VI - Necrophobia: The Fear of the Dead

“Among primitive peoples, the surrounding air is thought to be inhabited by the souls of the departed. Especially in the cases of those who have died of disease or of violence is placation necessary to safeguard the living and protect them against the vengeance of the tomb. The advance in knowledge did little to modify this primitive fear of death and new bogies developed to replace outworn superstitions and discarded beliefs. The Middle Ages were obsessed with worms and grinning skulls, with were-wolves and ghouls, vampires (the living dead who can be slain only by a nail driven through the heart), ghosts, witches, and all the other paraphernalia of medieval magic. We have not yet outgrown all these beliefs. Many superstitions linger on, although we may have forgotten the significance of the homage we unconsciously pay them. Thus we place tombstones over the graves of our dead – to prevent their return to haunt us; and should they escape, the funeral wreath is there to trip their steps.

“There is a fascination and horror connected with death that few, if any of us ever escape. Corpses exert a powerful attraction over hundreds who have no direct connection with the dead. They come to ‘view the remains’. The morgue is constantly visited by people who have no legitimate business there. In a few, this universal morbidity is exaggerated to the point where perversity supervenes. An unholy love is mixed with the necrophobiac’s fear of the dead – a wild desire, but one step removed from madness, to possess the unspeakable corruption that inspires his abject terror, and so to lose himself in the horror and stillness of death.”

John Vassos

New York City

May 25^th 1931

All Things Dyatlov...

I have a friend whose been hung up on the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Incident for about eighteen months now and who has been badgering me to look into it. Frankly the misadventures of a bunch of unfortunate trekkers has not held any appeal for me but, when my friend pushed yet another self-published work on the event at me I decided – merely in the interests of stopping this from happening again – to borrow the thing and look at it and its “new revelations”.

McCLOSKEY, Keith, Journey to Dyatlov Pass – An Explanation of the Mystery, The Author, 2016.

Octavo; paperback; 231pp., with many (blurry) photographic illustrations. Mild wear. Near fine.

The author of this book is the dogged Keith McCloskey, a Brit with the usual sentimental hang-up which pervades all things surrounding the Incident – that the group was too young and attractive for such a horrible thing to have happened – underlain with a solid set of investigatory skills and a surprisingly open mind. His website kicks off with maudlin testimonies to the dead with photographs and images of the memorials that have been erected to them, then gets straight into the hard facts before letting the weirdos in to have their two-cent’s worth – the MUFON aficionados, the ex-priests who know a demonic event when they see one, and the Yeti-trackers. That he gives these idiots even half the air-time he does is indicative of a considerable generosity of spirit.

From my perspective, what intrigues people about this event, is that it consists of a large series of clues which cannot be encompassed by a single theory about what took place; no matter what kind of box you find to put all the pieces in, some of them simply will not be accommodated. In this sense, the whole story is reminiscent of a modern-day Marie Celeste – there too, the mystery won’t be comfortably explained by any single theory. Added to this the fact that all the victims were young, fit, healthy and attractive, there is a cachet of Life being no fair considerer of its victims’ potentials. Unlike the Marie Celeste, however, in the aftermath of the Dyatlov Incident, there was a considerable amount of intrusion by high-level Communist Party activity and, to this day, ex-KGB sources insist on meeting every query with a stolid “no comment”. Thus, we may not know for sure what was going down on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl on the night of the 1^st and 2^nd of February 1959, but we can rest assured that there was a very human explanation for it all.

What does interest me about the event are the number of clues and how they work against each other in trying to find resolution. There are features which are hard to explain – the woman Luda’s missing tongue for example – and others which have several interpretations – like the group’s tracks from the tent down to the tree line. McCloskey is clear about dismissing the tongue as a deliberate falsehood in the autopsy report (and, since this is the fact that almost everybody latches onto with ghoulish glee, has been howled down for his opinion); the tracks, in the “Methanol Poisoning” scenario show blinded victims attempting to make their way downhill with some members straying a little to either side, or else they show a standard trekking practise for breaking a trail through fresh snow. The injuries displayed by the bodies are wildly interpreted to show everything from fights erupting within the group, to some kind of massive shockwave exposure. Again, because we know the autopsy reports are dodgy and that there was some kind of military cover-up in place, we’ll never know for sure.

