THE STUFF OF DREAMS by Edward Lucas White now shipping!

We have just received copies of THE STUFF OF DREAMS: THE WEIRD STORIES OF EDWARD LUCAS WHITE Edited by S. T. Joshi (Signed Limited Edition Hardcover).

If you’ve preordered  this edition we will be shipping your order within the next 48 hours.

We have a few copies of this one remaining just click on the image below for ordering information.

Arcane Wisdom Press is proud to announce our latest project, The Stuff Of Dreams: The Weird Stories of Edward Lucas White, collected and edited with introduction by scholar S. T. Joshi.

 

One of only 150 signed and numbered hardcover copies signed by the editor S. T. Joshi and acclaimed cover artist Alex McVey.

 

(This is an advance order and is not expected to ship until December 2012)

 

American writer Edward Lucas White (1866–1934) produced a memorable body of weird fiction in his two short story collections, The Song of the Sirens (1919) and Lukundoo and Other Stories (1927). The distinctive feature of these stories is that many of them were based on the author’s incredibly bizarre and detailed dreams. The classic story “Lukundoo” tells of a hideous curse inflicted by an African witch-doctor; “Amina” is the innovative tale of a female ghoul; “The Snout” hints loathsomely of a hybrid monster in an old manor house; and “The Song of the Sirens” tells of the latent horror behind the classic Greek myth of the half-bird, half-woman creatures known as the Sirens. These are only some of the potently macabre tales in this book, which shows Edward Lucas White to be a master of the weird tale whose work has been unavailable for too long.

 

Contents:

 

• Introduction
• The House of the Nightmare
• The Flambeau Bracket
• Amina
• The Message on the Slate
• Lukundoo
• The Pig-skin Belt
• The Song of the Sirens
• The Picture Puzzle
• The Snout
• Sorcery Island
• Azrael
• The Ghoula
• Edward Lucas White on Dreams

 

 

 

 

OK, What did you expect for $1.50? Deconstructing a Paperback Book.

Paperbacks were never intended to be Gutenberg first editions. They were to be read and tossed. However, babyboomers didn’t. We loved the covers, the feel of the book, and they stacked up by the hundreds in our Mom’s basement and garage. Now they are nostalgic, and somewhat collectible now that they are beginning to fade away. In our ongoing series of digging in and looking closely at selected paperbacks and time periods, this blog post deals with Lin Carter’s The City Outside the World.

We find no sin in liking Lin Carter. He was a larger than life figure in fan fiction, helped to bring back some good stories from oblivion with his editing, and assisted in bringing the Sword and Sorcery genre to prominence.

Let’s start with the basic information. It was October 1977. The paperback was an “S Fantasy” subdivision of Berkeley Medallion books. The enumeration system was beginning to expand the ISBN system, and this book was designated as 0-425-03549-2, a 10 digit system developed about 1970 as part of the ISO standard 2108. (Note, though, the number is refered to as a “BSN” here in this book.) The original 9 digit system appeared in 1965. (It is now a 13 digit system). The cover shows the Berkeley Medallion logo, the SF logo, the words “First Time In Paperback” in pale, thin lettering. The cover does not have a high gloss, so it may have been an experiment in an aqueous coating. Berkely’s number for this edition was 3549, a sequential number showing the order of release.

The cover art was by Ken Barr, and it was one of his early covers. (His first book cover was for Roger Zelazny’s The Guns of Avalon, 1974)

This book is now 36 years old. How was it constructed and how did it age? For a paperback, not too bad.

Above are the inside covers showing the workmanship and gluing. Note that UPC bar codes and ISBN bar codes were imprinted on the bright white interior of the front cover. The original inspiration for the Universal Product Code was Morse Code, except the inventor put dots in the and at a beach one day, and dragged his fingers forward to create lines. A laser flashed over the lines told the cash register what the price was, and for many stores allowed them to control inventory better.

As for the glue, not a great job.

You see that the glue ran a great deal to the interior pages, and thus made the pages uneven to turn.

