Entry 13: A Rough Draft

Hey again everyone.
So I found something kind of cool on the back of the last few letters I posted. Seems Thom liked to reuse old papers for his writing. This is a draft of a pamphlet he was writing for an exhibit on the Emmett Townsend Lighthouse Library. I did a little research and found out that lighthouse libraries were portable cupboards containing a selection of books that supply ships would bring to the lighthouse keepers along with the other monthly provisions. Considering how lonely and boring the life of a keeper and his family was, these regular arrivals of new literature were quite the cause for celebration.

Here's a more detailed description from Atlas Obscura.

Emmett Townsend, a veteran of the Coast Guard, was the founder of Grenhaven University.  Thom gives a brief summary of his life, but if you'd like to know more, there's a great thorough biography called Ever Watching the Horizon by Katherine Whig.

I haven't been able to locate the Townsend Lighthouse Library yet. Which is a shame, because it sounds really cool. I'll see if any of the curators at the museum know where it went to. Maybe it's in that big storage barn out by Rock Marsh Road.

Here's a transcript:

TOWNSEND’S LIGHTHOUSE LIBRARIES DRAFT 3.4

ABOUT EMMETT TOWNSEND

Grenhaven University was originally created in 1867 thanks to an endowment from Emmett Townsend, a Coast Guard veteran. For twenty-eight years, Mr. Townsend was deployed in the Lighthouse Supply division. He would make an annual route traveling along the East Coast from Mount Desert Island, Maine all the way to Wiltonharbor, South Carolina, bringing supplies to lighthouse keepers and their families.

Along with regular supplies of cheese, salt, tools, blankets, fruit, vegetables, etc, Mr. Townsend would also bring each lighthouse family a “traveling library” in a large wooden chest or case. Multiple portable libraries were distributed all along the lighthouses of the East Coast. With each arrival, Captain Townsend would bring a new collection of books and transport the previous one down the line to the next light. The arrival of a new set of books was always a great delight to the lighthouse keepers and their families, who were often isolated for months at a time at their post. .

ABOUT THE TOWNSEND-SANDERSON-BEECH LIGHTHOUSE LIBRARRY

This is one of the original traveling libraries that Emmett Townsend transported. Pulled from the wreckage of the Little Egg Light in 1886, it was kept for several decades in the attic of Samuel Theodore Sanderson, a retired shipwright and amateur botanist from Tuckerton, New Jersey.

In 1927, Mr. Sanderson gifted the Travelinge Library as a wedding present to his daughter Abigail Beech, a mathematician and amateur paleontologist. In 1956, Mrs. Beech generously donated the Traveling Library and it’s collection of books to Grenhaven University.

The Townsend-Sanderson-Beech Lighthouse Library Display is located in the Wesley Hackmann Reading Room in the Science Library of The Merryweather Ulsten Graduate Library, 4th Floor.

Books found in the Townsend-Sanderson-Beech Lighthouse Library are:

Tom Thumb’s Picture Alphabet illustrated by J.G. Chapman

vols. I-III of The Mammals of Australia written and illustrated by John Gould

Collected Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne

On the Origin of the Giant Arctic Ctenophora and their Carnivorous Reputation among the Greenlandic Natives by R. Nesmith and J.F. Collins

The Life of Our Lord by Charlces Dickens

Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes

Back o’ Cairns: The Story of Gold Prospecting in the Far North by Ion Idriess

Drums of Mer by Ion Idriess

Isle of Despair by Ion Idriess

The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent by Washington Irving

The Water Babies, A Fairy Tale for A Land Baby by Reverend Charles Kingsley

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

The City in the Stars, and What My Mother Saw There by Desmond Oarrick (a pseudonym of Tulip J.R. Orland)

The Shadow-Men and the Star-Watcher: A Penny Dreadful by Desmond Oarrick

The Tree of Many Hands by Desmond Oarrick

The Clockwork Ants, A Journey Amongst the Stars by Margaret J.S. Orland

The Dream-Walker, or The Five-Faced Star-Man by Margaret J.S. Orland

Loves Virtue Rewarded by Margeret J.S. Orland

Ten Against A Hundred by Margaret J.S. Orland

The Clockwork Fish, a Second Journey Amongst the Stars by Tulip J.R. Orland

Oliver Twiss, The Workhouse Boy. Edited by Pos. (a penny dreadful piracy of Dickens’ more famous work)

Nickelas Nicklebery. Edited by Pos. (another penny dreadful piracy)

The Mysteries of London by George  W. M. Reynolds

The String of Pearls: A Romance by James Lamcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest

