Esoteric Order of Dagon Conclave in Ohio

Exhibit INS002 - The Loveland Frog (image by author)

The people of the pleasant little town of Loveland Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, are gathering together this weekend to celebrate the infamous Loveland Frog. In 1955, in the midst of a larger wave of sightings of odd humanoids, three misshapen "troll" like beings (labeled as such by Loren Coleman in his Mothman and Other Curious Encounters were sighted carrying odd equipment that gave off electric sparks. Further down the Ohio River in Indiana, one of these encounters involved a swimmer grabbed by a claw-like-hand from underwater, leaving a green stain on her leg. In 1972, in two separate incidents police officers saw, and in one case fired upon, a four foot tall frog like humanoid. In the time since then, one of the officers has said he only saw (and fired upon) an iguana.

This is a drawing made by the sister of one of the officers in 1972, based on his description


Frog people, using strange devices? Robert Olmstead, the famed visitor to Innsmouth in 1927, was a resident and student in Ohio. The Marsh family sent a relative, Olmstead's grandmother, to Ohio in 1884. Robert Olmstead's cousin Lawrence was kept in an asylum in Canton, Ohio. Robert Olmstead decided to free his cousin and journey with him to Innsmouth, and then to Y'ha-nthlei. But what if they never made it? Perhaps the escape went badly, or the pair decided the waters of Ohio and the Great lakes were sufficient. Or perhaps these are simply blood relatives?

I visited Loveland two years ago, and did not have any time to really look around. But I did get some pictures of the area in which one of the 1972 sightings, the one depicted in the sketch above, occurred.

The area of the sighting, on Riverside Avenue


While perhaps ideal for a frog-fish-man, no sign of one here

Cannibalism in earliest Britain - The Real "Rats in the Walls?"

Cheddar Gorge at the turn of the 20th century
Image LC-DIG-ppmsc-08150 from the United States Library of Congress (Wikicommons)

Exhibit EXH001: The Gough's and Kent's Cave Bones


Recent study of disparate bits of hitherto unrelated knowledge have suggested some deep roots for the repellent behavior of the Delapores of Exham Priory, as chronicled in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls."

Anthropological testing of bones from Gough's Cave, in Cheddar Gorge, United Kingdom, have revealed some startling information about some of the earliest settlers of Britain after the glaciers started to recede. As reported in The Guardian, a battery of new tests and procedures suggest that immediately after a rapid warming in temperatures 14,700 years ago, Gough's Cave was inhabited by humans. The precision of dating the settlement derives from a new method for filtering carbon samples for radiometric dating, one primarily suited for bones as it isolates collagen.

Some of these humans were butchered intensively, stone tools used in a manner identical to the techniques used to butcher animals, and dumped in a pit. While the numbers are small and do not suggest a large-scale practice, and there is no evidence of violent death, the intensive processing methods are striking.

"They were stripping off all of the muscle mass. Brains seemed to have been removed. Tongues seemed to have been removed. And it is also possible that eyes were being removed. It was very systematic work"

It should be noted that this processing is not a guarantee of cannibalism, as the evidence only speaks to the intensive removal of flesh and marrow in a manner equivalent to animals assumed to be used for food.

Map of sites mentioned in the text. In addition, three other locations are noted. S. T. Joshi (1997) suggests that Alchester may have inspired Anchester, the general area of Exham Priory, while Hexham Priory in the north may have inspired the name of the place itself. Piltdown is referenced in the story in relation to the hominid remains found under the Priory.

It is notable that Cheddar Gorge is not very far from some other points of interest in regards to "The Rats in the Walls." Roman history is part of the de la Poer heritage, and while he made an error in the number of the legion stationed there, Lovecraft was clearly inspired by the Roman camp at Isca Silurum in Wales, a site that fascinated him. In 1923, the year "Rats" was written, Lovecraft had read about the place and fantasized of it, as demonstrated in a letter in May of that year to Frank Belknap Long (HPL letter to Frank Belknap Long, May 13, 1923, Published in Lovecraft 1965: 228) (he would write of it in a similar manner in other letters through the years). The inspiration by Isca Silurum with the invocation of the Cymric (Welsh) language suggests that the general area near the Wales/England boundary isn't a bad place to place Exham Priory.

