NecronomiCon 2026: Colonial Witches, Aleister Crowley, and H.P. Lovecraft

A couple weeks ago I attended NecronomicCon 2026, the biennial convention celebrating Rhode Island author H.P. Lovecraft and other artists and writers who created weird fiction. This was my fourth time attending and, as always, I had a great time meeting interesting people and learning strange and unusual things. I thought I'd share a few highlights here on the blog. 

First, I attended a session about colonial-era witches on film. The horror writers who were on the panel mentioned some of my favorite New England witch movies, like Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015) and that creepy, made-for-TV classic Crowhaven Farm (1970). They also mentioned a couple films that I'm adding to my watch list. One of them, The Sudbury Devil (2023) was filmed in Massachusetts with local actors. The plot focuses on two Puritan soldiers who are sent into the forest to investigate reports of witchcraft. Bad things happen, including some supernatural sex, so perhaps don't watch this one with the kids. The other is The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), which I didn't even know was about witchcraft in Colonial New England. Spoiler alert: it is!

A scene from Crowhaven Farm. 

Speaking of witches, I gave a brief talk titled "Unwholesome Nocturnal Meetings: H.P. Lovecraft, Margaret Murray, and the Witches' Sabbath." Lovecraft read Margaret Murray's seminal book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe in the early 1920s and, like many readers, accepted its claims that the people accused of witchcraft were actually members of a secret pagan cult . More importantly, though, the book stirred his imagination as an author. Before reading The Witch-Cult, Lovecraft mentioned witches just twice in his fiction. After reading it, he mentioned witches, witchcraft, or the “witch-cult” in 31 additional stories, and even mentioned Murray’s book directly several times.

Lovecraft was particularly intrigued by the idea of the witches' sabbaths, those midnight, orgiastic gatherings where infants were allegedly sacrificed and the Devil was supposedly worshipped by his followers. He included witches' sabbaths in 19 stories, beginning with 1923’s “The Rats in the Walls” and ending with 1935’s “The Haunter of the Dark,” one of his final pieces of fiction. For Murray, the Sabbath was a purely human, non-supernatural event, but Lovecraft transformed it into a celebration of the non-human, a barrier-breaking festival demonstrating humanity’s insignificance in a cosmos controlled by inimical and uncaring forces. 

The cover slide from my talk!

I think my talk was well-received, and hopefully it will be published at some point. 

The last thing I want to mention is Strange Magick, a documentary from local director Bill Darmon. The film examines possible connections between Lovecraft, a New Hampshire writer named Myrta Little, and Aleister Crowley, the famous British occultist. Did Lovecraft visit America's Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire? Did Aleister Crowley plot to kill a Harvard professor while vacationing in New England? Did Myrta Little secretly meet Crowley and accept an assignment from him? 

A still from Strange Magick.

Strange Magick asks these questions and more. You may or may not accept the answers it provides, but I enjoyed seeing the filmmakers try to connect the dots between various strange, local topics. A couple people I know appear as talking heads, and the movie has good production values for what is obviously a labor of love. It also has great re-enactments, including Crowley performing some magickal feats and scenes from a few Lovecraft tales. 

The 90-minute version shown at NecronomiCon was compiled from four separate films Darmon and his colleagues made. It's not publicly available yet, but you can watch the four separate films on YouTube. I highly recommend them for anyone who likes weird New England lore!

Celebrating America's Birthday with a Sasquatch Sighting

It was America's 250th birthday this past July 4th - how did you celebrate? I visited friends and ate pizza they made in their outdoor pizza oven. So delicious! I know lots of people who went to barbecues, to the beach, and, of course, to watch fireworks. 

There are many fun ways to celebrate Independence Day, but no matter how you hard you celebrated, I think a Rhode Island man has us all beat: he saw Bigfoot on the Fourth of July.  

An exhibit at the International Cryptozoology Museum 

Okay, technically it was 1:44 am on July 5th, but I think that still counts as Independence Day. Kevin Klimas was driving home after visiting a friend at Beach Pond in Voluntown, Connecticut. It was late at night and the road was illuminated only by his car's headlights. As he approached an intersection, he saw something emerge from the woods:

"I had to hit my brakes to avoid a collision with this thing. Upon doing so I witnessed a bipedal,8-8½ foot tall creature swiftly crossing the road. It had coarse, matted, and greasy looking long brown hair covering every part of its body I could see. Its legs were shorter than its torso and its arms literally hung down to right around knee height. Must have had an 8 - 9ft "wing span" if it fully outstretched its arms. Extremely broad in the shoulders (4+feet easy) Thick with what I can only assume is muscle, and moving like on a mission. It never stopped nor did it turn to look at me. I was only able to see a side profile of its head and face. 