Ivanhoe: A Romance by Sir Walter Scott

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

Maurice, or The Fisher’s Cot by Mary Shelley

The Bannik of the Bath-house by Carl Wald Sumter and Alyosha Bok

The Callicantzaroi: A Christmas Ghost Story by Carl Wald Sumter

The Domovoi by Carl Wald Sumter and Alyosha Bok

Diarmuid O’Connell and the Fachan by Carl Wald Sumter

Diarmuid O’Connell and Shellycoats by Carl Wald Sumter

The Lutins of Versailles by Carl Wald Sumter

The Salvanelli, or the Sunlight Dancing in the Mirror by Carl Wald Sumter

Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (Picture Book of A Hundred Stories) by Takehara Shunsen (in Japanese). Inside front cover has a handwritten note: “To Raymond, Eliza, Katie and Little Greg, Thank you all for keeping me in my wits these long years. With deepest love and affections, Captain Emmet Townsend”)

Beyond the Walls of Ys, or The Merovingian by Selwyn Middleton

A Brief History of the Hatters of Danbury, Connecticut by Sebastian Nells

Natural History of the Beaver, With Notes on the Use of Its Pelt for Felted Hats by Sebastian Nells. Inside front cover has a handwritten note: “To Emmett. Thout(sic) you’d enjoy this. Sebastian”

The Boneless Black Worm: A Collection of Sightings of the Connecticut River Beast by S.A. Pierce and Sebastian Nells

Connecticut Folktales by S.A. Pierce

A Short History of Boston Corners by S.A. Pierce

Ghosts of Boston Corners by S.A. Pierce

The Machine-Man and the Ghosts by S.A. Pierce

Return to the Isles of White Serpents by Emmet Townsend and Margaret J.S. Orland

The Shape in the Cupola by Margaret J.S.Orland

A Proper Lady’s Guide to Crochet and Tatting by Millicent Waites

A Proper Lady’s Guide to Decoupage by Millicent Waites

A Proper Lady’s Book of Antimacassar Patterns by Millicent Waites

A Treasury of Colonial American Cloisonné and Decoupage Designs by Millicent Waites

The Sleeping Stones by Armitage Wolstein

The City Under the Lake by Armitage Wolstein

For photostat facsimiles of any of these books, please consult the librarian on duty at the front desk.   .

Note: Six publications have not been included with this display. These are slim folios formed of several sheets of folded paper featuring letters and drawingss authored by a young Katherine Whig, daughter of Raymond and Eliza Whig, who tended the Silas Bay lighthouse in Connecticut. Both documents can be found in the Katherine Whig Special Collections in the Rare Books, Manuscripts and Palimpsests Department.

Special Rare Books Permission is required to view these folios. Please see a librarian to obtain the necessary forms. To preserve the quality of these delicate manuscripts, no photostat copying is allowed.

The six excluded publications are:

Gregory the Sea Gull and his Friends in the Sea of Apple and Orange Fish

The Man of Five Faces and the Road of Light Through the Land of Dark

Miles the Otter and his Friends on the Road of Light

Things I Have Found in the Tide Pools

Things I Have Found in the Woods

What Captain Townsend Saw in the Night Sea

This document was written and edited by Thomas Moorse

Entry 12: Some more neat drawings

Hey everyone. Busy day at the lab today. Thought I'd unwind by posting some more cool drawings from Thom's folders.

Here are some sketches of those walking echinoderm creatures he's been talking about. He's drawn these before, but these sketches are a little more detailed.

Text next to the walking starfish on the top:

"This starfish appeared to be a mobile transport for a colony of edrioaster-like beings. I believe they were sentient, for they seemed to interact with each other via waves of their tube-feet and flickers of prismatic cilia. I don't know if the transport-starfish was intelligent or merely a beast of burden."

Text concerning the walking brittlestar on the bottom:

"The central body has light-sensitive plates that together function as a single giant eye."

"Many of the starfish-beings I have met have these 'compound eyes'. "

"This one I believe to be part of a 'worker' group. Though I don't know if they have castes like ants, or if they are more mobile socially."

Here's a drawing about the walking urchins and those weird organic helicoplacoid-like data-storage devices he mentioned.

Text on top:

"Another denizen of the city. A walking sea urchin. I believe it is sentient."

"The sentient urchin seas (sic) through its tube feet. Each tube foot is a simple eye."

"The being walks on elongated spines on its underside."

Text on the bottom referring to the helicoplacoids:

"I saw a vast meadow of these structures. The Astarapomp told me these are the one of the libraries of his people. These beings hold the knowledge of each world within them."

"I saw many of the balloon weeds growing amongst them."

"They resemble helicoplacoids. Is it convergent evolution?"

Helicoplacoids, by the way, are an extinct group of spindle-shaped echinoderms from the Cambrian period. You can read more here.

Entry 11: A bizarre letter a cool drawing

Hey again everyone. Here's a new, especially weird letter from Thom. I'll just let you guys read it and make of it what you will. There's a pretty crazy adventure in here. I'm going to see if I can find any more descriptions of these interstellar journies somewhere in Professor Barnes' notes.
I've also included some pretty cool drawings that tie into Thom's letter.

