We weren’t able to make all of Saturdays activities but we showed up in enough time to catch quite a few of them. Luckily for me traffic was waaay better and we got there early enough to catch a bite to eat without having to eat it while jogging like the day before. I also got to see a gondolah and a deaf couple having an increasingly intense argument with sign language on our walk there. Those were firsts for me.
The vendors were still set up with T-shirts and happily chatted with patrons, the ticket seller remembered us from the day before. I mulled over a sweet little button-up shirt with a cthulhu on it but it was $50 and I realize since getting fat (and growing a stupidly pendulous set of boobs) that cute button ups are best left in my youthful days of thin androgyny. Now if I get a button up shirt that’s half a size too small my boobs are peering through make-shift windows between the buttons and buy one too large and suddenly I’m swimming in a trash bag. Annoying. Curvy people like being cute too.
ANYWAY, once we got in I looked around at an audience that was a couple times the size of the previous day although the theater was far from packed. They were however enthusiastic, even if small in number.
On this night we got to watch several blocks of shorts and a feature film. They were as follows:
Onan’s Harvest: I would have titled this Something Pagan This Way Comes. Just a lot of creatures, and masks, and weird magic in the woods.
After the Fall: Maybe it’s the state of the world today but this one seemed a metaphor for living under fascism via a be-tenticled sky creature.
Triangle: Which was actually a pyramid but I won’t be pedantic. Nothing like basing an entire short on a locked pyramid shaped box with floaty numbers and an attached warning from the village witch.
Five-Star: I’m really scratching my head on this one as I remember absolutely nothing from it. The blurb of it reads, “A diligent locksmith is on a quest for a five star review.” Soooo…. I’m guessing he failed but whose to say! Not me. *nervous chuckle*
Observer: A classic space horror, watching the last memories of a deceased crew.
A Serpent’s Touch: The only thing I remember about this one was the font was so weird I thought it said A Serpent’s Couch. The blurb reads, “In 16th century England Tennebris and his son mourn the passing of the family matriarch.”
The Second Grimoire: Evil books take hold of the minds of those who keep them.
Feature Film: Daemons. This one was a fun throw back to 70’s acid tripping horror, though it takes place in the modern day and is a little more socially conscious. A real We’re All Mad Here kinda film.
Shorts of Madness was the next block which is always a crowd favorite as it is the humor shorts.
Taylor and the Strange John. Is John a frequenter of prostitutes or a toilet? That was my question. The former. Crude but in a mildly shocking giggle kind of way. It’s nice to see a tip of the hat to the working girls.
Sea Legs: Pirate brothels have never been so tenticle-y.
Fisher of Men: A classic hillbilly show down with the opponent being a swamp monster. Quirky simplistic humor that really worked. This one had me laughing pretty hard.
Dry January: A comedy about being a college age fuck-up and deciding to go sober… which for some reason includes a very up-chucky crab man. 🦀
Burned Cans for Aluminum Children: Fun with Play-D’oh! Stupidly cute/funny.
Gusti the Strong vs The Merman: This one is 100% silly. Does not take itself one iota seriously. But still absolutely hilarious. A real joy to watch.
And that was this year’s wrap-up for me although there were several things going on Sunday that we didn’t make it to.
Its that time of year again, time to brandish some scary T-shirts and join the other lovable weirdoes at the H P Lovecraft film festival. This year has been BRUTAL. Things are bleak and we are already feeling like we’re living through a horror movie. Still, it was a MUCH needed break to attend this year. Curiously traffic was horrendous getting into Providence so we ended up late, scarfing down some fast food while jogging to the RISD. We made it just on time, though one of our companions had to relinquish the burning hot fries he had failed to eat while jogging. No food in the theater.
It was a small but dedicated crowd this year. On this night we got to see a block of horror shorts followed by a 40th Anniversary viewing of the ever-grusome satirical cult classic Re-Animator followed by a Q & A with the screen writer, which was for me more entertaining than I anticipated.
The shorts were as follows:
The Outsider: A three minute animation making it’s US debute from Canada. This one showed the struggles of a lonely cyclops just trying to find their people with a comical twist ending.
Stargazer: Answers the question what if stars could come to earth as people and seduce socially fucked up astronomers.
Undertone: I think I was mentally somewhere else for the entire 13 minutes of this one. Despite this being yesterday I remember exactly nothing of it. SORRY.
The Music of Erich Zann: A recently restored 1980’s short depicting how music can drive you mad. Cosmically mad. Ahhhhhhh.