The top of its head seemed to cone up slightly and it had a jawline any pugilist would kill for. Minimal hair on its face. It stepped onto the road, took another step, then a third step which put it back into the woods on the opposite side of the road. Walked more like a human than any other animal. I was (and remain) dumbstruck. Took me a minimum of 60-90 seconds to regain control of my faculties and get my car moving again"(from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website).

You can also see Kevin Klimas talk about the sighting in this YouTube video. You may be skeptical about Bigfoot, but Klimas certainly seems sincere about whatever he saw on that Connecticut road. 

The BFRO investigators assigned to this case commented that the area has a history of Bigfoot sightings. Like much of New England, it's very woodsy, providing lots of cover where something large and hairy could lurk. The organization even hosted an expedition in the area a few years ago, but sadly didn't find anything.

An exhibit at the International Cryptozoology Museum

One of the investigators also hypothesized that the Bigfoot seen by Klimas may have been attracted by the sound of fireworks. He notes that there have been a few cases from other parts of the country where people shooting off fireworks in the woods have wound up attracting a Bigfoot. 

Why would this be? The investigator thinks Bigoot may misidentify the sound of fireworks as gun shots: 

"It may sound like hunters shooting. During deer season the sound of gunfire will sometimes indicate where a deer has been shot and eventually gutted. It is the gut piles (and particularly the liver) that a sasquatch want from a killed deer" (from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website). 

I hadn't heard that Bigfoot likes liver to eat before, but apparently that's one theory drifting around the internet. Since no one has ever captured a Bigfoot, I'm not going to speculate about what they may or may not eat. Instead, I'll suggest that maybe Bigfoot was attracted to the fireworks because he wanted to celebrate the Fourth of July? He is, after all, the quintessentially American. Nothing says "U!S!A!" more than a giant, hairy hominid. 

Sadly, I didn't get to see any Bigfoots during the holiday, but we did see lots of Bigfoot memorabilia the following weekend at the International Cryptozoology Museum. The museum has relocated from its old home in Portland to a new, much larger building at 490 Broadway in Bangor, Maine. 

Exhibits at the International Cryptozoology Museum

I was excited to participate in the grand opening celebration, and was even more excited to look at all the exhibits. Plaster casts of footprints, creepy mermaids, and a replica of Mothman were just a few of the weird and wonderful things at the museum. There was even a taxidermied coyote with three heads, which reminded me of Cerberus, the dog who guards the underworld, but New England-style. I highly recommend visiting if you like cryptids or just want to spend some time at a really unique museum.

I hope you enjoy these last few weeks of summer!

A Case of Spontaneous Combustion in Ipswich?

I have a confession to make: summer is not my favorite season. 

I like summer, but not as much as I did when I was a kid. Back then, I spent summer sitting in front of a fan reading the trashy horror paperbacks my aunt gave us. Now, I have to work and be productive, no matter how humid or hot it might be. Sometimes as I trudge to work, depending on the temperature, I feel like I might spontaneously combust. 

Spontaneous human combustion is the belief that people sometimes burst into flames without any external source of ignition. The part about "no external source of ignition" is important. Catching your clothes on fire while using the stove is not spontaneous human combustion. Suddenly and mysteriously burning to death while just reading a horror novel is spontaneous human combustion. 

I first read about spontaneous human combustion when I was a kid, probably in Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious Universe, which my brother owned, but the concept dates back to 1746. That was when the term was first coined by the Italian poet Paolo (Paul) Rolli, a member of the British Royal Society, to explain the mysterious death of Countess Cornelia Zangari Bandi.

On the evening of March 15, 1731, Countess Bandi retired to her bed chamber. After talking and praying with her maid for several hours, she sent the maid away and went to sleep. When the maid returned in the morning, she saw a terrible sight in the middle of the floor: the charred remains of the countess. And there weren't even a lot of remains. According to Rolli, 

Four Feet Distance from the Bed there was a Heap of Ashes, two Legs untouched, from the Foot to the Knee, with their Stockings on; between them was the Lady's head; whose Brains, Half of the Backpart of the Scull, and the whole Chin, were burnt to Ashes; amongst which were found three Fingers blacken'd. All the rest was Ashes, which had this particular Quality, that they left in the Hand, when taken up, a greasy and stinking Moisture (from Wikipedia).

There was a lot of grease and soot in the room, but otherwise not much else was left of poor Countess Bandi, except for her lower legs, part of her skull, and three fingers. It was as if her body had been consumed quickly and suddenly by incredibly high heat. Oddly, the furniture and bed linens had not been damaged by the fire, although they were covered in grease and soot. The fire had cremated Countess Bandi but not touched anything else. 

