoes gave her headaches and nosebleeds. She also began to hear voices in her head which threatened to stab her and burn the Teed home down.Lit matches sometimes rained down on her from the bedroom ceiling and one of her dresses once caught fire while it was hanging in the closet.

When a magician came to Amherst, hoping to make some money exploiting the phenomena, the poltergeist threw carving knives, an umbrella and a chair at him. Pins were jammed into Eshter’s hand, fires broke out in the house and a trumpet was heard playing in the home. Later, a small silver trumpet was found. No one could remember seeing it before. Esther’s brother George found himself forcibly undressed in public three different times by the poltergeist and the family cat was levitated five feet in the air.

Concerned that the poltergeist trouble would affect the property’s value, the Teed’s landlord asked Esther to leave the house. She went to work on a local farm but when items disappeared, she was accused of theft and when the barn burned down, she was accused of arson and sentenced to four months in jail. During her time in the big house, the poltergeist activity stopped entirely and never returned. Esther was able to return to a normal life that included whispers about whether she engineered the poltergeist herself and a lifelong drinking problem. 

[em-dick]

Media featuring Emily Dickinson

This is a ongoing list of media (TV, film, and web content) that features Emily Dickinson.  Please note:  being on this list doesn’t necessarily guarantee the media is a quality or accurate representation.  I simply want to provide a list of titles and where they can be watched.  You be the judge of what’s good or not.

Fictional

The Belle of Amherst (1976) - Play starring Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson. kanopy

The World of Emily Dickinson (2007) - TV movie starring Claire Bloom as Emily Dickinson. kanopy

Emily Dickinson’s Guide to Spending the Holidays Alone (2013) - Web short starring Sarah Grace Hart as Emily Dickinson. YouTube

The Writing Majors (2015) - Web series featuring Shelby Stillwell as Emily Dickinson. YouTube

Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party (2016) - Web series featuring Sarah Grace Hart as Emily Dickinson. YouTube

A Quiet Passion (2016) - Movie starring Cynthia Nixon as Emily Dickinson. hoopla | kanopy | Plex

Wild Nights with Emily (2018) - Movie starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson. kanopy

Dickinson (2019–2021) - TV series starring Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson. Apple TV+

Documentary/Other

Emily Dickinson:  A Certain Slant of Light (1978) -  Julie Harris takes viewers on a tour of Emily Dickinson’s world, giving them a glimpse into the poet’s everyday life in New England. tubi

Great Women Writers:  Emily Dickinson (2006) - Program that provides an in-depth look into her life, and includes numerous examples of her works while examining her style. hoopla

Angles of a Landscape:  Perspectives on Emily Dickinson (2012) - Video series which explores little-known aspects of Dickinson's life and work. Only clips are available online. Part I - The Poet in Her Bedroom | Part II - Seeing New Englandy (clip #1) | Part II - Seeing New Englandy (clip #2)

The Life and Work of Emily Dickinson (2014) - Film that traces Dickinson’s life in 19th Century New England and her remarkable work during a time when any ideas contrary to the norm were not accepted by society. kanopy

My Letter to the World (2017) -  Film that provides an in-depth exploration of the life and work of the great American poet Emily Dickinson, narrated by Cynthia Nixon. hoopla | kanopy | tubi

Poetry in America (2018) - TV series which gathers distinguished interpreters from all walks of life to explore and debate unforgettable American poems.  Season 1, episode 1 discusses “I Cannot Dance Opon My Toes” by Emily Dickinson, featuring Cynthia Nixon, Marie Howe, Yo Yo Ma, and Jill Johnson. hoopla | vimeo

Up To Astonishment (2020) -  Film that uses the form of a cinematic diary to examine Emily Dickinson's eccentric and brilliant inner life. vimeo

LA Opera Digital Shorts:  Between the Rooms (2022) - An intense, deeply moving new Digital Short by director/choreographer Kim Brandstrup showcases composer Anna Clyne's gorgeous musical setting of poetry by Emily Dickinson. Between the Rooms is a poignant meditation on solitude, featuring two internationally celebrated ballet dancers, the extraordinary Alina Cojocaru and Matthew Ball. Soprano Joélle Harvey is the vocal soloist, joined by members of the Brooklyn-based orchestra The Knights, conducted by Eric Jacobsen.  YouTube

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*UPDATED 10/11/2022*  Removed hulu link for Wild Nights with Emily; replaced link for Poetry in America; added link for Between the Rooms

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*UPDATED 03/25/2023* Removed tubi link for A Quiet Passion; added tubi link for My Letter to the World

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*UPDATED 05/15/2023* Added Plex link for A Quiet Passion; added tubi link for Emily Dickinson:  A Certain Slant of Light

[magnusmysteries]

Part 3: The Wheel of Fear

The Magnus Archives was a horror podcast. It is now completed. Many of the show’s mysteries were never explained on the show. I intend to explain them. Spoilers for the show, but also spoilers if you wanna solve these mysteries yourself.

In the Architecture of Fear Smirke talks about a great wheel of fear. He talks of the fourteen powers, each with their opposites and their allies. I think Smirke believed the fourteen fears could be arranged in a circle, and that two fears on opposite sides of the circle are opposites. 

In Old Passages there is a circular room with fourteen corridors leading out of it and a datestone that says “Robert Smirke. 1835. Balance and Fear.” I think each corridor represents a fear, with opposing fears placed opposite each other. The building is supposed to balance and thereby neutralize the fears. I think it works to some extent. In End of the Tunnel there is a similar structure. This one was damaged by a bomb during World War 2. This ruined the balance, and the Dark got out.

In Family Business Gerard says some fears really clash with each other, while others can blend together.

I tried to work out how Smirke arranged his fears on the wheel. I looked for episodes where two fears seemed to blend together and put them next to each other. With some fears it is fairly obvious they are neighbors, if you look for the clues. Others connections are harder to spot. I tried a few versions of the wheel that didn’t feel completely right. But then I found a version where suddenly lots of things clicked. It explained why the web table could trap the Not-Then, why Robert Monthauk’s ritual banished the darkness monster and things like that. I think this is the correct wheel:  

Description of image: A circle with 14 spots similar to a clock. On each spot is a number and the name of a power: 1. Corruption. 2. Desolation. 3. Hunt. 4. Slaughter. 5. End. 6. Lonely. 7. Stranger. 8. Flesh. 9. Spiral. 10. Buried. 11. Dark. 12. Vast. 13. Eye. 14. Web.

Here is how powers overlap:

Corruption and Desolation 

Desolation deals with suffering and loss of loved ones, and disease can cause both of those things.

Asag is a god of both fire and disease.