Here's the transcript (I've left all the spelling errors intact):

"B-

God, have I really only been gone an hour? It’s still dark out. It felt like days!

So much in my head all at once. The stars. The green sunlight under the water. The Sleeper’s Eye. The walking urchins. The spiral-worm heiroglyphs (sic).  

Alright, I’ve had a bit to compose my thoughts. Let me start again.

 I saw a shadow at the window last night and feared it was a phantom, but no. The Astarapomp. He lifted me out of my body somehow- I saw myself sleeping in the bed still, under my feet. He brought me through the wall, to the hemlock forest and up to that strange gable fragment. He opened the doorway and showed me the building on the other side. It was a house. A hive. A colony. I don’t really know precisely what to call it. Some sort of dwelling. There were members of multiple species inside. Different taxonomic orders, even, if they are analogous to Earth echinoderms. It was its own ecosystem within. I could have spent months in there studying all the ecological interactions.

This time the Astarapomp took me directly to one of their worlds. There was no transfer through one of the great hubs. Or perhaps there was? There are holes in my memory. We were underwater. I could see fish swimming overhead. Or something like fish. I saw sunlight streaming down in crepuscular rays from the surface far overhead. The water was so green. 

The gabled building was only one small part of the city. There were more of those structures with the spiral patterns. And other buildings, too. The colonies were of shaped stone. Coral, I think. Possibly grown that way? But I also saw buildings that appeared to be formed from gigantic sponges in red and yellow. There were enormous tunicates, transparent and blue like glass vases. I saw other creatures moving inside them. More of the echinoderm creatures. And other things too. Giant worms. And there were beings that look almost human, yet still like seastars. Like the Astarapomp. There was a spiny thing that reminded me of a Chancelloria from Walcott’s Burgess Shale papers.

In the dwelling where he took me were brittlestars that ambled about on their arms, lifting their central bodies off the ground. I think they used the plates of their bodies to see, like the giant Watchers the send to other solar systems. I’d seen them before, briefly and at a distance, in the galactic hub he brought me to. But it was so much different seeing them up close like that.

The walking urchins. They were as big as my torso. Black. Red. Blue. They moved about on their spines. I think they use their tube feet to see. They were intelligent. I don’t know how I know that. Something in their movements seemed very precise. Deliberate. They seemed to exert some direct control over the brittlestars. Do these beings have some sort of hierarchy? Castes, even? Who rules them?

I saw their written language, though only briefly. They use worm tubes to form their sentences. Minute, filter-feeding creatures that secrete thin white tubes. I watched one of the brittlestars paint a dark blue fluid on a pale green translucent sheet- I think some sort of algae like Ulva? It sprinkled the naked worms on the sheet and when I saw it again a few hours- days? I don’t even know now. Anyway, when I saw it later, the worms had secreted their tubes along the blue trails. It seems their writing is tactile. Other brittlestars appeared to “read” the tubes by running their tube-feet over them. It seems like such an inefficient system. How do they take notes? Inventories? Perhaps this is only writing for more important works? Religious tracts? Ballads? What sort of ballad would a starfish write?

I’m sorry this is rather disjointed. There are just so many images in my head. I need to get them out before I lose them. I  may jsut (sic) dismiss it all asa (sic) dream if I don’t.

I’ll make some drawings to accompany this letter. Though I used up all my drawing paper on those sketches of the Natchez Trace. All I’ve got left is this draft of my Lighthouse Library.

The Astarapomp showed me one of their libraries. A meadow of bulbous, ochre-colored bulbs. Like cacti or spurges. No. Like those fossils Ellen showed us. The helicoplacoids. With the ambulatory grove ambulacral groove running around it. He told me all their knowledge is stored in these organisms. In the noncoding sections of of their genes.

I remember he said something about our genes. Human genes. and our noncoding sections. He told me that is where the phantoms come from. What could that possibly mean?

He said I would continue the work of Spears. I would finish the New Motive Power. I would open the gateway. But why me? And what will happen when I finish it? How will I even finish it? Wasn’t the original Machine God completely destroyed?

I just now remembered the whale. No, not a whale. That’s what I thought it was at first. It was shaped like a whale. Long, torpedo body. But there were no fins. It rowed with flaps running along its sides. There were feathery tentacles at the front. Gathering plankton from the water.

God, now I remember the Eye! The Astarapomp took me up to the surface of the world. It was night when we breached the surface. There were so many stars. And the great blue sphere on the horizon. He told me that was the “Jupiter” of their planetary system. That it drifted closer to their sun than our Jupiter. That it had brought in schools of comets from the outer darkness, to create a string of water worlds like this one throughout the inner system. He said there were at least six other worlds like this one. One of them was inhabited by flatworm-beings from that place that he called The Tide Pool of the Glass Echiura. Another one held cuboid oligochaetes and a species of giant, sentient bivalves from the Tide Pool of the Nemertea.