The print was atrocious, however. A random interior set of pages show how badly misaligned the printing was. Perhaps this was done to convserve paper, but if so why did it not descend further to the lower edges, and not just crop off the top pages. It seemed to be a compromise between a big print edition, and a means to maximize the print surface.

It also seems that the pressure of the type on the paper distributed the ink unevenly. Some impressions were deep and dark, others lighter by 30-50%.

The paper is hard to show. Holding it up to the light shows the distribution of the pulp to lignin. It was not possible to show, but at this time, and slightly before, the paper began to be pressed in such a way that pin holes formed. If you hold a paperback up to a bright light, like an incandescent or fluorescent source, you will readily see light shine through holes that are perhaps 0.1 mm or less.

In this case, these are cell phone images that at least give a general impression of the paper used.

Other interior key pages are shown below.

Lin Carter’s imagination was never in question. From a boy, his mind soared the solar system and beyond. One hopes that now that his spirit has been liberated he is seeing even more wonders. Below, a small portion of a story Lin wrote in high school, as best as can be researched.

 

Esoterica and the Crisis in Ufology

Here at Miskatonic Books, we love a good story, especially if it has horrific elements.  From Little Red Riding Hood to The Horror at Red Hook and beyond, we like it.

We also follow the emerging field of esoterica.  In the old days this would be divided into paranormal, metaphysics, para-religious ideas, exotic philosophy, magick, alchemy, astrology, spiritualism, ghosts, and in modern times, the “flying saucer”.  The latter subject burst on the scene as a series of “flying discs” that skipped along like a saucer on the water, or so said Kenneth Arnold in June 1947.  In a short window that included both Arnold’s sighting and the Roswell incident, the U. S. media was flooded with hundreds of reports of odd flying phenomenon, most of them disc shaped.  The excitement went to the Pentagon and to Truman’s office, before the hammer came down and generals sent to tell everyone to calm down.  But they didn’t – not at first.

If you read the media reports, and study the history of the phenomenon, the disc reports began to slowly subside though outbreaks popped up from time to time.  Interested parties began to publicize in books two branches:  a religio-spitualism where the observers received prophetic advice, and “nuts and bolts” saucer people who believed the objects were coming from mars or another planet.  Remember, in the years between 1947 and 1950, no other planet had been discovered or was suspected outside of our own solar system.  Only in the mid-1950′s did scientifiction ideas of extra-solar worlds become mainstream.  The movie, Forbidden Planet, was the most notable leap in that direction, and highly influential.

While many civilian and military people researched the sightings deep into the late 1960′s, many books were sold but little understanding was reached other than the media becoming more cynical and flippant with those who reported the flying saucers.   Then a game changer.  A nice New England couple named Betty and Barney Hill revealed that through hypnotic regression, they had come to believe they had been kidnapped by aliens.  A best selling book by John Fuller was snapped up by millions of Americans, but civilian UFO agencies who had all but eradicated the paranormal from their “nuts and bolts” investigations were overwhelmed by those coming froward with similar kidnapping stories, and finally with the rise of Bud Hopkins and others, the UFO phenomenon became plagued with tens of thousands of dream-like reports.

The resurrection of the Roswell story by Stanton Friedman brought back the “nuts and bolts” investigations, but instead of dreams and hypnosis sessions being used as “proof” of aliens, they presented “oral histories” as proof of a crashed saucer.  This is not to nit-pick whether any of this is true, or even to discuss what “true” means, because these were rip-roaring good stories, and many of them hair-raising and horrific.

A twin attack in the mid-1990s came.  Neurologists showed that hypnotic regression was not reliable, and that recalled memories were faulty.  At the same time, the Air Force put out a controversial series of reports trying to rip the Roswell story to shreds.    In both cases, the assault had mixed effects, and believers kept believing.

However, the rise of the internet and reality television has exposed the history of the UFO phenomenon to millions if not billions, and now that all those eyes are watching, and books have become less important than instantaneous viral visual media, the same “classic cases” that used to be exciting are now torn to pieces by the media and eager participants at the site Above Top Secret.  In fact, while there are still many believers, cynicism seems to prevail more often than not.