Where the Shadows Feast: This one wasn’t just horror but also a film noir with a black male lead and I must say, I am all here for that. He did a great job and the “shadows” were effectively scary/unnerving which is a high compliment coming from me. Generally I just find horror monsters hilarious… which I think is why people keep looking at me with recognition. Oh, the psycho laugher is back. 😬
The Itch: If ever there were a horror concept I’d be intimately aware of it’d be this. I’ve itched off layers of skin on many occasions and have had yeast infections so angry its made me want to fuck a wad of steel wool. I have not however accidentally killed myself itching too hard. This one had a fun rivalry and a couple twists.
Thrift Store Ouija Board: This one was just super juvenile. Teen girls having a super stupid teen girl spat with the aid of a ouija board. Also if you’re wondering the moving triangle piece on a ouija board is called a planchette. You’re welcome.
And then that brought us to Re-Animator which I’ve seen but apparently repressed 90% of it. The only thing I remembered was the actors. They looked familiar. Sorta. But anyway, it was gorey, gross, and fucked up in that special kind of way that you only see when a group of writers gather around and egg eachother on to write the most depraved thing ever. I respect it for that. I respect it more for adding humor over the top of that. It is however very much a movie of its time with the only woman present a bit of an annoying bobble-headed blonde. There was an attempted rape scene enacted by a decapitated head so that was… just ewe. Honestly, I felt this was more ewe than all the other ewes. And there was a lot of other ewes.
Afterwards the screenwriter Dennis Paoli took questions and talked a little about it. He explained it was a very short run film that only played in a handful of theaters because it was unrated (GEE, I WONDER WHY) and that it gained popularity when it came out on VHS. Now its a cult classic and I’m happy it was never remade. I can deal with 70’s gore but hyper realistic current gore would be too much for me personally. He also accidentally brought the mood of the entire room down by pointing out all the themes in the movie that made it so terrifying – male researchers who don’t know when to stop, the promise of great wealth to potentially evil creations, a broken health care system, humanity’s fear of death, and even the horror of college loans are probably all worse today than 40 years ago. Weren’t we all here to momentarily escape the bleakness of current American living?
Luckily he cheered us all right back up by wandering way off the beaten path and telling us how his theater play version of Peter Pan was banned for nudity. Peter Pan was re-imagined as a hippie, Tinkerbell was his boyfriend, the Indians were replaced with black folk, the pirates were Chicago police, flying was just tripping on acid and the flying scene was both male and female actors dancing naked to In A Gadda Da Vida. “And we didn’t even change the dialogue at all from the origional. It just worked.” And now I want to time travel to see this. I already had a soft spot of fucked up retellings of Peter Pan since I saw an absolutely god awful independant film called Neverland: Never Grow Up, Never Grow Old where Tinkerbell was a user/seller of fairy dust, Neverland was an abandoned amusement park, and Hook was a Pan-obsessed leather bound pedophile. This makes me nostalgic for the independant film era of the 2000s before corporations bought them all out and turned them back to shit. To be fair this entire film festival makes me want to start making my own little films. Probably animation as I don’t have the people skills to successfully convince a handful of “actors” to run through a park acting crazy or whatever I’d need to accomplish such a task. My creative mind is still aching to play, even as the rest of me is crushed by currant circumstance. Tell you what though, if ever globalized healthcare and universal basic income become a thing here in the US I promise I’ll make y’all a little film.
I’m not going lie, I’ve been absent from my blog because my life has been absolutely insane lately, and I haven’t had the spoons to do fun stuff like travel. That being said, I still wanted to attend the NecronomiCon, billed as, “the international conference and festival of Weird Fiction, Art, and Academia!” I mean… who could resist with that tagline? Probably neurotypical people now that I think about it. Thank the Eldrich gods I’m not one of those.
This year we wanted to attend some of the short films and the live radio show but also wander and hit some things we hadn’t in previous adventures – like the art exhibit and a puppet show. We started at the vendors, obviously, to check out which artists and crafters had shown up with adorably crocheted abominable horrors and whatnot. The first artist was indeed exactly that and boy did she know her audience! Her creations were perfection for anyone who loves the cross section between horror and cute huggable things. I almost bought a tiny baby Cthulhu in a plant pot but decided maybe I should wait on that as the place had just opened after all. This woman mopped the floors, with her competitors though. She almost sold out by the end of the day! I was more than impressed, so much so I took a card saying that I could find her at crochetmecurios on facebook and beyond.
Beyond this there were artists with paintings, prints, wood etchings, T-shirts, books galore, and even the most inventive take I have ever seen for a bra, aptly titled, “The over-the-shoulder-beholder-boulder-holder,” which you can totally buy at Dogzillalives’ Etsy Shop for a very befitting $666. As much as I LOVE that I’m also not that loaded (or perky-breasted) so I ended up buying mostly postcards as well as a wood etching and a small print. My companions bought crochet things, T-shirts, DVDs of former film festival shorts, and a variety of other things. Clearly this room was dangerous so we meandered out and started walking to our next destination – the art exhibit. It was a bit of a walk in a little gallery next to Lovecraft Arts and Sciences which is a fun little bookstore if there ever was one. Since we got there early, a few minutes before it actually opened, we wandered into the bookstore and checked it out. This place is also dangerous for weirdoes with spare change. What it lacks in size it makes up in uniqueness. I ended up with a book titled Death in Early New England: Rites, Rituals, and Remembrance which is soooo niche and sooo my kind of rabbit hole! Every time I hit this bookstore it always has something cool.