John Amherst is an avatar of both powers. There is fire in every episode he appears. In Taken Ill the old folks home he managed burns. It appears it was burned by Trevor and Julia, but this is misdirection. Amherst burned it himself. In Pest Control Amherst is burned, yet survives. In the Tale of A Field Hospital Jonathan notices the statement is charred. He speculates this happened when Gertrude burned the book. But I think the book spontaneously combusted. In A Cozy Cabin we learn that Gertrude is very much against burning books in the archives, and would have been more careful and not ruined the statement. And in Rotten Core Adelard says he will sit on Amherst’s throne and burn himself and it. I think that was a very bad idea, more on that in a later post.

In Squirm the protagonist, after being infected by worms, burns his own apartment down. He is influenced by Corruption/Desolation.

Desolation and Hunt 

You can run from a hunter and you can run from fire.

Vampires are Hunt, Desolation and Corruption. In Vampire Killer we learn that vampires burn very easily. Because of the Desolation.

Why do vampires have a long bloodsucking tongue? Because the Corruption deals with mosquitoes.

There is a hint about the vampire-mosquito connection in Dead Horse; “That night the mosquitos were out in force, thick with fever, and hungry for our blood. I did my best to simply ignore them, safe as I was in my net. But over in Raleigh’s tent I kept hearing a sporadic thumping, or clapping sound, as if he were killing them with his bare hands. When I asked him about it the next day, he simply told me he had inside him a strong and enduring hatred of bloodsuckers.”

And then later: “Now, he and his crew were pinning the things that looked like men to trees, with long, iron spikes. They thrashed, and struggled, and a long, bulbous tongue hung from their throats, pinned by the iron of von Toll’s men. “I cannot stand bloodsuckers,” Raleigh said approvingly, as he conversed quietly with Baron von Toll in French.”

Also in Vampire Killer, the vampire offers rotten fruit to Trevor. Her house is dusty, a book Trevor picks up is damp and moldy and the bed is musty. 

Hunt and Slaughter 

The similarities are obvious.

Several of the Slaughter episodes have music that makes people go violent: The Piper, Strange Music, Grifter’s Bone, Civilian Casualties, Nemesis.  Total War had singing corpses. Two hunter episodes also had music connection. First Hunt has the werewolf whistling “A-hunting-we-shall go”. Thrill of the Chase had the protagonist tapping her foot as if to music right before the violence started.

Thrill of The Chase is a Hunt/Slaughter episode. The Man in the mask is like a serial killer from a movie, very Slaughter. But it is a wolf mask, very Hunt.

Slaughter and End

People die in war.

Absent Without Leave covers both fears. Slaughter obviously, but it is also about the inevitableness of death.

Many Slaughter episodes deal with the living dead. And they usually seem to have a horrible existence: The guy getting stabbed in the Smell of Blood. All the soldiers fused together that shot Melanie. The dead people in Grifter’s Bone that had to fight each other. The dead woman in Absent without a leave. The corpses in the tunnel in the same episode. This makes people fear death since they don’t wanna end up like that.

The End also has the skin book which similarly makes people live after death, and it is agony. And Oliver Banks was alive after death.

In Total War, a Slaughter episode, the statement giver says he could believe he was dead and in hell. 

End And Lonely 

You’re all alone when you’re dead I guess.

In the episode Alone, the statement giver is almost drawn into an empty grave. Very End. 

There is also a ghost in that episode. So life after death, like with the End and the Slaughter.

The Lucas family only meet for funerals.

From Boatswain’s call, regard Peter Lukas: “His eyes only moved a fraction of an inch to focus on me, but it felt as though the movement had the weight of a heavy stone door. Like a tomb. Don’t know why that’s what popped into my head, but there you go.”

Lonely and Stranger 

If everyone is a stranger to you, you are lonely.

Lost in the Crowd and Monologue are Lonely/Stranger episodes.

Stranger and Flesh 

Stranger deals with objects that behave like people. Flesh deals with thinking people are just flesh, an object.

Anatomy Class is a Stranger/Flesh episode.

Flesh and Spiral 

Thinking you are just meat is a kind of madness.

In Killing Floor the protagonist is lost in a slaughterhouse maze, very Flesh and Spiral. He also walks a spiral staircase at some point.

I think Jared Hopworth is both Flesh and Spiral. Many reasons for him being Spiral: First: He prays on people with mental problems, body dysmorphia, anorexia etc.

Second: In The Butcher’s Window he twists a bone into a spiral and inserts it in himself.

Third: The book The Boneturner's Tale makes nearby books bleed. I think objects that bleed, that should not have blood, is a sign of the Spiral. The door handle in a Sturdy Lock bled. The tree in Burned Out bled. I think the tree is Spiral, much more on that in another post. Books, door handles and trees that bleed are all impossible, madness. Some might object that blood also fits with the Flesh, but the Flesh is actually fairly into cleanliness. I’ll explain why below.  

Fourth: when Michael Crew is tormented by the Spiral he tries to escape by using the Boneturner’s Tale. “...but when I tried to shift the bits of myself I thought might set me free, the only shapes I could form with them were laced with that horrid, hunting fractal.” You can’t escape from the Spiral by using a book of the Spiral.

Mary Keay seems to think the book that drops bones is of the Flesh “Just a bit of viscera. Poems about dying animals...” The book is part Flesh, hence the dying animals, but is also Spiral. If you see a book producing bones you’d think you’d gone mad right? 

Also in Old Passages, the bone book is stored in the room corresponding to the Spiral. The floor of that room’s corridor apparently bleeds. “I put my hand onto the floor to push myself up, and it came away faintly tinged with red.” There is a mummified hand in the Spiral room, hands are often an element with the Spiral. Think of the Distortion’s hands, or the Worker-in-Clay’s weird hands, or the hands coming out of the pot in Lost and Found. After entering the room, the statement giver gets very confused. He says his memories start to blur, and he ends up apparently taking the wrong door several times. That’s the Spiral messing with his mind and making him lost.

The demon In Confession and Desecrated Host might be of Spiral/Flesh. Or it might be the two Fears working together. More on that in a later post.

Spiral and Buried 

Strong claustrophobia can be irrational, a mental problem. The Spiral includes the fear of getting lost, and you can get lost in a cave.

The Distortion has a yellow door that is a portal to impossible places. The Coffin is yellow and is a portal to an impossible place.

Held in Customs is Buried/Spiral. Time behaved differently for the protagonist, typically Spiral. John says the protagonist got Alzheimer, but it is the Spiral messing with his memories.