Arguably starting with the work of Jacques Vallee, the idea of an extraterrestrial visit to Earth is becoming less of interest than a paranormal-based extra-dimmensional series of creatures or events.  This has opened the door for a crisis in ufology.

On one side, there are true believers who believe that we have been visited millions of times and as far back as man began to walk upright.  That there are innumerable species from aliens a few centuries smarter than us to Q-like god-beings, the latter many times resembling the gods that Lovecraft and Derleth created.  On the other hand, UFO books and conferences are not drawing crowds, and those who do go are decidedly baby-boomers.  There is buzz whether or not only septuagenarians will attend UFO conferences by the end of this decade.  Young esotericans such as Tim Binnall are openly scornful of ufology, though Coast to Coast AM still has fondness and treats the subject with dignity.

That being said, there seems to be momentum to begin to classify ufology into a broader field now being referred to as esotericism.  This begins to lump everything from folklore to Fortean, from saucers to sorcery, and maybe paranormal to parasailing.   It is a rapid growth market, and may be what has pudhed the CE-5 phenomenon to the forefront.

In the CE-5 technique, through meditation and special techniques, one can come into the presence and even the consciousnesses of the pan-multiverse alien sentience.  In many cases flying saucers and other esoteric conveyances can be called at will to Earth.  Telepathic communication is typical, and multiple possibilities include lucent dreaming, skin-walking, teleportation, out of body experiences, paranormal events, and prophetic messaging.

We could almost say to the past, welcome to the future.  The more we at Miskatonic Books study esoteric trajectories, and more and more we are reminded of the 19th century experiences we read of in the history books.

Ufology may be in crisis, but esotericism seems here to stay for quite some time.

PTSD: Can the Nightmare End?

Many horror stories, ancient versions or 21st century versions, often involve nightmares. They come to life and cause madness and eat our lives until there is nothing left but an empty shell of a human being.

Among the worst is the post-traumatic stress disorder nightmare. As recently as WWII when General Patton slapped a soldier for “battle fatigue” this was misunderstood. Now, society is beginning to piece together the complexity of the problem.

Most people know this simple image as an “IQ curve” or a performance curve. In fact, every cell and every hormone in the brain has one of these little curves associated with it. IQ can be high or low, but so can adrenaline, religious feelings, psychopathic behavior, sex drive, and you name it. Thousnads of these little curves conflicting with and reinforcing our behavior. Influence one, and another one can go askew. (“Flowers for Algernon’, was a Daniel Keyes story that discussed what happens when a very low IQ gets his IQ boosted past genius level. Highly recomended.)

NOw, therapists think they have a handle on what causes PTSD nightmares to repeat over and over. In ordinary REM sleep, key hormones turn off so that the brain can randomly access and assess events that are pressing upon the memory centers. We dream, we remember, but there is no or little emotion associated. Sometimes this does not work well, and we get mild nightmares, or psychopompic dreams.

In PTSD the hormone does not turn off. An NPR report makes this pretty clear (Click here). We are not particularly advocates of pills and drugs here at Misky, but a simple little pill called prazosin which costs less than a pack of gum turns off adrenaline temporarily. Almost immediate relief comes in some patients.

That pesky little bell curve can work for us or against us. This may be the first in many small steps to bring back mental health to many millions. Horror makes fun reading, but our goal should be to eliminate it from our society. Horror fiction assists us in understanding and processing the horrific events in our collective lives. Support your favorite horror writer, and if you have a few shekels left over, or a little spare time, help a local and trusted charity.

The Ancient World of Fanzines

Long, long ago on a primitive planet teenagers went amok.  Fed by imagination and fueled by pulp paper and ink they formed little local clubs and passed Weird Tales and Hugo Gernsback scientifiction (later Sci-Fi and SF) back and forth between each other.  When a “pen pal” in a far off town couldn’t get the latest works of E Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn, Dr. David Keller, Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, L Sprague deCamp, Isaac Asimov, or some other fantasy-horror-weird tale writer, they traded them or sold extra copies.