But the Eye itself! The center of the disk was so bright. Like a smaller sun. And the ring around it. Almost complete. Only fragmented in a few places. He has told me in the past that the echinoderm race seeks out systems where theseEyes are visible. Yet, who among their species can actually see them if they live below the water? I did not think their plate-formed eyes would be able to form an image at a fine enough scale to see these astronomical structures. It must be the Astarapomp himself and his kind that seek them out. And I am also reminded of those humanoid starfish beings I saw distantly in the tunicate-buildings.

It occurs to me now that I have yet to see another being like the Astarapomp. Is he unique? An avatar for whatever bizarre god these beings worship? Something else?

Furthermore, why does he bear so many human features? I cannot help feeling he assumed he has this appearance deliberately for my benefit. Perhpas (sic) he- and any other beings like him- has this form specifically to communicate with humans?

There is so much more to relate. So many things I saw. The red kelp forest. The ghost starfish in the East. The glowing trench. The white runners in the dunes. So many images still flying around my brain.

And yes, I saw those plants from the bog in the mountains! The Devil’s Cupolas grew on the dunes amongst the tall grass. I saw one of the white runners drink from one with a curling proboscis like a moth.

The fig flowers were growing on the edge of a little tide pool. The pollinators here were tiny flies from the machine race. Can you imagine? Full of little gears no bigger than the width of a human hair. What creates these things? Do they reproduce like Earth flies somehow? Or is there some massive factory somewhere- perhaps several factories- manufacturing them en masse on assembly lines. If so, to what purpose?

I need to stop now and rest. I’ll write you more again soon. I may stay another day or so, though I have to get back to the library eventually. They’re expecting this brochure soon and I already started drawing on the draft I brought.

-Tom"

Also, here's an interesting doodle on the back of Page 8. If you can't read the text, it says: 

"The hot Jupiter and its six water-worlds. Created by sheparding (sic) in comets from the outer dark"

And here's a little doodle on the back of Page 9.. The text notes say:

"A white runner in the dunes"

"It's head was featureless as far as I could see"

"narrow legs"

"uncurled proboscis"

And here's a really interesting page depicting the weird language he mentions.
Text reads:

"I only saw the writing briefly. This doesn't do justice to the intricacy of their writing. I believe the worms are spirorbis or something similar. I'll ask the Astarapomp to teach it to me. Their writing has five-fold patterns like their bodies."

"This is the sentence starter 'character' "

"feathery filter-feeding arms"

"A spirorbis writing worm feeding. They only feed when submerged in water."

The text at the bottom right reads:

"I saw these balloon-like weeds in the cracks of the roads. They appear to be another kind of echinoderm."

And on the bottom left:

"Another weed"

"This bulb glowed"

"Perhaps a kind of crinoid?"

I'll scan the drawings and post them a little later.

Stego-Squid Fest flyer

Hey everyone. I came across this flyer in Professor Barnes' files and thought I'd share it with you.
The Stego-squid Fest is pretty popular down here. It's been around for decades. I don't think anyone has actually seen a stego-squid (or sandbar devil as James Lee liked to call them), but we're always on the look out!  Mostly, though, we all come for the food and the music. Not sure who The Tin Men and The Sands are, but Tom Beth was pretty big around here back in the 60s. You can still find his LPs in vintage stores and in the music section at Berl's Books down on Geukensia Street.

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 5: Night Walkers

Here's the last entry in James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven". Posted with permission from the author.

"THE NIGHT WALKERS

On a cold autumn night in September, 1923, night security officer Atwood Delacey was making his rounds at the Whitney Shipping House near the waterfront when he noticed a strange pair of beings wandering along the edge of the rooftop. According to Delacey, the creatures resembled “walking wishbones or bobby pins”. They were nothing but round heads on a pair of long, stilt-like legs. They were covered in plates or scales, including jointed bands of armor running down their legs and a ring of rectangular “windows” around the middle of the main body. One of the creatures was half the size of the other and seemed to constantly scurry after its larger companion like a puppy following its mother.

Delacey watched the beings pace back and forth for about ten minutes before he went into the building to investigate. When he got to the roof, though, the creatures were gone.

This would be the first and only sighting of the so-called “Night Walkers” in Grenhaven. But a similar creature was seen on several occasions far to the Northwest in Boston Corner, New York (originally part of Massachusetts).

From 1825 to 1898, people would occasionally report sightings of a stilt-legged “Pumpkinhead” monster wandering the hemlock forests that clung to the sides of the nearby Taconic Mountains. This mysterious visitor only added to the appeal of Boston Corner, which was already infamous as a wild, lawless town of prize fighters, drunks, criminals and black marketers.