From here we ambled back somewhere else for the film festival and watched the first block of shorts. They were all very tame, I must say, nothing too outlandish, mostly going back on old tropes about our cursed colonial settlers. Though one did imagine, in the most brutal way possible, what it might be like to be kept as a pet by an alien. It was less Fantastic Planet and more Dr Rat as they started as lab subjects before becoming less than loved pets. It was… creative.
From here we made it to a shadow puppet show because why not? When one comes across a shadow puppet show there is no other option but to see what it’s all about. That one was an experience. We got there early, once again, as a crowd gathered outside this tiny establishment. You might wonder who was in the crowd, waiting as an adult to see a puppet show, and you’d be surprised it was quite diverse in age, gender, and expression, though that one very particular guy was also there asking everyone if this was an American styled shadow puppet show or a Japanese styled puppet show. No one knew. Or cared. Well, except for him. He apparently really loved Japanese culture. Eventually we’d be herded into this tiny room with a stage, all 300 or so of us. It was immediately hotter than the sun from everyone’s body heat and I couldn’t really stop my intrusive thoughts from telling me cuddling up like sardines was how people die, god forbid a fire should break out. My intrusive thoughts are always super cheerful like that.
ANYWAY, there was one woman putting on the whole production. She played a recording to narrate the story which was a voice actor and a theramin playing in the background. We’d hoped for a live theramin but I guess a recorded theramin is better than no theramin at all. I was just sad the aforementioned music was more high-pitched screeching noises than cool hovering woo-woo noises. We were warned this was a low budget production. It was entirely done via an Old School projector and what appeared to be colored cellophane scraps and bits of cardboard cut into silhouettes. I was a bit distracted by the fact much of the cellophane pieces had random bits of scribblings on them and as well as scratches and at times tattered edges but hey, one person’s trash is another person’s…. shadow puppet. All joking aside it was actually well done. I enjoyed the story and the silhouettes were apt. But it was time to be off once again.
We made our way back to the vendors where I then bought the things I’d eyed earlier but still had some time to kill so we decided to check out the gaming rooms. By this time I must have been showing my wear. I was getting very tired both physically and mentally. It’d already been a long day. So long in fact I forgot to mention we’d already found food at some psychedelically inspired cafe and did a mini walking tour where we glared at the shunned house of Lovecraftian fame which now had a cute little terrace and a sign that read in French, “Warning, weird dog.” Of course, the second my fatigued non-gaming butt walked through the door the woman at the table immediately told us all about the free coloring pages and crayons and showed us to some empty somewhat dark tables. BLESS NEURODIVERGENT CROWDS. That was the kinda break I could use! But first we noticed the vendor tables. I thought that’s why we were up here but my companion actually had no real inclination this would have it’s own separate vendors and was immediately smitten as a magpie at all the shiny things. I do love shiny things myself but I don’t know what they are or what they signify. Nonetheless I took a pamphlet from a pirate(?) boy and made it look like I knew what he was talking about when he discussed his new game described within it – as one does – I like to be encouraging. And then I handed it back to someone who very likely had more knowledge than myself and went back to playing with the giant die with the floaty eyeball in it. I don’t need to know shit to enjoy that! By this time we had 10 minutes to hurredly color before the doors closed so we did so. Man, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve used crayons. They’re like coloring something with cheap birthday candles. But it was stupid fun and we got to hang up our precious artwork next to the others who… clearly spent more than 10 minutes on theirs.
Onto the live radio show which was the H P Lovecraft Historical Society’s Dark Radio Theater’s presentation of The Shunned House. We had no idea this too was also filled to the brim with people and just like the puppet show we were left without a seat standing numbly in the back. I hadn’t worn my knee braces all day and I was one hurting puppy from all the walking. I decided I didn’t need to see anything (it was a radio show after all) and sat on the floor with a gaggle of others. That was no less painful as I had no back support and half my body was going numb. Those who had room just lay down. I was entertained by the show itself and the little story it told but because I was also blind to the stage I had the double entertainment of the audience bursting out in weird noises at random whenever the screen up front prompted them to help out. I was also delighted to see someone else taking a cellphone photo of the same patch of rug I’d taken a photo of a year before. It’s a pretty design! Actually, the people at these things always add to my joy of the whole event. Their choice in wardrobe is always wonderful. This year there was a Fantastic Planet T-shirt, a full-blown rat suit, the aforementioned pirate boy, and a chick wearing a tutu wound with lit Christmas lights. The last of which was likely on her way to the ball – which is extra I’m told. I said yeah, extra extra as you’d also need to find something bomb to wear. Someday.