Lost Johns’ Cave is Buried/Spiral/Dark. The protagonist's memories are all wrong, the Spiral has changed them. And the cave is a maze. Mazes are spiral. The statement giver is a big fan of darkness.

Buried and Dark 

Caves are dark and cramped. The ocean is dark and choking.

Lights Out is Buried/Dark. Quote: “I was in the Sandman’s sack. (...) The darkness pressed in, and seemed to fill my mouth, my nose.” Also the Sandman spills sand from his mouth, similar to how people chocked on sand in Dust to Dust and how the man spit out mud in We All Ignore The Pit.

Submerged is Buried/Dark. The protagonist is in danger of drowning but there are lots of references to darkness: The lights at the lawyer office don't work because the lightbulb is filled with water. There is thunder but no lightning, that is there are no lights in the sky. There are no street lights or lights on in the other houses. Water is described as dark and murky. The lights of the cars come on, to show dark shapes moving in the water. Quote about the water: "It would wrap itself around me, reach down my throat and fill me with its choking darkness." The water is murky. Dark water is also in several Dark episodes: a Father Love, Nightfall, Tucked In and the Movement of the Heavens. 

Dark and Vast 

The ocean is dark and vast. Space is dark and vast.

High Pressure is a Dark/Vast/Buried episode. The space the protagonist enters seems too dark. The vastness of the underwater space and the size of the creature is Vast. The enormous pressure is Buried.

In Big Picture we learned that Hailey, of the Dark, helped make the diving bell for the Vast ritual.

In Old Passages the first corridor the statement giver is in, is of the Buried. He keeps thinking the corridor is getting narrower. When he gets to the circular room he looks down the other doorways. One makes him feel like he’s gonna fall into it. One is exceptionally dark. It’s the corridors of the Vast and the Dark. They would be the corridors next to the Buried, the first doorways the statement giver would look into.

Vast and Eye 

From The Coming Storm, Mike Crew discussing the Vast and the Eye: “We have a lot in common, really. After all, what, what good’s the height, the terrifying draw of gravity, unless you, unless you really know the scale of what you’re facing?”

In The Architecture of Fear an enormous Eye fills the sky.

In Twice as Bright Jude says of Michael Crew “...he’s closer to your lot than mine.” Meaning the Vast is closer to the Eye than the Desolation.

Quote from Jurgen Leitner: “Imagine, you are an ant, and you have never before seen a human. Then one day, into your colony, a huge fingernail is thrust, scraping and digging. You flee to another entrance, only to be confronted by a staring eye gazing at you. You climb to the top, trying to find escape and, above you, can see the vast dark shadow of a boot falling upon you. Would that ant be able to construct these things into the form of a single human being? Or would it believe itself to be under attack by three different, equally terrible, but very distinct assailants?”

Jurgen is referencing four powers here, the eye is the Eye. The boot is the Vast and the Dark. The digging fingernail is the Buried. And these four powers are next to each other, so in a way they are the same.

When Jurgen said this he was compelled by John. John did not know that he was compelling Jurgen, but Jurgen did know. Jurgen seemed to not want to give too much information. He was perhaps worried John would learn that destroying the archives would kill John. That Leitner, indirectly, was planning to kill John. So Leitner talked in riddles. That way he could give into the compulsion without John getting wiser.

Eye and Web

Both powers can seem passive, waiting and watching. Spiders have eight eyes.

The Book A Guest for Mister Spider is part Eye. Mr. Spider has eight eyes of all shapes and sizes.

Archivists are Eye/Web. First, the way they compel people to speak is very Web. 

Second, the ancient archivist in Alexandria had long spindly fingers. Like spider legs. In Web Development Annabelle Cane is also described as having long spindly fingers. In Thought For The Day Annabelle moves her fingers along the wall, “...like a spider”.

Third, In Doomed Voyage, after John takes Floyd’s statement, Floyd seems confused. John tried to soothe him. Then John says “It’s alright, Floyd. You just need a break.” Floyd says “Yeah. Sure”. I think John was mind controlling Floyd. I think there is a little static when John speaks. Static on the tape often indicates that something magic is happening.  

In Heavy Goods John tells Breekon “Stop”. Breekon is upset. Then John extracts a statement from Breekon’s mind. I think John mind controlled Breekon to stand still. There’s definitely a lot of static.

In Infectious Doubts Gertrude tells Arthur that he can try to leave. It seems he tries but is unable to. I think Gertrude is mind controlling him to stay. 

Web and Corruption 

Insects and spiders are similar. Probably many people afraid of one of them are also afraid of the other.

In Hive Jane Prentiss talks about the song of the hive that affects her. She says webs has a song as well.

Each fear has an opposite:

The Corruption vs. The Flesh 

Because rot harms meat.

The Flesh tends to be very clean. The student in Anatomy Class cleaned up all the blood they spilled. The slaughterhouse maze in killing Floor was very clean. This is to combat the Corruption.

The Man Upstairs was about a Flesh avatar being attacked by the corruption.

I think Blood Bag was also about the Corruption versus the Flesh. More on than in a later post.

The Desolation vs. The Spiral

I’ll explain why they are opposed in a later post, when I get to Hill Top Road.

The Hunt vs. The Buried

The Hunt is a lot about running from a predator. Can’t run in a cramped space.

When Daisy was in the Buried she was freed from the Hunt. It could not reach her there, because it was an opposite force.

The Slaughter vs. The Dark

I’ll explain why they are opposites in the next post.

In The Piper the Slaughter kills Jonathan Rayner of the Dark.

In A Father’s Love the father performs a ritual that involves killing many people. The ritual destroys the darkness monster that is coming for his daughter. I think this worked because it was a ritual of the Slaughter, the opposite of the Dark. The father is chanting as he stabs the human heart. The Slaughter is often associated with music. 

The End vs. The Vast

From Dead Woman Walking, Georgie talking about the End: “The promise of a cold and lonely eternity in the grave would have been a mercy; at least it would be eternal. But everything ends, even the universe, even time. (...) ...the monumental realization of the scale we existed on. Not the meaningless vastness of the universe, but the… the smallness of it.” Sounds like the opposite of the Vast.

I think the Vast also deals with the fear of eternity. First: notice how Georgie said eternity would be a mercy. 

Second: notice how old Simon Fairchild was.

Third: In Submerged we learn that Gertrude threw Jan Kilbride’s body into the pit to disrupt the Buried ritual. John says “But Gertrude also realized that the body need not be alive. Or in one piece. She thought it was a mercy. It wasn’t.” I think this means she chopped up the body, but Jan was still alive. Jan was touched by the Vast. I think this had made him immortal, to make him fear eternity. 