Because it had only burned the countess, and because its source was never determined, Rolli hypothesized the fire had started inside Countess Bandi. He believed she had been consumed by a fire within her own body, a process he called "spontaneous human combustion." 

Of course, she probably caught fire from either the oil lamp or the candles in the room, but the idea of spontaneous human combustion was more exciting, and the concept quickly spread through the academic world and the general public. As more cases were 'discovered,' certain common traits were seen among the victims. They tended to be female, were often alcoholics, and were also often overweight. It seemed like the alcohol inside of them was spontaneously igniting and then burning the fat inside their bodies like a grisly, greasy, giant candle.

Image from The Irish Sun.

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE. Researchers who've reviewed cases of alleged spontaneous human combustion have always found possible outside sources of ignition, like candles, oil lamps, cigarettes, or space heaters. There is no such thing as spontaneous human combustion. The concept persisted, though, because it's fun (and scary) to think about someone suddenly bursting into flames, and because it also gave people an opportunity to pass moral judgment on their neighbors for being alcoholic and overweight, even after death.  

This blog is about New England folklore, so what does any of this have to with New England? Well, I became intrigued with the idea of spontaneous combustion last year while I was preparing to speak at an event in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Joseph Felt's 1834 book History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton has a chapter titled  "Remarkable Events," which includes a subsection called "Individuals Drowned and Killed." Among those individuals was Betsy Telock, who died at the age of 49 in a mysterious fire:

1814,  Jan.  5th.  Betsey  Telock,  M.  49,  is  burnt  to  death. 

It  has  been  commonly  reported,  that  she  came  to  her  end  by spontaneous  combustion  from  the  inordinate  use  of  ardent spirits.  But  it  is  the  opinion  of  the  gentleman,  who  first  discovered her  body,  soon  after  the  flames  in  her  room  were extinguished,  that  she  caught  her  bed-clothes  on  fire  with  a candle, and  thus  lost  her  life. 

This account, even though brief, encapsulates the entire concept of spontaneous human combustion. Betsey's neighbors seemed to think that she burst into flames because she drank too much ("inordinate use of ardent spirits"), but she probably caught on fire because she got too close to a candle. Even in 1814 people were skeptical about the idea of spontaneous combustion, and kudos to Joseph Felt for being skeptical, too.

I hope you stay cool this summer and get to spend it reading trashy paperbacks in front of a fan. 

He Wanted Dunkins But Saw Bigfoot Instead

People from Massachusetts are usually pretty reserved, but we’re oddly passionate about Dunkin’ Donuts. The company started in Quincy in 1950, and even though it’s now a global behemoth we still think of it as a local chain. It’s hard not to since there are so many stores in the state. There are approximately 1,050 Dunkin’ locations in Massachusetts – that’s roughly one store for every 6,500 residents. 

I don’t know how many Bigfoots live in Massachusetts, so unfortunately I cannot calculate the ratio of Dunkin’ stores to Bigfoots in our state. But because there are so many Dunkins here, I had a hunch at least one Bigfoot encounter would involve a Dunkin’ Donuts. It just seemed inevitable. A quick search of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website confirmed that my suspicion was correct – there was a Bigfoot sighting in Massachusetts that involved a Dunkin’. 

I suspect there are more, but here are the details from the BFRO about the one confirmed case. On a hot July day in 1996, a 10-year-old boy in Rowley was feeling bored. As he tried to think of something fun to do, he remembered that a neighbor had recently told him about a path through the woods that led to a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts. He perked up at the thought, and decided to find the path. Was he planning to buy a donut, some munchkins, or a bagel with cream cheese (which had just been added to the menu that year)? Or perhaps he was going to try an “adult beverage” (i.e. an iced coffee)?

Was Bigfoot seen behind this Dunkin' Donuts in Rowley, MA?
Photo by CD Rasmussen, posted on Google

Sadly, the BFRO report doesn’t specify what he wanted to buy, but it does tell us that he convinced a friend to join him on his adventure. The store was less than a mile away so the boy and his friend thought it was going to be an easy trip, but after walking for a while through the woods they got lost. They could have easily turned back, but they did not. Instead, they showed true Massachusetts grit and forged ahead through the undergrowth, determined to reach Dunkin’ Donuts. 

Suddenly, they heard the sound of large animals moving nearby. Turning towards the noise, the boy and his friend were amazed see three humanoid figures running along a nearby hilltop. The creatures were not wearing any clothes and were covered in tan fur. Years later, the boy (now a man) told a BFRO investigator that the figures were around six-feet tall and had rugged but not ‘jacked’ (i.e. overly muscular) builds. He was unable to make out their faces because they were too far away.