Just to the south of Cheddar Gorge, another interesting piece of the Exham Priory puzzle can be found at Glastonbury. Though I am not aware of any evidence that Lovecraft was familiar with it, in 1919 Frederick Bligh Bond published The Gate of Remembrance (intriguingly, the New York Times did not get around reviewing it until January 1923, the same year Lovecraft wrote "Rats")(New York Times, January 14, 1923). In it, Bond discusses his employment of a psychic researcher in his excavations of Glastonbury Abbey a decade prior, similar to the presence of Thornton, a psychic investigator, in Delapore's party of explorers under Exham Priory. This revelation led swiftly to Bond's dismissal from Glastonbury, though I suppose this is not as harsh a fate as the committal to a mental institute suffered by Thornton.

Returning to Gough's Cave, the descendants of these early settlers would have not survived directly to the present, in Britain at least. Climate grew colder again with the onset of the Younger Dryas, sending the North Atlantic back into a glaciation for about a thousand years, before warmer and more familiar temperatures became the norm after 11,500 years ago. Britain was settled again, and once again the spectre of cannibalism would raise its head. In 1866, a human arm bone was excavated at Kent's Cave, Devon, amongst thousands of animal bones. Re-analysis of this bone in 2009 (as reported by the BBC) showed cut marks not unlike those from Gough's Cave. That said, cannibalism is a flashy topic, and taking a look at some of the promotional material from the Cheddar Gorge museum might give us pause before jumping to conclusions.

Similar sensationalism has been invoked in historical discussion of another tale of British cannibalism, this one much more recent, the infamous case of Sawney Bean. Like the de la Poers in "The Rats in the Walls," the Bean clan supposedly lived in a cave (since the nineteenth century associated with Bennane Cave) and ate hundreds or thousands of victims, leaving behind a vast subterranean bone bed. In both cases, this reign of terror came to an end during the reign of King James I, a monarch so obsessed with witchcraft that he became personally involved in witch hunts and wrote Daemonologie, a manual for hunters. The reality of the Bean legend is not entirely clear, and it has been suggested it may have been nothing more than a print media hoax of the eighteenth century (read original text here) based on earlier tales.

Such tales are alive and well today, though more often associated with paranormal folklore and tourism. Nicholas Redfern in his "gonzo" Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men includes relict (or time traveling) cave men and savages amongst the various terrors encountered or alleged during his journey up and down Britain in search of the strange. More than one reviewer has suggested (with a mix of praise and disdain) Redfern and his traveling companions resemble a punk version of Lovecraft's seekers of "strange horrors," and indeed the book plays with a mythology of (somewhat New Age-tinged) extradimensional old ones who can be found in forgotten places by those who disturb what should be left alone. Likewise, the tale of Sawney Bean appears to be a staple of the Edinburgh paranormal tourism industry (a development not approved by all).

Works cited above

Bond, Frederick Bligh (script by John Alleyne)
1921 The Gate of Remembrance: The Story of the Psychological Experiment which Resulted in the Discovery of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbury. Fourth Edition. E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. Source Google Books.

King James the First (edited by G. B. Harrison)
1922 - 1926 Daemonologie [1597] and Newes from Scotland [1591] From the series Bodley Head Quartos published by John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd. Source Sacred Texts

Joshi, S. T. (ed.)
1997 The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft, annotated by S. T. Joshi. Dell, New York.

Lovecraft, Howard Phillips
1965 Selected Letters: 1911 – 1924. Volume I. Edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin.

Redfern, Nick
2004 Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men. Paraview Pocket Books. New York.