In the summer of 1854, one of the sightings led to an outright hunt for the creature. According to the Boston Corner Gazette, a local man ran yelling into the crowd at a prize fight claiming to have seen the Pumpkinhead skulking around an alley. The crowd fled in a panic, which naturally angered the two pugilists in the ring, Gottlab Straw and Douglas “Ducky” Poole (nicknamed after his peculiar limp caused by an old injury). Eager to take revenge on the creature that had ruined their show, Straw and Poole collected a small militia to “drive the damned thing back to Hell once and for all”. In the end, though, no trace of the Pumpkinhead could be found. This event is the inspiration for the Massachusetts folk song “Ducky on the Hunt”*

No one knows precisely what the Grenhaven Night Walkers or the Boston Corner Pumpkinhead were. Some have suggested they were beings from another world that had slipped through a window into our plane of existence. Others have claimed that the creatures are some sort of unknown Earthly animal. Still others have suggested that they are nature spirits or elementals that have always inhabited the Northern woods. Supposedly there are Native legends about them going back centuries. Those who believe this theory have pointed to strange wooden statues of the beings found in the woods around Boston Corner shortly after the sightings began. These, they claim, were created by prehistoric Indians to pay homage to the spirits.

These claims have been called into doubt, though, by Mohican spiritual leader Joseph Tallpine, who says that there is no record of any being even remotely resembling the Pumpkinhead in his people’s legends. Furthermore, examination of the “prehistoric” wooden statues showed that they were freshly cut and carved around the same time that the sightings began, suggesting that they were probably created by locals to drum up more publicity. 

*see Ephram Switon’s “Gandydancing: Folksongs of Working America”

Also, here's a list of other books by Lee, from the back of the pamphlet:

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 4: The Leyaks

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven", posted with the author's permission.

"THE LEYAKS

The terrors of the witch trials are a dark shame on the history of New England. While the infamous trials at Salem are the most well known, Connecticut actually has the dubious distinction of being the first place in the New World where people were tried and executed for witchcraft. The hysteria began in 1647 and would continue for nearly fifty years, during which time 33 women and two men were murdered by the courts of the witch-hunters. Oftentimes the victims were older women who lived outside the community, or women who “knew too much”, or were too inquisitive and interested in the natural world. Most of the perpetrators were likely motivated by greed. Many of the women accused were married but without children, and thus would inherit their husband’s property upon his death. If she died first, however, her husband’s valuables would be given to the community once he died. Thus having the wife executed as a witch meant the accusers would be able to get their hands on the husband’s goods when he passed.

When public opinion outgrew witch-craft hysteria, some looked back and saw the trials for what they were. Righteous judges became cruel torturers, and accusers were cast anew in the light of greed and avarice. In Grenhaven, which has had its own shameful history of witch-trials, a legend sprang up surrounding the execution of alleged witch Mary Carrington. Her accusers, John Colwen, Silas Orne, Mary Goodwin and Wilbur Greensmith Jr. were motivated by a desire to seize the successful woodworking shop of Carrington’s ailing husband. After Mary was hanged, it is said that the Earth beneath her feet cracked open and the Devil Himself emerged to punish Colwen and the others along with the sentencing judge, Enoch Hathorne. Though the five fled, the Devil chased them all the way to East Haddam, where he left his hoofed footprints in the glen known as Devil’s Hopyard. In desperation, they offered to give their tormentor all of Carrington’s property in exchange for their souls. The Devil accepted their deal and allowed their souls to remain on Earth. However, he took their bodies down to Hell, leaving them as disembodied spirits forced to wander the Connecticut woods for eternity.

With the arrival of immigrants from Indonesia in the late 19th century, a new wrinkle was added to the tale. Along with these new citizens came the tradition of the Leyak (pronounced “Lee-ak”, the y is silent), sorcerers-- usually female- who could detach their heads from their bodies at night and fly about with their entrails hanging from the ragged stump of their neck.

According to the tales, Rangda, the queen of these creatures met the wandering ghosts of Colwen, Orne and the others and offered to give them new bodies if they would serve her. Desperate to the point of insanity, the ghosts agreed and instantly found themselves restored to human form. Come nightfall, however, they discovered the true horror of their situation as their heads ripped off of their bodies and flew into the night. These New World leyaks continue to serve Rangda in the hopes that she will someday grant them their freedom and allow them to either assume normal human lives or at least finally find the sleep of death.