All and all it was an exhausting but very much worth it day of hanging out with fellow freaks and geeks. Until next year – love y’all!
I admit that conventions are not part of my world. And a horror convention seems even more out there but I like being a wild card and having someone share their special interests with me which is how I ended up here. And as an added bonus I LOVE weird people and this seemed like it might have a whole den of them.
Really my usual companion wanted to see the live radio show. He’s super into them. So on Saturday after he got off work we drove directly the convention. It would leave us plenty of time to catch the radio show. I was excited to see it too but I had to take a few days to prepare for it as I am not one for crowds. Or city life. Or people really. Got off to a bit of a bad start when we spent a TON of time in traffic which was acting insane. Usually, I can deal with this just fine but on that particular evening it put me on edge.
We parked at the mall as it was cheaper but that did mean we’d have to walk through the mall on a weekend evening and holy crap was it swarmed. I’d have trouble with this even before Covid. I carried on and did the best I could but then I had to ride an elevator, walk through one of those weird human hamster tunnels over the street, and ride several escalators – the last of which was ungodly narrow, steep, and claustrophobic. Escalators had been my nemesis since childhood and everything was setting off my sensory overload tonight.
Eventually we found a big room full of vendors with a $5 per person admittance fee. We forked it over and looked around. There was all kinds of weird betenticled art everywhere. Paintings, prints, giant plushies. It was an odd rabbit hole to fall down but a fun one. Still, this was not what we were looking for. We asked where the general admittance was and was told we’d have to walk over the Biltmore down the street which we did.
The Biltmore itself is supposed to be haunted. In fact it has such a reputation it was on my list of places to poke at even before this convention but tonight wasn’t the best night to be doing so. I walked in and there’s all sorts of absolutely garish 1920’s art nouveau architecture and design which when done well can be stunning but this place? I dunno, it just seemed so tacky to me. And disorienting. I can’t even describe how I was feeling at that point but it was almost like I was wearing those shitty drunk goggles they give children to make them not want to drink. Just everything seemed somehow off. It was a weird energy for sure – whether I can blame this on the place being haunted or just my own sensory overload I don’t know but that’s where I was at that moment.
We found the people at the take in register for the convention but they said they’d already packed up hours earlier and were no longer selling tickets or making allowances to see the radio theater. My companion was deflated. I was too. I had struggled mightily for this one and now it was a no-go. I asked if the radio theater would be there tomorrow and yes, it was a different show, but they would be there performing something. We decided to come back the next day. Let me tell you I was happy to be home after that.
Sunday came around and we headed out fairly early so we could see at least some of the short film festival at the library before the radio show. We got out on time and were able to buy tickets and even better I was feeling much less over stimulated!
We walked to the library but we were a bit early. There was a sign on the door saying it was closed on Sundays except for the convention and then in small letters that it’d be open at 12:05. it wasn’t 12:05 yet so we stood politely at the door with another man who claimed to have “just rolled down the hill” to get there. A librarian popped out and happily burbled, “Thank you for reading the sign! Everyone else has just tried to come right in!” She then highlighted the part about opening up at 12:05 before replacing it on the door. By now several more people had gathered and were now chatting about how far they travelled and then all about cats. This would be an ongoing theme on just about everyone I eavesdropped on. Who attends horror conventions you might wonder… Cat people. That’s who. I mean yeah there are those decked to the hilt in Goth gear, the heavily tattooed, those who look like they’re suffering existential dread, the odd rat enthusiast, some queer rebels, a large swath of neurodivergent peoples annnnnd amateur mycologists otherwise known as mushroom lovers. That last one caught me a bit off guard.
Finally we were allowed in and made our way to the theater – an actual tiny theater, in a library. This was new for me. And it was cute! And cozy! And Old Timey looking. And to their credit the first film they showed was suitably distressing. It was about keeping a living consciousness in a computer which is always a little unnerving but they seemed to make it over the top uncomfortable. Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know.
From there the films ranged from familiar old tropes, to psychological horror, to comedy horror. I was having a good time with it. And it was interesting to see just what people were doing to make these little films which had to be a shoe string budget but most you couldn’t tell. Afterwards one of the film’s creators came up to do a Q & A and my companion got into it by asking a question. I was happy to see him involved even if I myself would rather die than ask a question in a public forum. That’s just me and that’s OK.