Not content to merely talk about it, or send a USPS letter about it (long distance!  too expensive!), they made their own “fanatic magazines”, or fanzines.  These were the rawest of raw by the most amateur of amateurs.  The art was drawn, and then hectographed (by gelatin plates) or sometimes a raid to the local high to use the mimeograph machine!

Crude?  You bet.  Fun?  Better than an Indie forum firefight.  In fact, fanzines invented the flame war.  One of the first practitioners of the flame war was a guy from Providence named Howard Lovecraft.  When “H P Lovecraft” wasn’t calling down astrologers in the newspapers, or ripping into Edgar Rice Burroughs for not portraying Mars correctly, he critiqued other people’s stories.  That is until he met a kid from California named Forest Ackerman.  Whew, was that something.  Later, along came cratchity Harlan Ellison, frenetic Ray Bradbury, and a boy from Florida whose name was almost as long as his state:  Linwood Vrooman Carter.

Those were days when amateurs drooled to be in the “prozines”, or *gasp* land a letter in the  PULPS!  A few rare dreamers thought they might one day live to have a short story published like their heroes Robert Bloch, August Derleth, or Robert Heinlein.  Darest they reach for the stars and think they might even get a BOOK  published?

Forest J Ackerman ‘zine from August 1942

Many youths between the years 1935 and 1975 learned their craft and landed contracts (such as Marion Zimmer and later Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, Jr),  became critics or editors (Sam Moskowitz), or went on to write for radio, television, and movies (Arthur C Clarke is one example).  As they say, cream rises to the top.

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of those fandom days is how 4SJ managed to sneak him risqué magazine covers through the USPS censors!  Hey, anything for the G. I. Josephs!

So the next time you visit an Indie horror forum and post there, think how hard that person is working to grow the genre.  Support Horror!  It may be down, but it ain’t over yet!

Monsters Swimming Beneath the Frigid Waters of Icelandic Lake

Since 1345, a mysterious aquatic creature dubbed the Lagarfljót worm — or the Iceland worm monster — has been showing up unexpectedly in Lagarfljót Lake near Egilsstaðir. The Huffington Post reports that, according to lore, it is considered a bad omen when the worm appears.

Rare footage of what appears to be a giant serpent swimming through the icy water emerged earlier this month. See for yourself:

Iceland News has more on the local legend:

The story goes that the worm was once just a little heath worm which was put onto a golden ring, as that was rumoured to make the gold grow. When the owner of the ring came back later, she discovered with shock that the worm had grown enourmous, but the ring was still the same size as before. In frustration she threw both the worm and the ring into the lake, where the worm continued to grow bigger still.

 

 

You can read the entire article here Lake Monster

Arcane Wisdom Press Publishing Schedule Update

Here is a quick update on a few already announced title and a couple that will be announced over the next several weeks.

THE GHOST OF FEAR AND OTHERS: H. P. Lovecraft’s Favorite Horror Stories edited by S. T. Joshi Vol I (Signed Limited Hardcover)

This title is already at the printers and we are expecting it within the next several weeks.

H. P. Lovecraft was a voracious reader of supernatural and fantastic fiction, and he was continually on the hunt for powerful and stimulating works in these genres. Many of the stories he read directly influenced his own writings. This first volume of H. P. Lovecraft’s Favorite Horror Stories presents 16 stories that Lovecraft found to be of particular merit. Among them are the beautiful poetic fantasy “Idle Days on the Yann” by Lord Dunsany; Fiona Macleod’s grimly evocative “The Sin-Eater,” which influenced “The Rats in the Walls”; Arthur Machen’s grisly novelette “Novel of the White Powder,” which Lovecraft adapted for “Cool Air”; and M. P. Shiel’s “The House of Sounds,” which Lovecraft ranked among the greatest weird tales ever written. Also included are hard-to-find stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne, E. F. Benson, Théophile Gautier, John Buchan, and others, as well as two stories from the legendary pulp magazine Weird Tales (Seabury Quinn’s “The Phantom Farmhouse” and Arthur J. Burks’s “Bells of Oceana”). The volume contains an introduction by S. T. Joshi as well as notes on the individual stories, giving background on the authors as well as on Lovecraft’s appreciation of the tales and their possible influence on his work.