Fourth: In Personal Space a door in password to the door is E109GHT8. Someone on the Magnus subreddit figured out what it means. It refers to the three fears that owned the space station, the Lonely, the Dark and the Vast. For the Lonely, the 10 should be read like lo, and the beginning of the nine as n, giving is elon, sounding like alone. For the Dark, the 9 sounds like ni, making 9GHT sound like night. For the Vast, the 8 sideways is an infinity symbol 

Fifth: in Freefall, when the guy is falling through infinite sky, his watch has stopped and he doesn’t know how long he has fallen. It feels like hours or days. But when he returns it has not been that long. The spiral messes with time to make people doubt their sanity. The Vast does it to make people fear eternity. 

Sixth, quote from A Matter of Perspective: “I don’t know how long I was floating for. I know it was less than a billion years, which is barely a heartbeat in the life of the universe, so how can it really be said to matter? The stars began to wink out, one by one, and I thought – perhaps for a second, perhaps for a hundred years…”

I believe the immortal gamblers from Cheating Death, Section 31 and Burial rites, were not of the End, like John thought, but of the Vast. They didn’t want to die at first, hence they gambled for life. That is the choice they made to embrace the Vast. But later they become afraid not of death, but the opposite, of not dying. The mummy in the pyramid tried to stab itself to death. The gambler in Section 31 tried to shoot himself. There is a symbol of infinity on the pyramid. 

In High Pressure, the statement begins and ends with the statement giver saying she should be dead. She didn’t die because she was touched by the Vast.

The Stranger vs The Web 

The Stranger makes dolls, puppets etc. into living things. The Web does the opposite, makes living people into puppets.

In Heavy Goods Breekon says of the Spider “It knows too much to truly be a stranger.” The Stranger has the Unknowing, a ritual based on not knowing things.  

The Web table trapped a creature of the Stranger. Quote from Jonathan after he smashed the table: “Smash the table, kill the monster, stupid! Lazy, sloppy assumption. Of course the table was binding it. The table is webs and spiders. Spiders are something else. They don’t help each other, they oppose, they… they weaken.”

In Nightfall Officer Musterman tells John he doesn’t know who is listening to the tapes, but that he doesn’t like it. The tapes are Web and Mustermann is Stranger.

In Angler Fish, the Stranger targets smokers. Smokers, like other addicts, are weak to the Web. So the Stranger isn’t just getting victims, it is fighting the Web.

The Eye vs. The Lonely 

Because if you’re watched you’re not alone.

In Personal Space, there is a camera apparently recording the lonely astronaut. But then he finds out the wires of the camera were severed from the start. So it is scary for the astronaut that no-one was watching him, the opposite of the Eye.

But if every fear has an opposite, what about the Extinction? Find out next post.

[joachimnapoleon]

New Year’s on Saint Helena: Napoleon calls Gourgaud’s servant a spy before doling out candy; the Montholons hope the Prince Regent is dead. Disappointment.

***

1 January 1818 – We went to the ball in the rain; Mme Bertrand spoke with the Russian a lot, we didn’t leave the fête until 6 o’clock in the morning and I woke up at 10. I was brought some bullions from Pierron and I was obliged to distribute forty louis in New Year’s gifts to the Emperor’s servants. At 3 o’clock, His Majesty asks for me. He is on his sofa, half-dressed, has me sit down, questions me about the ball, about what the Russian said. He seems to be in a concentrated anger, and wants to quarrel with me, tells me that my domestic Fritz is a spy, because the captain assures him of it. I respond that this is because M. de Montholon wants his room. “But, M. de Montholon…” I hold back. The Emperor, very angry: “You are insulting me… you’re getting upset, I think.” –“No, Sire.” I do not say another word. The Emperor, after some moments of silence rings to get dressed, goes into the billiard-room and orders me to go find the Bertrands for the fête. I return with them. Mme Bertrand expects, as His Majesty has told me in the previous days, to receive some superb New Year’s gifts. Great surprise: the Emperor brings sweets, gives them to Mme Bertrand and the children and sends some to Mme de Montholon, who cannot go out. Then, two plates of candy to Jenny and to Betsy who have slept over at Mme Bertrand’s.

It is announced that a vessel has just arrived from England with news; the doctor runs downtown, because the Emperor is extremely agitated. “It is a vessel sent express, the governor has changed.” Indeed, Amherst, Malcolm, the impression of observations, everything coincides. Perhaps there is a change in minister! The Montholons hope that this will be for our return to Europe. “If this could be the death of the Prince Regent!” O’Meara’s return is reported; the Emperor eyes him; “He comes at a great gallop! That’s good news! The governor is surely recalled! It looks good for O’Meara. This decides the question. If it were otherwise, he surely would’ve remained in town. Interest before everything.”

O’Meara dismounts, great emotion, we follow all his movements; he goes first to his kitchen, we are all disappointed. After ten minutes, he is announced; His Majesty talks with him in the salon, we remain in the billiard-room. Then the Emperor returns to us: it is a boat from Brazil, where a ship from England carried dispatches and which was immediately sent here; there are some for the governor and the admiral, countersigned by Lord Bathurst, nothing transpires about their contents, this is important, but follows a mysterious march. Balcombe went to dinner at the admiral’s house to try to learn something. Three letters from my mother are given to me; I tell the Emperor that she and my sister have been in great distress despite the lovely words of His Majesty. At 8 o’clock, we have dinner; the Emperor is in bad humor and affects to tell people that the Bourbons will not remain, that France is on fire; after the meal, he returns to the salon and retires at 9:30.

—Gaspard Gourgaud, Sainte-Hélène, journal inédit de 1815 à 1818.

[bigiftruecast]

The Great Amherst Mystery is one of Canada's most famous hauntings, and has been cited as being one of the most credible examples of explainable paranormal phenomena in history. The events saw 18-year old Esther Cox and her family be tortured by the presence of spirits for nearly a year, before ending almost as soon as it all began. Actor Walter Hubbell famously wrote about the case, gathering a number of eyewitnesses for testimony, and having them sign an affidavit for the release of his book The Great Amherst Mystery: A True Narrative of the Supernatural. In this episode, we talk about Amherst, Nova Scotia, Esther Cox, and the events that took place from September 1878 until the following summer.

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

CMP Travel Program and Section of Invertebrate Paleontology Promotes the 125th Anniversary of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh with an outdoor walking tour

Before Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh (CMP) reopened to the public on June 28th, Barbara Tucker, Director of CMP’s Travel Program, talked with me about ways to reengage members and bring them back to the Oakland museums.