We stuck around for block two which started with a claymation short which obviously tickled my own special interests. And there was one some time afterwards that was really low budget – just one dude sitting in front of a green screen playing with a plush bat, that actually was still amazing somehow?? And hilarious! I don’t know, I was impressed. Actually most, if not all, of the shorts kept my interest for the most part. There was a couple I was hazy on but I guess that’s just part of the experience. It was hard picking a favorite.
We decided to skip the last block of short films and instead go to grab a bite to eat before listening to a dramatic story reading before attending the radio show. So off we went. I’d read over the program schedule for fun and I was amused with a lot of the offerings. Cthulhu prayer breakfast, a lecture on missing persons, and weirdly enough a group therapy session. I guess in acknowledgment of the fact if you were here you might be the sort to benefit from a little group therapy sesh. Actually, a lot of the lectures looked super intriguing, but they were from the previous few days. They were the sort of things I could plunk myself on a seat and just spend a day listening to random lectures. Yeah, OK, maybe the crazy ticket price was worth it. There was a lot going on.
Making our way out of there I met a woman on the street who had the same cutesy baby Cthulhu T-shirt and we laughed. She asked if I’d seen the Craft-thulu T-shirt and I said I had it. It was just a weird, sweet moment – two oddballs recognizing each other’s oddness.
We ate at the mall and I picked up one of my books from the car which I’d leave on a bench in the park to be found. Part of my book bombing/book crossing campaign. The dramatic story telling was actually The Willows by Algernon Blackwood read by Robert Lloyd Perry and let me tell you – it was indeed dramatic! I was expecting a nice little relaxing story time, just sit in quiet and listen to someone read to me like I’m a child. No, not quite. It did start off nice and soft but the deeper into the story we got the more impassioned and loud our narrator and the music behind him became. This in combination with the fact they dimmed the lights set my brain off. I basically forgot where I was, immersed completely in the story, seeing it in vivid detail in place of the very real surroundings around me. I started to fidget and scratch at my skin just to keep myself grounded in reality. My companion too really enjoyed this piece. Curiously so too did a young woman wearing noise reducing headphones. She hadn’t been the only one wearing some sort of deadening device. Even I was tempted to put in ear plugs as a lot of these events were getting a bit loud for me. I wondered if these people were also somewhere on the spectrum enjoying a day out the best they could. So far the diversity of each crowd was keeping me quite happy.
And when it was all over we were in the right place to just stay for what we came for – a performance of Curse of the Yig performed by the Dark Adventure Radio Theater. I should probably note that going into this I have not been a huge fan of any kind of radio. Yes, I listened to War of the Worlds and got a good giggle in my youth but that is where my interest in this activity ended until I met my companion who has on numerous occasions shared his love of these performances by playing them in the car on our many trips. And it’s been pleasant but I still didn’t fully comprehend why seeing it live would be any better. It’s radio after all.
It started with a lot of fussing over the projector and an apology to the audience that the cast they had painfully ensured was diverse for this adaption of an H P Lovecraft story was down to a skeleton crew and just looked like a buncha white people again. It might seem like a strange thing to say but H P Lovecraft unfortunately was even a hardcore racist for his day and although there are lots of people who love his wild and whimsical style of writing there’s a lot less of us who agree with his politics. But white supremacists being who they are probably would find a good ‘hero’ in Lovecraft which is why the rest of us decent folk have to try so very hard to take the good and leave all the bad. It’s a noble effort.
Anyway, the radio drama started with just four people voicing all the parts (including the dog who barked intermittently at various scenes.) Every once in a while the projector would show something to the audience asking them to make a noise for the background. Oh, so it’s audience participation that’s different, I see. Granted all the noises were the same…. wind, the rattle of a rattlesnake, hissing… these are all the same noise. None the matter I found it adorable and quite fun. By the end I got it. It was worth coming to see live. Even better they gave the hardcore fans a ‘clue’ with which to decipher a code. My companion of course got up and asked for a code card at the end and brought it home to happily solve it. Again, it was nice to see this sort of involvement.
It was getting late when we left and my companion was concerned I’d had enough activity for one day but he did mention there was one last film showing 4 miles away at a theater. I said it’s OK, we can go check it out, and so we did. And the parking gods must have been smiling on me because there was a parking spot right near the theater that was next to an intersecting street meaning all I had to do was drive into it without properly parallel parking which I STILL have not learned how to do. No matter!
That’s how we ended up at the Dunwich Horror Picture Show. We knew this was a screening of the 1970 movie The Dunwich Horror, which is a terrible movie, but we didn’t really understand the Picture Show part of that. Rocky Horror mashup? Hard to say.