From the point of view of writing a mystery story, or a “Call of Cthulhu” scenario, the incidents at Dyatlov Pass are an interesting case of how to go about establishing an event where something mysterious has taken place and where outside agencies are keen to keep things hush-hush. Imagine if this was a secret meeting between the Russian military and the Mi-Go – there are all kinds of clues that such a rationale could encompass, from missing organs, to shockwave weaponry, to why a bunch of well-trained, even battle-hardened, individuals would run screaming into the night without their shoes on. I’m not saying that the Fungi from Yuggoth were there that night, but it would be an interesting, “X-Files”-y way of interpreting the facts.

I’m fairly sure that we’ll never know what happened that night – unless some senior FSG figure has a sudden fit of conscience – but we can rest assured that it involved nothing but human error and human mendacity. Keith McCloskey is also pretty sure that that’s the case too, and you can find his thoughts (as well as those of the idiot fringe) here at his website:

www.dyatlov-pass-incident.com

For my money there’s not a better introduction to the Pass and its pervasive secrecy. And it’s probably a better guide than the Rennie Harlin movie...

Review: Dolly

HILL, Susan, Dolly – A Ghost Story, Profile Books Ltd., London, 2013.

Octavo; paperback; 153pp. Minor wear. Very good to near fine.

Now this is more like it.

Having read a few of Susan Hill’s ghost stories by this stage, the M.R. James pastiche was starting to wear a little thin. In this novel, it’s the first time that I’ve had the sense that she’s moving beyond a text-book imitation of the Jamesian mode and has struck out to make the form truly her own. Let me be clear and state up front that I haven’t as yet read The Woman In Black (or seen the film), the story for which she is best known – I have decided to leave it until last, although, if it’s as good as everyone claims it is, I may just kick myself for having taken this option.

Dolly concerns two cousins, whose mothers hated each other intensely. Edward and Leonora are brought together one summer by their mothers’ elder sister after Edward’s parents die. Edward is a careful and thoughtful child, keen to make no mistakes, or trouble, while visiting his aunt; Leonora, on the other hand, is a spoilt brat, proud and determined to have her own way at all costs. The summer they spend together is highlighted by the Aunt’s attempt to make up for Leonora’s mother’s thoughtlessness by buying her the doll her mother always promises to buy her but never does. Unfortunately, the doll that is presented is not the dream doll that Leonora has concocted in her mind: she smashes it in fury and wins her Aunt’s instant enmity. Edward is left to gather the broken pieces and he buries the doll in the nearby churchyard.

Many years later the two are brought together by the terms of their Aunt’s will: they are older but their characters are even more firmly entrenched – Edward still sensitive and insightful; Leonora more spiteful and greedy. This is highlighted when the will is read and Edward gains all of his Aunt’s estate and Leonora is left only the ruined doll which she rejected – if she can find it. After all the screaming is over, Edward digs up the doll and, together, he and Leonora clean it off, only to discover that is has grown old under the earth, becoming a haggard baby-doll of evil aspect. Then the fun really starts.

This is no “Child’s Play” story; no murderous Chucky dolls go gunning for the main characters in the final act. Rather, the chills are more subtle. The doll becomes a harbinger of the doom that awaits the one who wreaks the physical and psychic damage upon it. The distorted features of the buried doll are a signifier for the cruel fate that befalls Leonora (and for which she is entirely the author). However, Edward has also had a hand in generating the animus of the doll and he too, suffers at the hands of Leonora’s petulance and pride.