 

Contents:

• Introduction by S. T. Joshi
• Idle Days on the Yann by Lord Dunsany
• Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Man Who Went Too Far by E. F. Benson
• The Mark of the Beast by Rudyard Kipling
• The Sin-Eater by Fiona Macleod
• The House of Sounds by M. P. Shiel
• The Phantom Farmhouse by Seabury Quinn
• One of Cleopatra’s Nights by Théophile Gautier
• The Stranger from Kurdistan by E. Hoffmann Price
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allan Poe
• Novel of the White Powder by Arthur Machen
• The Dead Smile by F. Marion Crawford
• The Ghost of Fear by H. G. Wells
• Lukundoo by Edward Lucas White
• Bells of Oceana by Arthur J. Burks
• The Wind in the Portico by John Buchan

This is a signed limited edition hardcover of only 150 signed and numbered copies.

 

MEDUSA’S COIL AND OTHERS Volume II by H. P. Lovecraft edited by S. T. Joshi (Signed Limited Edition Hardcover)

 

Volume one The Crawling Chaos sold out quickly and this one is almost gone too. If you haven’t reserved your copy of this book yet do so soon by clicking the cover art above.

This book is in the final stages of copy editing and then it will be at the printers. We expect to have it in hand within about six weeks.

Some of H. P. Lovecraft’s most fascinating work came from a time in his life that he was forced, by economic survival, to ghostwrite, collaborate and revise the work of others in the field. Here Lovecraft Scholar S. T. Joshi collects the best of these revisions and collaborations in a two volume set to be published this year from Arcane Wisdom Press. Medusa’s Coil and Others is the second of these two volumes. This edition is painstakingly annotated, and includes an introduction and bibliography by S. T. Joshi. The book is a must for the Lovecraft enthusiast and scholar alike. This limited edition hardcover will be strictly limited to only 150 hardcover copies. They will be signed by Lovecraftian scholar S. T. Joshi and will be hand numbered on a custom signature sheet, featuring artwork by Zach McCain. We expect to be shipping these in late January reserve your copy now of this unique collection.

Contents:

• Introduction by S. T. Joshi
• Medusa’s Coil (with Zealia Bishop)
• The Trap (with Henry S. Whitehead)
• The Man of Stone (with Hazel Heald)
• Winged Death (with Hazel Heald)
• The Horror in the Museum (with Hazel Heald)
• Out of the Aeons (with Hazel Heald)
• The Horror in the Burying-Ground (with Hazel Heald)
• The Slaying of the Monster (with R. H. Barlow)
• The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast (with R. H. Barlow)
• The Tree on the Hill (with Duane W. Rimel)
• The Battle That Ended the Century (with R. H. Barlow)
• “Till A’ the Seas” (with R. H. Barlow)
• Collapsing Cosmoses (with R. H. Barlow)
• The Challenge from Beyond (with C. L. Moore, A. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, and Frank Belknap Long)
• The Disinterment (with Duane W. Rimel)
• The Diary of Alonzo Typer (with William Lumley)
• In the Walls of Eryx (with Kenneth Sterling)
• The Night Ocean (with R. H. Barlow)
• Appendix
• Notes to “Medusa’s Coil”
• Notes to “The Challenge from Beyond”
• The Sorcery of Aphlar (with Duane W. Rimel)
• The Diary of Alonzo Typer by William Lumley
• Notes
• Bibliography

 

Soon we will be announcing two new additions to our Modern Mythos Library:  THE COLOR OVER OCCAM by Jonathan Thomas. Cover art for this one is currently being completed and we should have the limited edition hardcover up within the next couple weeks.  And the first book in our new novella series in the Modern Mythos Library titled IRON CHAIN by Donald Tyson. Stay tuned for more on these awesome new Modern Mythos Library titles.