I did what I always do… looked around the audience. And that’s where I found them – a group that had been remarkably absent most of the day despite my theories they should have been everywhere – the gay men. Oh sure, I’d seen a couple adorable lesbian couples here and there but this seemed to be the hub where all the men were. Scores of them. Which made little sense to me as the Dunwich Horror is CLEARLY a film about one straight white dude’s rape fantasies (which is very in step with horror from the 70’s.) If you’re wondering why I thought such a large portion of the queer community would be at this convention it’s because I grew up in the 80’s and 90;s when every villain was still queer coded and although that was supposed to be a bad thing I also knew this backfired and many still LOVE queer coded villains. Honestly, how can you not? They’re fucking hilarious. Also so much of the crowd today seemed neurodivergent and again there’s a disproportionally large cross section of people who are both queer and neurodivergent. I was just happy my amateur psychology worked. I was comfortable here now the world made sense again. Also the theater was dark so it was kinda perfect for my nerves.
So, what was it about the Dunwich Horror that was so great? Well, it had a live band playing the soundtrack and an announcement at the beginning saying, “We know this film is terrible. Feel free to heckle it. Just make your comments funny.” And the audience complied! But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was the wildly gesticulating people in Cthulhu costumes who’d come from the sides of the theater to do a crazed interpretive dance to distract you whenever the dream sequences got too rapey. How cool would that be just to have that on standby whenever something triggering comes up? Like no, you don’t want to look over at something potentially distressing, look over here AT THE DANCING TENTICLE MONSTER! WOOOOO!
It was all a very happy and positive experience. My companion even got to take a break to enjoy remembering some other happy memories at this theater. While doing so he tried to thank me for coming with him today to enjoy the weird things in life and I…. would have replied it was no problem if I wasn’t distracted by the John Waters Christmas poster. Now that’s a whole other brand of weird (and I’m all for it!)
All and all I am super happy we did the Dunwich Horror as it was the perfect way to end the evening and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe a little too much if I’m honest. So, was it worth going into the city, a place I normally avoid? Oh yes, absolutely. And it looks like someone picked up my book that I left sooo… there’s always that.
So after the John Hayes Library we decided to keep on walking to “The Ath” as the locals call it. It’s another library but with its own unique charm. Apparently, it was in this library where Edgar Allen Poe had his marriage proposal turned down and H P Lovecraft also wrote about it in his many letters to friends. He seemed to have a great affection for it and I could see why.
Upon stepping in there’s a little room to the side you’re guided into and there was a woman at a desk handing out visitor stickers and politely saying that there was a suggested $5 per person donation but that it wasn’t required. I was already endeared to this place so whatever. Spending $5 here was a lot better than the $5 that the parking meter ate (no, I still haven’t forgotten about that.) In return for our most gracious donation, we were handed a little guide and told we could do a self-tour.
This place was kind of adorable. I was digging the whole vibe with the historic figure busts around the ceiling, the Roman statue at the entrance, and in the center of it all the bane of my childhood existence – A card catalogue. Today’s youth will never know the pain of having to search for “key words” manually by hand, flipping through index card after index card only to end up absolutely nowhere because guess what? The key words in your brain will NEVER match the keywords of the insufferable clerk that put this hellfire together. Made me a little nostalgic.
The guide was fun, we walked about looking at different things it was talking about and just generally digging the place. The downstairs had a distinct speak easy feel about it and this place did say it held a lot of cultural events so who knows! We then wandered accidentally into the rare volumes room and were quickly shuffled out by a very intense academic whose energy was let’s just say tightly wound. VERY tightly wound. The door we walked through was supposed to be locked. We held up our hands, swore we didn’t touch anything, and tried to back out in the friendliest way possible. I sighed, spending a day out in this college town was a bit of a mindfuck for me. It was the kind of place I always daydreamed about as a kid when I still had aspirations. I wonder if I had not had a total likely autistic burnout in nineth grade if I would have ended up somewhere like here… being someone like that guy, hidden by academia because the world is really too much, swatting at people getting too close to my drawers full of bones (as I would have studied paleontology not literature.) Life has not been easy or straight forward for me but I like who I am now and I’m actually grateful that I have come this far. I certainly enjoy life more.
And with that epiphany we decided to continue our journey to the Edna Biology Lab.
I really needed more trees but when the weather is 89 degrees you tend to want to do things indoors… so this week I tepidly pointed towards Providence and said, “Why don’t we poke around there until we find something weird.” And we did.
The John Hayes Library is a big beautiful library set up mostly for the nearby Brown University students which is rumored to have not one but three separate books bound in human skin. Morbidly I was hoping they might have one on display so off we went!
But first I have to warn you that if you use the Brown University visitor’s parking don’t pay in cash unless you have exact change. There were NO signs up saying the machine didn’t do change so when I gave it a $20 for a $15 day pass IT ATE MY FIVE DOLLARS. That’s just super not cool you guys.