The Case of Claire Nolan

Exhibit WIT001 - Portrait of Dame Alice Kyteler (images at links below)

Author has "uncanny" resemblance to unrelated hypothetical portrait of the subject of her relatively obscure book. This wouldn't be terribly interesting, except that the subject, Dame Alice Kyteler, was accused of witchcraft, including the poisoning of three husbands.

Someone please direct Ms. Nolan to "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," ASAP.

John Dee's Aztec Scrying Mirror

Exhibit NEC001: John Dee's Speculum. (on loan from the British Museum).

The parent institution for the item, the British Museum, has images for perusal.

Dr. John Dee was many things, including court astrologer for Elizabeth I, scholar, bibliophile, possible intelligence agent, and most importantly for our purposes, translator of the Necronomicon, the "book of dead names" or the "book of the dead." Amongst the various items he used to aid his magical research was an obsidian mirror. Brought over from Mexico not long after the initial Spanish Conquest, Dee used the mirror to communicate with spirits.

Maybe.

All of this information comes from Sir Horace Walpole, 4th Early of Orford and credited as a major originator of the horror tale and the Gothic tradition. Walpole obtained the mirror in 1771, over 160 years after Dee had died.

If it was Dee's, the idea of using it for magic is not that far-fetched. Not only does the mirror have sorcerous associations in Europe, it was tied to supernaturals in Mesoamerica (the supposed source of the obsidian and the mirror). Most commonly associated with the dark Aztec sorcerer Tezcatlipoca, the mirror has deeper time depth than the Aztecs. The Classic Maya analog for Tezcatlipoca, K'awil, regularly has it associated with images of him, to the point that one way to write his name is mostly a hieroglyph of a mirror. Older mirrors are found in association with Olmec ritual deposits.

Dee's possible Aztec mirror was not the only prized item to come across the Atlantic in the sixteenth century. Aztec featherwork best survives from royal gifts that ended up in the curiosity cabinets and musems of Europe, and Cortes sent back a ballgame team to entertain the Spanish royal court. However, the infamous crystal skulls were likely 19th century hoaxes, and not examples of early transatlantic cultural transfer. We do not know how Dee would have acquired a prized magic mirror from a Spanish colony, so one might as well throw in suggestions of pirates and privateers like Sir Francis Drake. Why not?

The Taos Hum and "The Transition of Juan Romero"

Exhibit AUD001: Recording about the Taos Hum

It is generally agreed that discussion and naming of the "Taos Hum," a low-frequency sound many have claimed to hear in and around Taos, New Mexico, dates to the 1980s. Since popularization of the Taos Hum, other hums have been suggested around the globe. The Taos Hum has been blamed on any number of culprits, though a persistent one ties it to Dulce and the legends of a secret military and/or extraterrestrial underground base.

But while the story of the Taos Hum may not be that old, it bears a striking resemblance to the central feature of one of H. P. Lovecraft's earliest stories, "The Transition of Juan Romero," written in 1919 though not published until the 1940s.

Specifically in the story, the secret of a mysterious lineage comes to a head after the dynamiting of a mine in the Southwestern United States, probably Arizona, in 1894. Soon afterwards, a low rumbling sound emerges from the abysses opened by the explosion. Lovecraft writes

"It was Romero’s voice, coming from the bunk above, that awakened me, a voice excited and tense with some vague expectation I could not understand:

"Madre de Dios! - el sonido - ese sonido - oiga Vd! - lo oye Vd? - señor, THAT SOUND!"

I listened, wondering what sound he meant. The coyote, the dog, the storm, all were audible; the last named now gaining ascendancy as the wind shrieked more and more frantically. Flashes of lightning were visible through the bunk-house window. I questioned the nervous Mexican, repeating the sounds I had heard:

"El coyote - el perro - el viento?"

But Romero did not reply. Then he commenced whispering as in awe:

"El ritmo, señor - el ritmo de la tierra - THAT THROB DOWN IN THE GROUND!"