With knowledge about my research on the 125th Anniversary of the founding of the Carnegie Library, Barbara suggested a 90-minute outdoor walking tour around the exterior of the massive building.  Starting from where the oldest portion of the building (Portal Entry) meets the newest (Museum of Art) to the front of the historic library entrance, past the Diplodocus carnegii statue, to Forbes Avenue and the entrances of the music hall, natural history museum, and fine arts museum guarded by the statues of the noble quartet.

Fig. 1

The tour was advertised on the CMP website under the Travel Program link, https://carnegiemuseums.org/things-to-do/travel-with-us/ and https://carnegiemuseums.org/kollar/, and accurately described as an activity fully compliant with CDC protocols. Within a week, the tour received overwhelming signups, which were organized by date and number of participants by Travel Program assistant Isabel Romanowski. Three tour dates were set in August and several more in September. Special private tours for donors and others in the fall continue to be arranged.    

Andrew Carnegie, Founder:

As guide for an exercise that involves close observation of architectural details, I face the challenge of getting participants to imagine this section of Pittsburgh long before any of the structures around in Oakland existed. The library and museums cover five acres of flat bottom land formed by the pre-Ice Age Monongahela River more than 1.2 million years ago. In far more recent times, the land was part of the Mary Schenley Mount Airy tract of 300 acres which was donated to the City of Pittsburgh in 1889 to create Schenley Park in her honor. Andrew Carnegie, (1835 – 1919) industrialist, steel magnate, and philanthropist, in 1895 saw the site as a place to build a complex with a library, fine arts gallery, science museum, and music hall that would represent the noble quartet of literature, art, science, and music.

The Library Tour Themes:

Fig. 2

Tour groups assemble on the dark stone steps outside the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) rear entrance for an introduction focusing on the two connected, but architecturally different buildings: the Beaux-Arts style Carnegie Complex, with the original structure dating to1895, and later addition to 1907, which was built by Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow using Carnegie Steel (Fig. 2), and the modern Carnegie Museum of Art, built by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes in 1974.

Two rock types distinguish the building exteriors. The older portions of the building are clad in a light grey, easily carved, 370 million-year-old Berea Sandstone from Amherst, Ohio, while the exterior and much of the interior of Museum of Art is covered in the 295 million-year-old bluish iridescence Larvikite igneous rock from Larvik, Norway. When Barnes was commissioned to build CMOA, he chose the dark rock to blend with the older building’s coal dust veneer, a grime coating that was removed when the exterior stone was cleaned in 1990.

Landscape Art and Geology:

Fig. 3

Pittsburgh’s landscape painter, John Kane’s (1860 – 1934), Cathedral of Learning, circa 1930 (Fig. 3), depicts the 150-foot-deep Junction Hollow with its operating railroad. The work also includes many important architectural references, the Schenley Park Bridge (1897), Carnegie Institute’s Bellefield Boiler Plant (designed by Alden and Harlow in 1907 to supply electricity and heat to adjacent buildings), the Carnegie Institute Extension (1907), and a then unfinished Cathedral of Learning. This painting is part of CMOA Fine Arts collections.

Fig. 4

Another John Kane landscape, Panther Hollow, circa 1930 – 1934, (Fig. 4A) in combination with Cathedral of Learning has been used in teaching about the 300 million-year-old geology of Schenley Park (Fig. 4B2) and the pre-Pleistocene Monongahela River that formed the flat bottom landscape of Oakland, and through erosion, Junction Hollow (Fig. 4B1).  Kollar and Brezinski 2010, Geology, Landscape, and John Kane’s Landscape Paintings.

Junction Hollow Landscape:

Kane’s Cathedral of Learning (1930) is an idealized green space of Junction Hollow, the Wilmot Street Bridge in the foreground (1907) now replaced with the Charles Anderson Bridge (1940), and Carnegie Tech’s (now Carnegie Mellon University’s) Hamerschlag Hall or Machinery Hall (1912), built by Henry Hornbostel, a Pittsburgh architect. Hornbostel designed a circular Roman temple wrapped about a tall yellow brick smokestack (Fig. 4A). The design is based on the Roman temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, dating to the early 1st century BC. Hornbostel’s overall campus design focused on connection between art and science, with Junction Hollow representing the geological sciences. The architect Philip Johnston, who built Pittsburgh’s postmodern PPG Place (circa 1984), once contrasted the Bellefield Boiler Plant smokestack as “the ugliest in the world to Machinery Hall’s smokestack as the most beautiful.” In novelist Michael Chabon’s debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, (1988) the Bellefield Boiler Plant, termed “the cloud factory” by the narrator, is the setting for a pivotal scene.

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (Main):

Fig. 5

The separate institutions we now know as Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Carnegie Museum of Art can track their origins to exhibits and galleries within space now fully occupied by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. An image of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in 1902 from the Bellefield Bridge, a structure now buried under the Mary Schenley Memorial Fountain (1918), reveals eclecticism in architectural features (Fig. 5). The west facing frontage doorways and portico of the library features, CARNEGIE LIBRARY, FREE TO THE PEOPLE, and 24 carved writer names. Missing from the names is Carnegie’s favorite poet, Robert Burns, whose statue was dedicated in 1914 on the grounds of Phipps Conservancy. Three separate entrances are served by granite steps of Permian age from Vermont, one for the science museum, one for the Department of Fine Arts, and the third, with distinctive Romanesque round doorways, brass doors with intricate features, and keystone scrolling, for the Library. This entrance was designed by Harlow, who was the draftsman on the McKim, Mead, and White team responsible for the Beaux-Arts Boston Public Library (1895). When the Carnegie Institute Extension was constructed in 1907, the science museum and fine arts museum collections were moved into the new space. The former spaces in the library became the Children’s Room, Pennsylvania Room, and Music Library.

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

A challenge at this point in the tour involves discussing features that are not visible up close. The Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow’s Italian Renaissance and Beaux-Arts H-shaped parallelogram winning design featured a copula (Fig. 6) on top of the red tile roof that was never built.  Eclecticism features include a double apse, a smaller shaped semi-circular extension of the library’s wall on the southside of the building, and larger apse on the north or Forbes Avenue side of the building, with the semicircular Music Hall auditorium, designed by Longfellow. The music hall exterior was structurally changed by the 1907 construction (Fig. 7).  

The exterior Berea Sandstone reveals rustication masonry techniques with the cut blocks on the exterior first floor level distinguished by ashlar pillow horizontal border stone, and smooth masonry from the second floor to the cornice below the roof line.  The second floor late Gothic style windows are divided by a vertical element called a mullion that helps with rigid support of the window arch and divides the window panels. Two symmetrical Campanile towers that Carnegie called “those donkey ears” were modeled after the San Marco Bell Tower in Venice, Italy. The towers served as an architectural offset to the semicircular exterior walls of the music auditorium and were removed in 1902 for the construction of the Carnegie Institute Extension. The installation of the towers can be interpreted as a tribute to Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny County Courthouse twin towers (1888).