Though the Grenhaven Leyaks exist primarily in folk tales and ghost stories, a few sightings have cropped up over the years. In 1903 a hunter reported seeing three black, ragged-looking objects approximately the size and shape of human heads floating through the forest. In 1935, workers tearing down the ruins of the retired Meyers Mill along Wolsten Creek reported hearing sobs and choking sounds from the woods at night, and being terrified by shadows that floated just outside the light of their fires. In 1941 a pharmacist snapped the haunting “DeBois Photo” which appears to show the blurry image of a man’s floating head and entrails drifting across a bridge.

Then of course there are the numerous sightings and legends among Grenhaven’s Indonesian population, which are covered in full in the author’s book “Ghosts of Bali: Indonesian Folklore in the New World”.

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 3: Lou Carcolh

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven". Posted with the author's permission.

"LOU CARCOLH

If you are walking in the woods and you happen upon a strip of grass long and winding as a ribbon with blades that are thin and brown like hair, tread not upon this peculiar foliage or you may become a meal for the dreaded Lou Carcolh.

The Lou Carcolh, so the old folks of Little France say, is something like a snail and something like a serpent. There is no precise description of the beast since almost no one has seen it. At least, no one who has escaped its traps. The Lou Carcolh is believed to inhabit caves beneath the woods outside Grenhaven, in particular, the section of forest called “Leeds’ Hop” is said to be the preferred territory of this malevolent mollusk.

To feed, the creature extends from its burrow its flat, ribbon-like tentacles which can each be almost a mile long. These tentacles are covered with sticky brown hairs rather like a sundew. Indeed, some stories claim that the Lou Carcolh is not an animal at all, but a gigantic, mobile species of the common Drosera found in New England bogs. Others have compared the beast to Spaghetti worms (Loimia medusa) of the South Pacific. Like the Lou Carcolh, these annelids live in burrows- though theirs are in heads of coral rather than underground- and drape their long, sticky tentacles along the reef to ensnare prey.

Legends of the Lou Carcolh originated in Southwestern France, near the border with Spain. According to the legends of Nouvelle France a rich Huguenot merchant, Etienne Coustou, collected several of the creature’s eggs as curiosities and took them with him when he sailed to the New World to escape Catholic persecution. Upon arrival he was robbed in the port. Among the items stolen were several Lou Carcolh eggs. Apparently at least one of them hatched and survived to haunt the dark hemlock hills surrounding Grenhaven.

Not all of the eggs were stolen, however. Two still remain in the possession of the Coustou family. They have put them on display at various times, the latest being a display of family treasures at the Trompe-l’oeil House.

Though some have suggested that the “eggs” are nothing but polished spheres of peridotite, this hypothesis must remain untested for now since the Coustou family has refused to allow anyone to examine the eggs."

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 2: Noah's Raven

Here's another entry from James A.S. Lee's "Monsters of Grenhaven" manual, posted with the author's permission. Lee told me he used to pass these out at cryptid and paranormal festivals to promote his books. Seems Thom and Dr. Barnes were fans.

"NOAH'S RAVEN

Bezu and Anna Brasselay were returning home on a cold autumn’s eve after a long day selling cloisonné at the October Market in Mystic. As they started to cross the Hetman bridge, Bezu drew the horses to a halt. In the center of the bridge crouched something large and black. Anna thought it might be an injured bear or a man in a heavy coat. Then the thing rose to a height two heads taller than a man and turned to look at them. Both merchants cried out in fright as the red-glowing eyes- round and large as the full moon- fixed on them. The apparition remained motionless, skewering them to the spot with its gaze. Then it opened a set of wings so massive that the tips touched the railings of the bridge. It then rose straight up into the air, according to Bezu’s later report to the Grenhaven Gazette. “It did not crouch and leap as a bird would,” he said. “Nor did it flap its wings. No sir, it rose straight up with legs and wings held stiff as if it was a marionette lifted on strings.”

Such was the first known sighting of the strange flying being that would terrorize Grenhaven and surrounding farms for six months in the autumn and winter of 1887.

The beast was given many names in the beginning- Devil Bird, Devil Moth, Snollygost, Grey Scratch. But the moniker that ultimately stuck was Noah’s Raven. This unusual name has its origins in the famous dinosaur tracks that are abundant in the central valley of Connecticut. In 1802 Pliny Moody was plowing his fields in Hadley Massachusetts when he uncovered large, three-toed fossil footprints. Impressed by his find, Pliny installed the tracks as a step on his front porch and allowed the curious to come see them. Religious leaders declared that the tracks had come from the mythical raven that had been dispatched from Noah’s Ark to find land after the Flood.

Later, famed geologist Edward Hitchcock would identify the footprints as belonging to a giant prehistoric bird. Later researchers would correctly identify the prints as belonging to a bipedal carnivorous dinosaur called Eubrontes.

It’s not clear how the Eubrontes tracks came to be associated with Grenhaven’s “Devil Bird”, particularly since the city lies in the gneiss highlands far from the sedimentary sandstones of the Central Valley where the tracks are found. It’s thought that the comparison may have been made in jest when a set of tracks were installed in the Grenhaven Natural History Museum.