And now I also heard; heard and shivered and without knowing why. Deep, deep, below me was a sound - a rhythm, just as the peon had said - which, though exceedingly faint, yet dominated even the dog, the coyote, and the increasing tempest. To seek to describe it was useless - for it was such that no description is possible. Perhaps it was like the pulsing of the engines far down in a great liner, as sensed from the deck, yet it was not so mechanical; not so devoid of the element of the life and consciousness. Of all its qualities, remoteness in the earth most impressed me."

Things only get worse from there.

A mechanical sound, emanating from deep underground, in the American Southwest, and as noted in the story, tied into occult traditions?

That's the Taos Hum.

The Fairie Cursed Goblet in H.P. Lovecraft's Family

Exhibit HPL001: The Luck of Eden Hall

Much is made of H. P. Lovecraft's ardent materialist skepticism and atheism. It was a defining element for the man. Personally, one of the great "what if's" of Lovecraft's life, in my opinion, revolves around the debunking book on superstition that Lovecraft was writing for Harry Houdini, an item we will perhaps return to in the future. But while Lovecraft may have rejected the supernatural, it doesn't mean he couldn't have a bit of magical lore in his family background.

In March 1934, Lovecraft wrote a letter to one of his regular correspondents Robert Barlow, who would go on to be an anthropologist of Mesoamerica, specializing in rare Nahuatl texts and Aztec hieroglyphic writing. In this letter, Lovecraft discusses his genealogy, including ties to the Musgrave family. While Lovecraft regularly discussed his genealogy (including jokingly producing Roman and other ancestors to satisfy his historical interests), in this case he went into the specifics of an unusual item associated with the Musgrave family: The Luck of Eden Hall. As Lovecraft put it himself:

“This is the legend of Eden Hall in Cumberland, seat of the family until quite recent times. It is given erroneously in a German poem by Uhland and thence paraphrased in a verse of Longfellow’s – but the original version of the tale is as follows: A drinking-glass was stolen by a Musgrave from the fairies, who thereafter made futile attempts to recover it. In the end, the fairies pronounced the following prophecy – indicating that disaster would overtake the house of Musgrave unless the glass was kept intact:

‘If the glass either break or fall
Farewell to the luck of Eden Hall’

In the family there actually existed an old glass, supposed to be the one of the legend, which was guarded with the most extreme care. Upon the breaking up of the estate and the sale of Eden Hall after the World War, this glass was placed in the South Kensington Museum, London. I hope no one will smash it, since that would doubtless bring me some sort of evil through my Musgrave side!”

Selected Letters: 1932 – 1934. Volume IV. Edited by August Derleth and James Turner. Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin p. 392, Letter 692

More extensive versions of the story note that the cup was found by one or more humans, possibly by a servant, who disturbed a group of fairies partying near a well. As the fairies fled, one of them (in at least one version, the Queen of the Fairies) uttered the curse.

The drawing at the top of the page appeared in the Halloween entry of Chamber's Book of Days (1869)

While not an actual magical fairie cup, the Luck of Eden Hall nonetheless has an impressive pedigree. In reality the cup is an ornate gilded and enameled drinking cup made in Syria in the thirteenth century. It seems to have left the Middle East not long after that date, as a custom case was made for it, likely in fourteenth-century France. While the manner in which it reached England is uncertain, returning participants in one of the later Crusades seems a possible option. It is not the only legend of a fairie cup, nor the only supposedly fairie item, ranging from elaborate luxury goods to "elfshot" interpretations for prehistoric projectile points.

It was clearly very carefully curated, only brought out of its case for special occasions, though there are family accounts of ancestors throwing it into the air as if to tempt fate. It can be traced back in the Musgrave family to at least a published mention of it in 1791.

While the Hall was demolished in 1934, the cup exists intact to this day in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The cup was loaned to the museum in 1926, and would later become a permanent part of the museum collection in 1956.

You can learn more about the Luck, as well as see recent color photographic images, at the Victoria & Albert Museum page on the Luck. A modern Musgrave discusses the legend here.