Architects choice of light grey sandstone and red tile roof:

The library’s red tile roof incorporated multiple glass roofs over the library, fine arts galleries, and science museum (all shaded from exterior sunlight today) which typified the Beau-Arts style. Keep in mind, the library did not have electric light. Light was provided by gas lighting and natural sunlight.  Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow wrote that “the choice of a red tile roof and grey Ohio (Berea) Sandstone was intentional to contrast with Pittsburgh’s grey skies and the changing seasonal colors of the foliage in Schenley Park.”  

The Beaux-Arts Architecture of the Carnegie Institute Extension 1907:

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

After Longfellow returned to his Boston practice in 1896, Alden and Harlow received the commission to build the Carnegie Institute Extension (1907) (Fig. 8). Their efforts created one of the great Beaux-Arts building in the United States. As Cynthia Field, Smithsonian Architecture Historian, stated in 1985, “the building itself is the greatest object of the entire museum collection.” Formal recognition of the building’s architectural importance exists in two historic landmark plagues placed outside of the Carnegie Library entrance and the Museums’ Carriage Drive entrance (Fig. 9).

New exterior features of the 1907 extension work included the replacement of the red tile roof with copper, the addition of an armillary sphere,  the construction, with a colonnade of solid Corinthian fluted columns of Berea Sandstone, four portico porches over the main entrances to the library, music hall, natural history and art museum, and eastside of building (now removed), and the creation, along Forbes Avenue, of a main Carriage Drive entrance with direct access to the galleries. The carved names of authors, artists, musicians, and scientists in the buildings’ entablature, a Victorian era practice, extends around the building from the library’s southeast corner to the music hall entrance, and natural history and the fine arts entrances.

Also notable along Forbes Avenue are John Massey Rhind’s noble quartet statues that guard the Music Hall and Natural History and Art entrances. The four male figures all seated in classic Greek chairs are Michelangelo (art), Shakespeare (literature), Bach (music), and Galileo (science).  Standing three stories above the quartet on the edge of the roof, four groups of female allegorical figures represent literature, music, art, and science as well. The bronze figures were casted in Naples, Italy in 1907 (Fig 8).

Inside the 1907 Architecture and Building Stones:

The architects created 13 new interior spaces where three grand spaces stand out for specific architecture styles such as, the Beaux-Arts Grand Staircase (voted in 2018 as the 8th best museum staircase in the world), the Neoclassical Hall of Sculpture, and neo-Baroque Music Hall Foyer. The extension used 32 varieties of marbles and fossil limestones, many from antiquity, quarried and imported from Algeria, Croatia, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and the United States.  

Since 2004, the collaboration between the CMP Travel Program and the Section of Invertebrate Paleontology has been highly successful reaching out to our members and patrons. This summer’s tours generated some particularly appreciative comments:

The Carnegie's resident scientists are a defining characteristic of this noble institution. Might be an anachronism in an era when museums are focused on providing 'destination' entertainment and hosting special events for swells, but while treasures like Dr. Kollar are still on staff, it’s a splendid idea to facilitate interaction between them and museum visitors. Congratulations on a most enjoyable program. -Ron Sommer

Albert was very informative and interesting. I found it most valuable learning the history of the area. -Janet Seifert

I can't stress enough how unusual and interesting it was to have a geologist give us the tour. It had never occurred to me before that there's so much one can learn about building materials from a geologist. -Neepa Majumdar

Albert D. Kollar is Collection Manager and Carnegie’s Historian of the Carnegie’s Building Stones. Barbara Tucker is Director of Carnegie Travel Program.

[magicalwriting]

July Camp-NaNoWriMo 2020 planning

Hello! Angel here.

So as I’m writing this post, it is June 15, and still a good while until July. But I’m so excited for camp nano! And I also need to figure out which project to work on and what my goals are gonna be.

In May, I participated in camp NaNoWriMo for the first time ever, and I had a blast! I also made lots of great progress on Superhuman, (which is almost at 40k words atm!) However, in the past weeks, I’ve been working on other projects and also getting more and more ideas for WIPs. Which makes choosing what to work on even harder.

Since during May I had school, but in July I’ll be done school, I decided to raise up my goals for the month. In May, I had a daily goal to write 500 words each day, and I had no end goal. For July, I want to keep the same daily goal, but have an end goal in mind as well. I also want to encourage myself to write more everyday, but not pressure myself into writing, you know?

So, I’ve decided that I should do what I like to call:

✨A Double Daily ✨

Basically what a Double Daily is, is that I have two daily goals instead of one. So each day, I would focus on the first goal, and until I complete that one, only then will I focus on the second goal. Hopefully it will help me write more in a day, but if I don’t then I won’t feel so upset at myself.

My first daily goal is 500 words, that is the minimum amount I want to get. My second daily goal is 1,000 words, which is what I ideally want to get everyday.

I also have an end goal in mind. 25k words. I want to be able to write 25k words in a month. I believe that I was able to write 27k in May, so hopefully I’ll be able to achieve it.

Now for what project I’ll be working on in the month of July. I have three main WIPs that I am currently working on at the moment, and multiple ideas that are begging to have even some substance to them. My poor brain can’t decide which WIP to work on for camp by itself.

That’s why I decided to leave the choice up to you!

Other than Superhuman, I haven’t posted much content on my WIPs. So if there’s a WIP that you want to see more of, then tell me in the comments/reblog tags that you want me to work on that WIP. If I choose it, then I’ll post my progress on the WIP daily throughout the month of July, and post as many excerpts as I can of the WIP. And if it isn’t Superhuman, then I’ll also make a WIP intro of it!

You have until the final day of June to “vote” for which WIP I should work on. Please tell me your thoughts because I will not be able to choose on time on my own.

So now that you understand the rules, here are the WIPs that I am currently working on!

Superhuman: A YA superhero WIP that follows a girl named Allison Park. After discovering that she has the power of telekinesis, she makes it her mission to find out how and why she got them. This gets her wrapped up in a plan much darker than hers could ever be. (Currently has 39k words.)

The Voice in the Mountains: A YA fantasy which follows Jacklyn Trustoff. With hearing mystical voices that no one else can hear, and her wishing she could explore the world, she gets her wish in an awful way when she sees her mother get kidnapped by a strange creature. For the first time in her life, Jacklyn leaves her small village to find her mother, and along the way, she learns things about her mother that make her question the woman she thought she knew. (Currently has 9k words.)