Lastly In the coming months we will also be announcing THE SONG OF THE SIREN by Edward Lucas White. This will be a collection of his best work edited and with long introduction by mythos scholar S. T. Joshi (title and cover art for this one may change)

 

Contents:

Introduction

• The House of the Nightmare
• The Flambeau Bracket
• Amina
• The Message on the Slate
• Lukundoo
• The Pig-skin Belt
• The Song of the Sirens
• The Picture Puzzle
• The Snout
• Sorcery Island
• Azrael
• The Ghoula
• Edward Lucas White on Dreams

Betty and Barney Hill

Hi, “Chrispy” here. Thanks to Larry for letting me, Chris Perridas, blog here on “Misky”. This one is a personal account of how a little boy first got dragged into horrific esoterica.

Interrupted Journey

When I was a little boy we were poor. How poor? We lived in a non-insulated, house where we stuffed rags to keep the cold out. The “bathroom” was outside. No hot water, not even a bathtub. We lived there from before I was born through the early 1970′s with almost no change other than what the city forced the landlord to do. The house was adjacent to a rail road repair yard, next to tracks (I still recall the constant clickety-clack), and directly above the flight path of the airport when most of the airplanes still had propellers. They usually were about 200 feet over us as they landed.

My mother worked a number of part-time cleaning jobs to help out and pay our meager rent (maybe it was $40, I can’t recall) and bills. As this was over 40 years ago, it probably is safe to speak of these things. She had to take me with her as she did not think I should stay home by myself. One of these places was at a dental office, and I recall playing with beads of mercury. Probably not a smart thing to do with what we know about mercury, but compared to all the hype of mercury vapors now, I don’t see that it affected me much. I ended up getting two college degrees.

Another place she cleaned was the little local library in our community, now long ago torn down. I had to sit quietly while she mopped and dusted. She let me remove the books as long as I put them back exactly where I took them. As I went week after week, I read a lot of books – for free. I loved books then, and I love books now.

I could read pretty quickly back then, and it was out of necessity as I had to return the book within an hour – about how much time it took her to mop, dust, and sweep.

One book I spied was called Interrupted Journey, which I thought might be about some adventure. I liked adventure stories in those days. I can no longer remember the year, but since the book came out in October 1966, it was likely the following summer of 1967 that I noticed it.

It scared me to death.

It told me things I never knew about.

I had never really thought much of New England (I lived in Kentucky). The book told me about a place called New Hampshire, about Civil Rights, and interracial marriage – all new to me at the age of almost 11. And while I was into everything space-based (clipping every new article about the brand new upcoming Apollo project) I was unfamiliar with UFO’s or flying saucers. Maybe I had seen an old movie, but in 1967 reruns and old movies were still just coming into their own.

I had never heard of alien abduction. At 11, I certainly didn’t know about kidnapping, aliens, medical rape, or for that matter much about sex at all.

Needless to say, my mind was blown. And I had no one to talk to about this as I had no close friends then.

What did I read in that John Fuller book? About a poor innocent couple driving home from a long trip. I could relate as I sometimes went to my grandma’s farm in the tiny place called White City. It was dark! They saw something, then that something grabbed them, and did all sorts of unspeakable things. And Fuller told what those things were.

Today, a quick Google and you will find out about every detail of their experience. Both are gone now. Skeptics have decided they were everything from kooks to sleep deprived. Believers have drawn maps of where their abductors came from. A new group of esoteric investigators believe that the truth is far more complicated. Some of what they experienced was disorientation and sleep deprivation, other parts lend credence that something very bad happened to these quiet, hard working people. The government certainly checked them out, and their highly skeptical. expert therapist simply stated that while he did not believe in flying saucer aliens, they did, and that was all that mattered.

They did everything in their power to keep their secret. They struggled with what today is called post-traumatic stress disorder. They got the best help available in the United States at that time. They wanted to get healthy, get past this event, and continue to work for their community and bring people peace in the midst of Civil Rights struggles.