Regardless of the name’s origin, it’s doubtful that anyone seriously thought the Devil Moth was genuinely the bird from Noah’s Ark or that it had made the tracks. But the name still stuck.

After Bezu and Anna’s original sighting, the Raven made several appearances throughout town. Shopkeeper Hiram Levy repeatedly saw the creature crawling head-first down the Moonlight Tower that illuminated the center of town.

Farmer Jean Barré saw it gliding over his fields “stiff as a board without even a flap of its damned wings!”

Many witnesses reported being filled with dread upon seeing its red eyes. One man even claimed that it also had a glowing horn or carbuncle on its forehead.

Sightings of Noah’s Raven abruptly ended on March 7th. That night, a terrible fire swept through the city, destroying many homes and historical buildings. Several people have remarked on the fact that the Raven was no longer seen after the fire. Some believe it actually caused the conflagration. Others swore they saw it consumed in the flames. Still others have postulated that the being may have been a harbinger, it’s sudden disappearance prophesying the disaster.

There is an eerie addendum to this story. A few weeks after the fire, several people including Bezu and Anna were visited by an odd man who claimed to be a “census taker” and would ask mundane, seemingly random questions such as what someone had had for breakfast or how much paper they had in the house. He would typically end his interrogations by asking people if they had seen or heard of Noah’s Raven. If the interviewee responded yes, he would insist that what they had seen was a misidentified owl or crane, or even a case of hysteria-induced hallucination. If the person objected, Frost was said to repeat his assertions in an automatic way, as if reading from a script. Eventually he would simply end the conversation and abruptly leave.

Those who encountered this stranger remarked on his constant, unnerving smile which never wavered throughout the encounter and which led to people referring to him as the Grinning Man. Many also noted the unusual paleness of his skin and the way it seemed too thick and almost detached from the underlying muscle and bone. His clothes were said to be two sizes too small and thirty years out of fashion.

What connection, if any, the Grinning Man had to Noah’s Raven is unknown."  

Monsters of Grenhaven Part 1: Sandbar Devils

Hey everyone. I opened a new packet of letters from Thom and found this pretty neat little manual about local legends and monsters. Grenhaven has a long, long history of supernatural goings-on. Heck, we're one of the most "monster-heavy" places in New England.

James A.S. Lee is a folklorist and monster-hunter who has become quite the celebrity around here. Every giftshop stocks his books. He even opened a "Museum of the Paranormal" a few years ago down by the harbor.

"Monsters of Grenhaven" was a small pamphlet that summarized a few of the entries from his book "The Raven and the Devil", which is a pretty engrossing read if you can find a copy. With his permission, I'm posting a few pics of the interior, plus a complete transcript of the text.

I'm going to break the entries into several posts to keep things at a reasonible length.

Here's the first entry:

THE SANDBAR DEVILS

“What is it? the Devil! The Devil, you say? The very one. Seems he’s tired of leaving his footprints in hopyards and has decided to take a dip in the sound.”

Such was the opening line of the article in the Grenhaven Evening Gazette that first introduced folks in Connecticut to the strange aquatic critters known alternately as Sandbar Devils, Devil-Squids, Ol’ Sandy or, in more recent years, Stego-Squids.

The first Sandbar Devil was sighted in 1896 by local fisherman Burton Hall, who saw it basking at low tide on one of the sandbars that choke the mouth of the Connecticut River. He said it resembled a giant “anomalous shrimp” with a row of spines along its back. Hall also described the beast as being “black as jet, with a pearly sheen like opal.”

Sandbar Devils didn’t really get big until 1901, when multiple students from Grenhaven University on a boating tour of Long Island Sound reported seeing a small school of the creatures frolicking “like otters” amongst the bars. Witnesses described the creatures as having distinctly segmented bodies like lobsters, but with large wings or fins along their flanks. The Devils’ heads were adorned with two thick arms or tentacles, “great appendages,” said witness Archibald Browning, “lined with barbs on the undersides that I don’t doubt could have ripped a man to ribbons.” Perhaps the most unusual features of the creatures, though, were their tails, which bore double rows of spikes not unlike the prehistoric stegosaurus. Thus the more colorful, comic-book name “Stego-Squids.”

The most famous sighting of these beasties came in 1911. On a misty morning in early spring, amateur marine biologist Martin Leeds was out in his boat collecting specimens for his private cold-water aquarium.