The Enchanted Eclipse: Another YA fantasy, but also romance. Callum Almaster had a normal life, until it was burned to the ground by the neighbouring King Donovan. Callum gets a job as the personal assistant to Prince Adelio, a handsome boy his age. Together, they try to find a way to stop Donovan from invading their home kingdom. But Donovan has his eyes on Callum, and the legendary Enchanted Eclipse is coming up, where magic will be extra powerful for a full 24 hours, which would be a perfect time for war. (Currently has 3k words.)

And if those don’t seem to peak your interest, then here are some ideas for WIPs that I haven’t started writing yet!

The Night Warrior: (YA urban fantasy) A boy wakes up from a deep sleep, in a city that he doesn’t recognize, with his only memory being how to fight. He makes a friend with an earnest girl, and together they uncover this boy’s mysterious past.

(No name yet): (YA fantasy/romance) Daenerys Aurora Amherst is a Deaf princess who loves to read. One day she finds an acient book that’s chained up. After opening the book, she accidentally releases a demon who just so happens to be the daughter of Satan.

Starslayer: (YA superhero) A girl finds a beautiful gem in her attic, and it transforms her into a magical warrior being who has the power of light and the stars. She uses these powers to protect her city, which always seem to be ridden with criminals. But a much more sinister criminal is rising up, and she has no idea who they are.

Please tell me which WIP you think I should work on/start! And remember, you have until the very last day of June, which is the 30th.

[hphm-etched-engraved-everlasting]

2. Em

Author’s Note/Table of Contents

If I had to be honest, I had no idea just what Hogwarts would be like.

All my life I have heard of my siblings facing trouble there, and it was a never-ending topic of conversation among my family. Amidst the hardcore studies, there was trouble brewing. After I received my letter, my parents almost stopped me from going, and I didn't have any trouble agreeing with them when they shook their heads. But Clara kept begging and pleading, telling them that she'd keep me safe. It was then when she told me what she was truly hiding, and I had to say, I've never felt more moved by the amount of care she had for me.

So they said yes. And that was when I began to wonder just what laid in store for me--just one month ago.

Walking into Hogwarts now still felt like walking into a dream, really. It was like stepping foot into a trance you knew you wouldn't want to wake from. Huge chambers filled with history and mystery made up this incredible fortress for us to study magic--and, in my family's case, solve a huge case that would potentially put the school at ease once more. Candles burned bright everywhere, flames in torches lit with a warm welcome glow. Everywhere I looked, there was something cool to see--even now, as I stood in the Great Hall, a small soul among many others my age gazing at a worn old hat atop a tall stool.

The hat suddenly ripped open at the brim and began to sing its song.

As years passed in this hallowed school I aged to do my task To sort all younger magic folk In houses--which, you ask?

Brave Gryffindor, we are to start For sheerest courage and dare With loyalty and strength to heart They'd sacrifice and care

Sweet Hufflepuff, ah yes, that's one To see the hard work shine Among their brethren in the sun Always patient, just, and fine

Then Ravenclaw, intelligent With smarts and certainty Give credit to the ones who went To read, to know, to see

Shrewd Slytherin, the ones so sly They love to meet their match By any means, they dare to try Ambition, that's their catch

They started off as founders four To build this wondrous school They made me with their goal of core The custom, placement rule

So put me on, try me out And I will look to see The house where you belong, no doubt The house where you will be!

For a talking hat, it wasn't a bad verse at all. I glanced over at the Gryffindor table and caught my older sister's eye; she just gave me an encouraging nod as she clapped with everyone else.

"Now, when I call your name, you will come forward to be Sorted," Professor McGonagall told us then. She unfurled a long scroll in her hands then, and began reading it aloud.

"Ahn, Eunice!"

A tall girl with tan skin and a rebellious white streak in her black hair walked up and put the hat on her head. I counted approximately ten seconds as she sat on the stool before the hat shouted, "SLYTHERIN!"

I glanced over at the table where everyone was wearing black robes followed by green accents--the same table where Eunice Ahn was walking to. I shouldn't be surprised to see them grinning like maniacs at the new addition. Like the Sorting Hat said, they'd achieve their means by any means necessary.

"Amherst, Remy!"

Next, a burly boy with ash blond hair walked past me--almost pushing me to the side--and put on the hat.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

On and on, the list went, each person trying on the hat and getting their results shouted to the entire school a minute later. Some people barely had the hat on for a second before its decision was announced. Others took longer. I remembered this one boy, Cedric Diggory, sitting on the stool for almost two minutes before the Sorting Hat declared that he'd be put in Hufflepuff House. Each time someone was sorted, though, thunderous applause could be heard from the various house tables, all around the Great Hall--now that I looked at every house, I wondered where the Hat would put me. It didn't help that the lower Professor McGonagall went down the list, the closer the time for my Sorting got.

"Lester, Felicity!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

"Lian, Michael!"

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Lin, Emily!"

That was it. The bomb had finally dropped, and the Hall had gotten so eerily quiet, one could hear a pin drop in the middle of the room. Then I heard the whispers.

"Another Lin?"

"No way. I thought Jacob only had one sibling!"

"Looks like we were fooled."

"Better not have another snob walking around the place."

Snob? I took it that another Emily must have left some muddy tracks somewhere in her Hogwarts reputation, but that wouldn't mean that I would be the same. I couldn't be. True, not many people knew about Jacob Lin's second little sister--mostly because my mother didn't want anyone to know that she had failed not just one other child, but two children who didn't deserve the pain that was losing their eldest brother. Still, who gave them the right to openly judge me when they've only just known about me for the first time?

The hat eventually dropped over my head, obscuring the vision before me--all the heads craning at me, trying to get a better glimpse of me. Then I heard a small little voice in my head.

"Another Lin. Yes, they were right. I wasn't expecting another sibling of the infamous curse-breaker," it seemed to say. "But here she is. My, what an intriguing personality. You seem to be different from your siblings."

"In a good way?" I whispered, my mouth barely moving.

"I see courage and loyalty, yes. Your greatness is strong, but there is something else. I see a thirst for justice. I see a will to work hard, and spread kindness among others. You will prove yourself, little Em, in a way you might not expect."

Silence ensued. Then--

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Thunderous applause suddenly came from the Hufflepuff table on my left, and I saw Clara stand up at the Gryffindor table to give me applause, too. I got off the stool and looked at her; she nodded and jerked her head to the Hufflepuffs, and I saw another girl about Clara's age with blonde hair in plaits and bright blue eyes wave me over.

"Wotcher, Emily!" a girl with pink hair greeted me with a grin as I approached the table. "You're Clara's little sister? She's hardly mentioned you much."