Obviously, I’m trying to avoid spoilers here, but I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that the doll is the focus of the haunting in this tale. Like many people, I find old porcelain dolls incredibly creepy, so I deliberately waited for a bright sunny day to read this tale. Interestingly, the scariest thing about the story is the repeated motif of rustling paper, as the doll seems to move within its tissue shroud, inside its coffin-like cardboard box. Edward hears this sound at various points in his life and it always signals a fresh fright’s appearance.

In contrast to the other books of Hill’s which I’ve read, the writing style of this work is crisp and spare. Hill’s other books have often partaken of the Edwardian hue of James’s stories, sunk in their sleepy Oxbridge somnolence; this has a darker and a slicker feel. Set in the fen country of east England, there’s a freshness to this story which makes it stand alone as a work by Hill and not simply an homage. The only other works I’ve read which were set in the fens are, on the one hand, Prince Valiant’s early years and, on the other, Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Nine Tailors, (going from the ridiculous to the sublime) both of which gained added interest and lustre for also being established in this unusual setting. Dolly gets an extra note of creepiness for being set here too, and Hill lets it do a lot of the heavy lifting for her.

Ghost stories tend to tread a path of vengeance, in that the haunting entity usually arises out of a sense of thwarted ambition, or justice denied. In this tale there’s plenty of just desserts heaped on the guilty parties at the end which makes for a very satisfying conclusion. Some readers may be put off by the unanswered questions of “How?” and “Why?”, but in the best tradition of James and his ilk, Hill is not here to spell things out – however, her implications in this narrative are a lot clearer than have been the case in some of her earlier efforts.

This is a great read and I heartily recommend it. Four Tentacled Horrors from me.

Rip It & Run! Character Images 2...

Awhile ago I posted a bunch of images here as inspiration for characters or NPCs. These were culled from the second-hand knitting patterns which we sell at the shop where I work and proved that you can get character inspiration from just about anywhere. Anyway, I was tidying-up the patterns the other day and discovered a bunch more had been added to the stock.

I quickly sorted through them and grabbed all the ones that seemed appropriate - these are the ones that date from the '30s through to the end of the '40s (there are many patterns there for designs from the '80s, but I'm not into that kind of horror...). Sadly, there was only one pattern for women's wear, so I ended up with a stack of mainly blokes, but never mind.

Here's a likely lad. You can picture him driving back a throng of ghouls, right?

And a tennis racquet's just the thing when you're dealing with the Brood of Eihort!

And this guy? Goodie? Baddie? It could go either way...

(And those quick to notice will realise that this is the same fellow in the picture at the top of this post, so that's extra bang for your buck!)

Sadly, this guy won't see the end of the adventure. These stolid, trusting types never seem to last long...

"You're not going to try and infiltrate the cult in that knitted vest, are you?"

Finally, a couple of dependable lasses who probably know how to mix a handy Molotov Cocktail...

I've said it before, inspiration for Call of Cthulhu characters - both player and non-player - can come from all kinds of places...

V - Ylophobia: The Fear of the Forest

“This is a phobia that occurs very rarely. Forests are no longer numerous, our feet travel no sylvan paths, and instances of the morbid fear of the grove are seldom found. But there do exist persons to whom the forest is still a shrine of terror. The great trees of the woods, which the Freudians look upon as phallic symbols, can be strangely human creatures to the ylophobiac – creatures that can reach out with root and branch to seize and destroy him. Not the noble pillars of a living glorification, but stalwart potencies that may hang, maim, crush, rend, suck, and overwhelm him. Unutterable evils lurk within their sprawling tentacles, dread things are poised to drop from their branches. They exude vapours that drive him mad. They blot out the blessed security of the open heavens.

“It is not always the forest that the ylophobiac fears. It may be a lone tree that stirs his terror, a tree on his own property, as commonplace as the very walls of his house. But he cannot endure its insidious suggestion and sooner or later will have it destroyed, however beautiful it may be. In the autumn, the familiar maple on the lawn, stripped of its concealing leaves, takes on strange shapes in the moonlight and whispers to the troubled soul of surcease from its agonies at the end of a dangling rope.”

John Vassos

New York City

May 25^th, 1931.