Then a reporter slipped the news out, and a firestorm enveloped the couple threatening their jobs, their lives, and their hard-won reputation. This led to the book, and Betty’s lifelong crusade to vindicate themselves – even after Barney passed on. By almost all who knew them, they were just nice people who had a horrible thing happen. They died with no explanation of what happened, only various possible solutions of what occurred. The one that stuck was that they were accosted and examined like lab rats by some unknown extraterrestrial group. Then let go.

For a little boy in Kentucky, he has been searching for some answers for well on these nearly 45 years. A few have been figured, many others haven’t.

I can't recall if this was the edition I read, but if so, how could something so plain and innocent be so terrifying inside?

THE DUNWICH ROMANCE by Edward Lee Limited Edition Now Shipping

THE DUNWICH ROMANCE by Edward Lee    Is a signed limited edition hardcover of only 300 signed and numbered copies. Now in stock and shipping!

“To boil the seas. To smash the forests. To crush the cities.”

Wilbur Whateley has the power to do all these things.  Dunwich folk believe the backwoods cretin to be just another inbred hill-freak, but he’s actually the scion of deviant and unhallowed gods; his purpose on this earth is to fill it with a horror which will eradicate all mankind.  See, Wilbur is inclined to agree with his otherworldly father, that human beings are filthy, wretched, nearly brainless animals who do not deserve to live.

But he’s also half human, and as time goes by he finds himself longing for the one thing he’s not likely ever to possess: love.

Wilbur will find it, however, in the last week of his life–a love so pure, so honest, so incontestably sincere that it almost changes his mind about the unworthiness of mankind.

Almost.

“Yog-Sothoth be praised…”

Only hardcore horror scribe Edward Lee would dare sequelize Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror in a manner so explicit and so sublimely obscene.  Where Lovecraft revealed his horrors in between the lines, Lee puts them under a most perverse microscope to exploit every abominable, erotic, and lust-soused detail, and hook-drags the reader through a screaming black arcade of jerkwater sex, articulate gore, and unmitigated grotesquerie.

THE DUNWICH ROMANCE
A novel of unutterable horror and undiluted love.

Esoterica and the Brain

Between Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of “flying saucers”, and the Fox Sisters New York paranormal doings in 1847, esoterica has went where scientists feared to tread. After nearly two centuries of plugging away, and even billions of dollars that the CIA and the U.S. military have thrown at everything between E.S.P. to ghosts, what do we know? Not a whole lot. But we are getting closer.

This writer is a big fan of Jason and Grant and the Ghost Hunters series even though week after week we don’t get much more than bumps in the dark and a few flashing K5′s. But what they do bring attention to is matrixing.

Our eyes do not really “see”. The rods and cones detect various electromagnetic patterns and the brain interprets those into patters and three-dimensional objects; the same with the ears and hearing. Therefore, random white noise, and randomized patterns of dots or smudges can become electronic voice phenomenon of ghostly whispers, and spectral images. It is also what makes potato chips look like Elvis, sidewalks look like Jesus, NASA images are faces-on-Mars, and potatoes that look like ducks.

Vincent Price looked out an airplane window one day in the late 1950′s and saw as clear as a bell the words “Tyrone Powers is Dead”. He was shocked at his colleague appearing in such a way. He looked around and no one else noticed it, or said a word. Yet, Tyrone Powers had died that day, and he had no way of knowing it. Was he touched by the dead, or was he matrixing a bizarre quantum mechanical coincidence?

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, has spent years with false memories. Subjects looked at a little book of life events; three their own, one not. The fourth event was a little story about when they were little they had been lost in a shopping mall – completely a lie. Relatives were asked to confirm the event. That double whammy created in most people a recalled event with specific details in living color and a logical chronology. Again, it never happened. It was a type of matrixing.

This writer went through the house looking for his glasses, room by room. Suddenly, in exasperation, and wiping my brow, touched my glasses perched upon my head.  They had been there the whole time.  I had become my parents.  Recently, a music student left a priceless instrument behind, and forgot it. This has happened over and over, the most significant when a Stradivarius had been left on the roof of a car only to be relocated at auction decades later. Children are left in hot cars, in taxis, even in hotel rooms. The scientist who spent years locating the Java Man skull left it behind in a restaurant one day – he did get it back. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers is a by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard University’s Psychology Department. He details these and other very ordinary memory lapses and explains why they happen in the brain.