"Tonks, that's not nice. I'm sure Clara was only doing it to protect her," the girl with blonde hair said with a frown. "I'm Penny, by the way. I hope you enjoy it here in Hufflepuff."

"Of course. I really look forward to some fun times here," I responded politely, though I knew that might not happen. At least, from the way things were going, it wouldn't be.

The rest of the Sorting continued without me paying much attention--all I could remember was loud roars from the Gryffindor table as a pair of redheaded twins got sorted there. The moment everyone was seated, the Headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, stepped forward.

"To our new students, welcome! To our old students, welcome back!" he commenced. "There will be a time for serious speech, but for now, we feast. Tuck in!"

Suddenly, the plates were filled with food I could never imagine having eaten at home. Heaps of golden mashed potatoes with the slightest sprinkle of parsley, juicy steak with savoury barbecue sauce, steamed vegetables of various kinds bringing colour to the meal. As everyone else grabbed their forks and knives and began to grab their servings of food, I too began to help myself to everything I could see.

"This looks incredible!" I exclaimed, shovelling a small spoonful of mashed potatoes in my mouth. "Mm. I can see why Clara loves the start-of-term feasts so much."

"Any feast is a great feast here at Hogwarts!" Tonks exclaimed with an eager nod. "Ooh, wait till you get to the Halloween feast. Always good spooky fun."

A girl with short silver hair nodded. "At least we'll be safe from the threat that is Greyback returning to Hogwarts." She then turned to me. "Your sister was really brave, stepping up to stop him."

"That's Chiara," a boy with dark brown hair introduced her. "And I'm Diego Caplan, the greatest dueller at Hogwarts."

Did I just imagine that, or did he just smirk at me? I laughed and took a quick swig of my pumpkin juice. "Ah, I remember you. Clara told me quite a bit about you, Diego."

"All good things, I hope." Diego smiled and produced a bouquet of roses out of nowhere, handing them to me.

"Ooh. They're beautiful, Diego," Penny approved with a nod as I took them--hey, it was a friendly gesture, after all. "Nice welcome gift."

"Wait till you get to the Hufflepuff common room! I've got a cool present for you too!" Tonks said excitedly, clapping her hands.

The rest of the time, we were eating and laughing together, just Clara's Hufflepuff friends and me, until dessert came around. Clara then came over to the Hufflepuff table just as I was grabbing a fruit tart, tapping me on the shoulder.

"Come on. I want to introduce you to the rest of my friends."

So I took the fruit tart and went with her to see some of her friends from other houses. It kind of saddened me to see that I wouldn't be able to meet Bill--from what I heard in Clara's stories, he was a crucial part in Clara's education and growth here--but the others were just lovely company all the same. There was Tulip, who was also quite the troublemaker at school. Andre, the fashionista and Quidditch fanatic who simply nodded at my choice of wardrobe and complimented me with the rose bouquet I held. Barnaby, a Slytherin who looked confused half the time, but was genuinely kind. Charlie, the redhead who loves dragons to no end. I found myself at ease with Clara's friends, but I knew that I would have to make some of my own, too. They wouldn't be around here forever. By the time I enter my third year, I would have to have some friends of my own age.

I just hope I could without the judgments going around.

"This is weird," Clara eventually commented to me. "I told you about Ben, Merula, and Beatrice, didn't I?"

"Ben, Merula, and Beatrice? Yeah, I remember." I nodded thoughtfully, glancing at the doors of the Great Hall. "But you told me you never really liked Merula."

"Doesn't mean that she'd be fully fine on her own. I know how bad she got it last year--almost as worse as me." She glanced around the Great Hall, a concerned look in her eyes. "They're not here. That's troubling."

"You think they didn't come? Or that they wanted to skip?"

All Clara could do was heave a long sigh before Professor Dumbledore reappeared on his grand podium, clapping his hands. I quickly returned to the Hufflepuff table, grabbing a custard cream and quietly munching on it as he talked.

"Students of Hogwarts, your attention, please."

The Great Hall fell silent once more--so quiet, you could hear the echo in Dumbledore's voice greatly magnified across the chamber.

"It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the start of a new year at Hogwarts," he said, sweeping his arms out in a grand gesture. "And with a new school year comes new opportunities, to further your studies...develop new friendships...grow as young wizards and witches...and apply difficult lessons learned to build a brighter future."

Or will learn, in my case. Still, I was enraptured by his speech. That was what Hogwarts was made to do--that was the purpose of the school. Raising young people with potential...I nodded quietly, sparing a glance at my sister, who was just looking at him with a serious glint in her eyes.

"In recent years, we've been through some trying times," Dumbledore continued. "But Hogwarts remains an institute dedicated to learning, and there is no place here for those who seek to threaten it. And so, Professor Rakepick will no longer be teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. All are urged to let the proper authorities deal with her and the Cursed Vaults."

I could see Tonks looking like she was holding back tears. Penny turned as white as a sheet of paper. Diego's eyes narrowed at the announcement, and I wasn't sure if it was my imagination again or not, but he seemed to spare a glance at me--a concerned glance, as if silently asking if I was okay.

"Your priority should be your lessons, and preparing for your wizarding careers," Dumbledore encouraged with a solemn nod. "Our staff is here to support you in those efforts. Do not hesitate to ask for help. Now it is time to wrap up the feast--I imagine your cozy beds are awaiting you."

At these words, everyone got up and huddled towards the door in large masses. From afar, I could hear another girl's voice calling, "Hufflepuff first-years, come over here please!"

I quickly finished off the custard cream and was about to walk over to her, but was stopped by Diego again, who reached a hand out to me.

"If you need anything, little Em, just let me know," Diego said. "Anything that bothers you, you can tell me--and the other sixth years. They're good people. Clara trusts them, even me."

His eyes glinted with concern when he said this, and I nodded, taking his hand and shaking it. "Thanks, Diego. I'll keep it in mind," I responded lightly.

Then we parted ways while the Hufflepuff prefects lead us to the common room--a cozy little place below the castle, where everything glowed topaz and gold. It reminded me of a hobbit hole, with tunnels and circular doors branching off to the various dormitories. As I entered my dormitory, I barely noticed the other girls coming in--I suppose everyone was just as exhausted as I was.

I quickly got changed and climbed into bed, my head hitting the pillow before closing my eyes.

Would I really be safe here, or would I face potential betrayal too, the same way Clara did? And when it happened...what would it take for me to protect myself?

[blogparanormalexpresso2stuff]

10 Creepy Cases of Violent Poltergeists and Ghosts

Published on Jun 20, 2020

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