“I’d just pulled up a big stone covered with Ciona (intestinalis. A kind of tunicate or sea squirt- ed). As I was pulling it up in the boat, I saw a huge black shape- nearly as wide from wing-tip to wing-tip as I was tall- glide under my keel. I thought it must be a ray of some sort, but then it came back and flipped on its back and extended these long, jointed arms out of the water and grabbed the rock with wicked-looking hooks all along the undersides. I remember them real distinctly. They were white at the roots, staining to amber near the tips, like barnacles on the shore rocks. The thing’s mouth was weird. Like a pineapple ring, or a lamprey’s mouth, you know? I fought it for a bit. It kept tugging and hissing and spitting jets of water from that pineapple-ring mouth. Finally I let go and it took the rock back down, I guess to eat those tunicates. Or maybe, I don’t know- maybe it had laid some eggs on the rock that I’d overlooked, and it was just protecting its young. Anyway, last thing I saw was that sharp, spiny tail slapping the side of my boat. You can still see the scratches it left.”

Stego-squids have been sighted off and on over the decades, usually among the sandbars at the river’s mouth. Though one witness reported seeing one all the way up by Rocky Hill near the historic ferry.

Skeptics have dismissed the sightings as misidentified rays or skates. Perhaps even an errant mantra ray that came in from the Atlantic and got lost. Those who believe the Sandbar Devils are real, unknown animals have suggested that they could be a new species of squid, or perhaps even large swimming lobsters. Famed folklorist and cryptozoologist Paul Brighton believes they may be a type of mantra ray whose “horns” have evolved into long, flexible grasping appendages."

Entry 10: Some Strange Photos and A Drawing

Hey again everyone. I was digging through the files again and I found some weird photos that I think are supposed to depict these "living machines" Thom keeps mentioning. They look like random piles of mechanical junk to me, but there's also a drawing of an intact living machine that makes everything a bit more sensible.

See what you think.

Weird, eh? Here's the drawing that makes things a bit more coherent.

In case you can't read Thom's notes, they say (clockwise from top):

"A living machine.
I saw a number of these around the portal. Were they attracted tot he energy? Are they pests? Are they maintainers? Who builds the living machines (?)"

"I didn't get as good a look at these" (referring to the protozoan-like critter on the right)

"What are the tubes for?"

"I saw this creature only briefly as we were passing over the tide pools" (referring to the clockwork starfish on the bottom of the page).

Entry 9: An eerie letter

Hey everyone,
It's pretty late here. Been a long day. It's been a while since I've posted, though, and I don't what you guys to get bored. So here's a creepy letter from Thomas during his stay at Boston Corner.

And a transcript:

"Barnes,

God, they’re here! The phantoms have followed me! I woke up in the middle of the night and knew they were at the window. I didn’t even have to open my eyes. I could sense them. Three? Maybe more. I didn’t want to look. Didn’t want them to know I was aware of them. I tried to go back to sleep, but I could feel their eyes (do they truly even have eyes as we would understand them?) upon me. I got up, staring at the floor, and closed the curtains without daring to look up even once. I doubt that really did much good, though. I could still feel them watching me. At some point, though, I must have fallen asleep. It was morning when I next opened my eyes.

I still feel their presences everywhere. It’s so hot out today, but I feel cold. The Astarapomp has told me they are attracted by the energy of the portals. He implied that they were just animals feeding off the energies of the doorways.  But I know that is not true. They are sentient. They seek out the portals- they seek out me!- for a reason that has the clear feel of intelligence behind it. I do not like that the Astarapomp is keeping something secret from me.

I need to clear my head. I’m going to walk to the drug store to get that film, then I’ll head back to the hemlocks and take some pictures of those bog plants. Write more later.

. . . . . . . . . . . .    .

It’s evening now.

The bog plants were gone. Not a trace remains. It’s as if someone pulled up every single one. Did the black phantoms take them? Why? So much for photographing them.

I found something better, though. I finally located that roof gable from the other world. And more! I found workers from the machine race. The ones I saw in the intergalactic hub. Their biological parts had rotted away, but the mechanical portions were still intact. At least I was able to get some pictures of them. I’m collecting their remains this time. Don’t want them vanishing like the bog plants. You can look them over when I return and tell me what you think.

The gable is in a weird location. There aren’t any trees nearby that I can climb to get a good picture 

of it. But I’ll see what I can manage.

I’ll be staying a few more nights, I think. Not sure what I’m going to do here. But something tells me I should remain in the area. I have had this feeling before. Perhaps the Astarapomp will contact me again. Perhaps the portal will open. I do not know.

At the very least, I can use the down time to catch up on my reading and edit this brochure I’m writing about the Townsend Lighthouse Library for the display going up. You know I was finally able to get access to the Katherine Whig Collections? God, they keep that thing locked up so tight. Luckily I knew the Collections clerk from that piece I did on the Voynich Manuscript exhibit a few years ago. I was able to chat him up enough to let me take a look.

I just looked out the window. Night is coming. Will the phantoms return? God, I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight.

                                               

                                                            Tom"