The library wasn’t too far away. We walked through the college campus to get there (trying to take the shortest route possible since it was so miserably hot that day.) When we arrived it was another ornately decorated building with an entrance befitting a castle. We walked in and noticed there were displays everywhere so we wandered around, quietly looking at them and trying not to look too much like tourists. We’re both WAY old to be students although being baby faced no one would know that.
Somehow we ended up on a different floor in a big room that seemed 100% dedicated to tin soldiers in historic battles. And I don’t just mean American ones either. There were a lot of British Empire type things going down as well as armies consisting of elephants and people from far off lands. It was… fucking surreal if I’m honest. Like how exactly did we topple down a rabbit hole and land in the middle of a bunch of toys reenacting military history? I have no idea. This was not in the pamphlets.
Other art was scattered about – paintings of very posh looking historical figures adorned the walls in the hallway and there were also a lot of illustrations and photos of the library back in the day. No human skin books though. However, before we left we did ask about the H P Lovecraft letters that were supposed to be here.
“We have a lot of his letters here. He wrote a ton to his… pen pals?” I had to laugh at this poor young librarian in search of a better word. “Anyway, the main collection is huge but we can show you the samples if you’d like.”
And so we were handed a box full of what I can only describe as mad scribblings. A few full letters, a bunch of little doodles, lots of notes…. just absolute and utter mental chaos. There was even maps and schematics to imaginary locations. As a fiction writer myself I found this refreshing. And slightly horrifying. Please don’t scrutinize my To-Do lists after I die.
ANYWAY… I did not muster the courage to ask about the damned tomes but I suspect they’re hidden somewhere safe only to be seen by appointment and I…. do not have a legitimate reason to be asking strangers about their human skin books. Sad Sigh. I can tell you that at least one of them is an anatomy book probably bound in the skin of a cadaver – to which I say – that’s a really fucking bomb way to go out. Can someone make me into a book after I die? Almost makes me want to get a tattoo that could also work as a book title… *whistles*
Swan Point Cemetery is a gorgeous 200 acre garden cemetery that I had been meaning to return to so I could take photos and blog it. My first visit was to find the grave of H P Lovecraft, which we did, but it was a very short visit as the cemetery was closing within the hour. This time we made sure to leave quite early so we could have the time to walk the entire grounds and I must say there was a lot to see!
I think I was struck with the diversity in this particular graveyard. There seemed to be a lot of different ethnicities calling this their last resting place. Some of the stones even had different languages on them and a lot had symbols and designs even I was at a loss to interpret – which is always great fun! And mixed among them there were mausoleums, pillars, crosses, angels of all sorts, bronze statues, and a great deal of truly creative stones. One was even in the form of a dollhouse with the front door reading, “welcome home.” In fact there was a lot of endearing messages on these stones that would melt anyone’s heart – words of affirmation and love – poems, epitaphs, and Bible verses.
I was also enamored with how many kinds of monuments there were here – everything from traditional slate stones, to simple marble, to ornately carved marble, to metal, to natural granite boulders which were probably already there, to metal and mausoleums. It gave this place great character!
And so did all the infant stones. There were a lot buried within family plots that had not only their own stones but names in recognition of their exceptionally brief existence. It was pretty clear a lot of these were likely stillbirths and it sort of hit a soft spot with me. Having toured a lot of the less wealthy cemeteries I know historically infants and toddlers frequently weren’t given stones and of the handful of infants I have found almost none of them had names – instead being listed as “baby.” Sometimes they’d be buried with their mother if she also died during the birth or shortly after. I don’t think it’s because the poor loved their children any less – I think this was more a question of who has the luxury to spend time mourning. Infant deaths have historically been very common and in those days women were usually encouraged to just move on without any real grieving period – just pretending it never happened. It was another sobering lesson on the realities of the economic classes.
Another one of these reminders came in the form of the servicemen I found – coming from each of the wars of the past century – their memorials often had whole passages written on them on how exactly they died – overseas, during battle, as a prisoner in foreign lands, or in the hospital after being injured in battle. I was not used to this. I was used to the only identification that a serviceman was buried being the flag planted aside the grave that is paid for by the state. It was a lot to take in.
Meanwhile we did manage to find the grave of H P Lovecraft. I like finding author graves… the tokens left on them are frequently interesting. Today someone had left a bottle of whisky, a woolen hat, and a series of rubber duckies. Why, I have no idea but it was fun to speculate!
All and all I had a great time and think this would be a wonderful place for a little stroll or even a picnic. It was mid October when I visited and freakishly warm at more than 70 degrees. The sun melted me into a puddle! But other than that it was very pleasant for both me and my travel companion.