So between matrixing, false memories, and forgetfulness, how in the world will we ever trust a jury trial again? Because people are phenomenally good at remembering things, they are just very bad at interpretation. In a specialized setting amidst trained professionals – judges, lawyers, police professionals, and psychiatrists, a person can be guided to accurate recollections.

This is why in the 21st century, amateur sleuths have taken the entire eyewitness reporting’s of millions of people who have seen dragons, the Virgin Mary, UFO’s, fairies, and ghosts and have triaged them using sophisticated techniques to discern that there seem to be three things going on.

Some events are as real as touching a table. Many people see and report top secret military objects only to learn years later they were stealth bombers, drones, or helium filled transport ships the size of football fields.

Some events are the fantasies of people who have had traumatic lives. They may or may not have seen Mothman, ghosts, or whatever, but their interpretation was fueled by first rate story telling abilities. In another life they could have been Stephen King or Ray Bradbury.

Finally, there are people who experience thin-boundary events. These people through drugs, stress, sleeplessness, or brain trauma lose the ability to discern dreams or visions from reality. Michael Shermer, a top notch skeptic, recalls that on a long bicycle competition where he did not sleep, suddenly began to see aliens who attempted to kidnap him. The team who followed him in a car saw he was in trouble, tackled him, and waited for paramedics to realign his electrolytes. To this day, he recalls the event perfectly in detail of what the aliens did to him. This may be a real clue to a part of what happened to Betty and Barney Hill. We don’t know.

The brain is totally weird. It can hot wire sexuality and serial killing. It can make Mother Teresas and psychopathic CEO’s.

Phineas P. Gage (1823 – 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman now remembered for his improbable survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head. IT destroyed much of his brain’s left frontal lobe affecting his personality and behavior. He became a completely different human being. On 21 Jan 2012 in Oak Lawn, IL, Dante Autullo accidentally shot a 3 inch nail in his brain and did not realize it for more than a day. Only a scratch and a drop of blood showed any trace. Autullo felt bad the next day, an after a series of tests was rushed to surgery – and he is recovering.

Muhammad Ali is suffering from Parkinson-like symptoms from his years of boxing. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane took LSD many times with seemingly no after effects. One shot of crack cocaine and one is hooked for life. Try getting a smoker to stop smoking. Charlie Sheen recently sabotaged a successful career despite the long term support of his family and close friends and a desperate network.  It’s all in the brain.

In 1827, a family of Rhode Island farmers felt the only way to cure tuberculosis was to bind up their daughter, Nancy Young, and burn her and inhale the smoke of this “vampire’. The story persisted for two centuries of a “witch’ and ‘vampire’ who, lived in the hamlet of Foster, Rhode Island when folklorist Michael Bell uncovered it. (Food for the Dead). On Coast to Coast AM it was recently revealed by Kenneth Arnold’s daughter that he not only saw ‘flying saucers’ but came to believe they were living beings and saw them frequently, and it was his proof of God. His story helped to fuel other sightings during the Cold War and prompted billions of black budget dollars to see what was really happening to make a mockery of Civil Defense and NORAD efforts. The FBI is still convinced that there has never been a child harmed by a Satanic cult in the continental United States – but try to convince the ordinary citizen. Conversely, who would have suspected a world-wide clandestine cover-up of child molestation by Catholic priests in virtually every Western nation?  Conspiracy?  Or not?

Ray Garton once stated that in his early writing career he excitedly accepted a contract to tell a ghostly non-fiction story, but through several unsettling events ended up writing a fantasy. In supporting an esoteric illusion, he was disillusioned, and his credulity crushed.

The question is not exactly why do people believe weird things, but why do we experience weird things? And when those weird experiences overwhelm our senses, how do we sort out esoteric stories between reality non-fiction and fantasy fiction?

Shields up! Phasers on full! Boldly go! The world of esoterica is not one for the squeamish.