Yet another day I ended up in Rhode Island under the threat of imminent rain. This time around there was a 30% chance and I was willing to take those odds. My travel companion chose a cemetery that has a bunch of completely made up folklore because that was a little different than anything else we have done…
We’d already been to the grave of Mercy Brown, Rhode Island’s last vampire, and it was Mercy Brown who was the inadvertent cause of confusion in the this completely different cemetery. The story suggests that a teacher in the 1960’s told his students about Mercy Brown but his details were vague and he didn’t have her name so the students went out in search of the vampire’s grave with only the scant details they did know – and they decided at some point that the grave of Nellie Louise Vaughn must be the vampire. Nellie died in 1889 from pneumonia at the tender age of nineteen. She was not a vampire or even a victim of tuberculosis (which is where most of our vampires are from.) In fact she was an innocent bystander to the chaos that ensued.
All small towns have their urban legends and this is usually how they start – with a dusting of truth, a lot of mistaken details, and the whole story getting increasingly twisted as it’s told generation to generation. In time local teenagers believed so strongly that Nellie was their hometown vampire that her gravesite became a bit of a tourist attraction and with that came the inevitable vandalism that occurred as pieces of her stone were chipped away as souvenirs. From there stories about satanic worship began being circulated until someone took the stone away completely. Was it stolen? Or were respectable townspeople the culprit, having taken the stone to preserve it? No one knows. But not long after her story got even more colorful as the appearance of a ghostly woman and white showed up not long after. Now, is this a true haunting or just a bunch of hilarious hogwash, I don’t know. What I do know is I ended up in this cemetery and it had a lot more charm than it would seem.
First off this place was a bit of a nightmare to find. My GPS for some reason did not register the address at all and my navigator, using his phone, kept falling asleep on me. This eventually resulted in the poor Prius driving down what looked like an unpaved camp road that ended in signs reading, “Dead End. Private Property. All trespassers will be shot.” Which is always fun. From there I got to practice my 300 point turn on a narrow wooded lane until I got my way out of there.
The cemetery itself is at a church that is easy to spot on the corner. It doesn’t look like a functional church but there is a plaque out front telling the history of the area. We weren’t the only ones there. We parked, wandered into the cemetery as the other people in the parking lot watched us freaks. I began to take photos of cool stones and the many adorable mushrooms that were blooming as my travel companion tried to find Nellie’s absent stone. He wasn’t having any luck but I was finding all kinds of interesting things.
One of many Tillinghasts
The cemetery looked ordinary from the outside but it had a few unusual quirks. For one it was still in working order – here smattered randomly throughout were modern burials, probably laid to rest next to their ancestors. This graveyard was chock full of Tillanghasts. This is a name I have never met anyone by even having lived in New England for my entire life. It made me wonder if they had gone extinct in the area. It made my travel companion wonder if HP Lovecraft was wandering cemeteries and taking the names off the stones for his characters – which included not just Tillinghast but a number of others here – and as I would later learn he once “haunted the town in his infancy.” It’s an odd thought but it makes sense. Stephen King has openly admitted to both wandering cemeteries and using the names as inspiration so why wouldn’t his horror writer predecessors?
In addition to this there were stones with poems and histories on them – even one of a civil war soldier who was shot and summarily drowned trying to make an escape by swimming. Many of the monuments here were historically speaking enormous – and in these older cemeteries this is a signifier of wealth. But that wasn’t the only clue these people were loaded, there were also Masonic symbols everywhere, and the most alarming thing were their ages at death. Many here died in their 80’s as far back as the early 1800’s and one was even 101! I have found through my travels that life expectancy is a super flimsy thing – it only seems to apply to the lower classes. These upper classes always had the resources to live very long lives.
And then I found a modern stone with a very sweet sentiment on it. It read, “Life is like a painting. It started with my brush and I have filled my canvas with love.” I usually don’t bother to stop for modern stones but that one touched me. This was a small cemetery but we’d made three trips around it finding one cool thing after another before we finally found dear Nellie who was positioned in the dead center just in front of the crypt which had pentagrams and god knows what else scratched into it – likely by clueless teenagers needing a thrill. We knew it was her because other more respectful individuals had left coins and trinkets – as did we. Leaving pennies is usually reserved for historical figures and a 19 year old farm girl from the 1800’s is not exactly the kind of person who’d fit this category but through the power of urban legend she is now. And I hope she’s enjoying it.
As for it being haunted – I don’t know. I didn’t feel anything weird but several of my photos do have an odd haze over them. I thought it was the sun but one of these photos was taken in the opposite direction as the sun and I… just don’t have an answer for that. Just as the people in the parking lot didn’t have an answer about us – having watched us poke around for an hour they left when they saw us leaving. Protective locals? I don’t know. In any event it was an interesting little jaunt. As always I learned a little something and I hope you have too in reading this.