Photo by Mike Mozart from Wikipedia. 

The boy and his friend stood paralyzed with fear, but after the creatures vanished among the trees they ran back to the friend’s house and told his mother what they had seen. I assume she was surprised, but she may not have been. The BFRO investigator notes that several other people have also reported seeing Bigfoot in that same area near the Dunkin’ on the Newburyport Turnpike, so maybe she already knew about the creatures in the woods behind her house.  

The report leaves one important question unanswered – where were the three hairy humanoids running to? The boy didn’t say which direction they were headed, but if they were Massachusetts Bigfoot, maybe they were also going to the Dunkin’ Donuts themselves? It’s just a suspicion on my part.

The Devil's Den in Hemlock Gorge

There are lots of places in New England named after the Devil. A few years ago, I published some lists on this blog. I'm not going to repost the full list today, but I have included a list of the Bay State's devilish places at the end of this post. 

I've been to several of these places, like the Devil's Footprint in Ipswich, the Devil's Den in Ashland, and another Devil's Den in Newbury. Amazingly, though, I've never been to the Devil's Den in Hemlock Gorge, which is in Needham right on the Newton border. I've lived in the Greater Boston area for more than 30 years, but somehow never visited the devilish place closest to me.

Last weekend we set out to rectify that. Hemlock Gorge is easily accessible by the MBTA Green Line, so Tony and I filled our water bottles, hopped on the T, and were soon at the Hemlock Gorge Reservation. I have to say that this park is worth visiting even if you aren't interested in vaguely Satanic caves. It's situated right on the Charles River and has some nice walking trails, but it also has the enormous Echo Bridge, which was built in 1877 to contain an aqueduct. The bridge is only open to pedestrians and has amazing views from its top. 

We entered the reservation from the northern side. The first thing we passed was this very dramatic spillway, where water from the Charles River flows under Route 9. I'm glad I'm not a fish or a small duck because I would definitely go over those falls to my doom.

Near the spillway was this old stone barn. Since I'm a horror-nerd, at first it reminded me of the Whateley house in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," whose windows and doors have been sealed up to contain an amorphous, ever-growing, ravenous monstrosity. A closer look revealed there was indeed an unsealed door and also some open windows, and a sign indicated that the building is used for some type of scientific purpose. 

Sadly, this probably means there isn't a monster inside. I guess that's good news for the neighbors, but the barn has always been a source speculation. For example, when the barn was built in 1839 some locals thought it was going to be used to raise silkworms. That never worked out, even though silkworms are preferable to monsters.

The Devil's Den was just a short walk from the barn. I knew it was a cave of some kind, but I had modest expectations because most caves in Massachusetts are pretty small. That was not the case! It's actually large enough to stand up in, and is located on a steep embankment overlooking a pond. There's also a small, little cave right next to it which is too small to hold a human.

A lot of Massachusetts caves are formed by boulders that were piled on top of each other by the glaciers. That type of cave is called a tallus cave, but the Devil's Den is quite different. It's carved out of solid puddingstone, not formed by assorted boulders. I don't know what geological forces did this, and I'm assuming it was a combination of water and wind. 

Like a lot of weird places we've visited, there was some graffiti in the Devil's Den. Although I'm not a fan of graffiti, I can understand why teenagers would want to leave their mark in someplace named after the Devil. Many of the places we visit are just slightly off the beaten path and are good locations for teens who want to hide their illicit behavior from their parents. At least there wasn't a lot of trash or broken glass in the cave, which was nice. 

This excellent page about Hemlock Gorge says that that local Native Americans may have used the cave to dry fish, but I couldn't find any information about why it's called the Devil's Den. King's Handbook of Newton (1879) only says the following: 

Just across, on the Needham Shore, is the old rocky grotto known as the Devil's Den. This is, of course, to be expected; for poor must be the New-England town that has not its bit of a cavern, consecrated to his Plutonian Majesty. 

As that quote sarcastically notes, you really can find caves or rock formations named after the Devil in many places. But why? I've seen a few theories trying to explain this. One claims that many of these places were associated with Native Americans, and that racist settlers gave them them devilish names because they thought the Native Americans were evil. That could explain the Devil's Den in Hemlock Gorge.

Sometimes there are also legends about particular devilish places that explain how they got their name. The legends might claim a particular cave earned its sinister name because it was used by smugglers or bandits, or that a particular rock formation was literally formed by the action of the Devil (like the Devil's footprints in Ipswich and Norton). Underlying all these legends and place names are old Puritan ideas about good and evil, where things outside the norm (like strange rock formations) were considered suspicious and assigned to the Devil. 

Interestingly, Needham has two Devil's Dens - the one we visited in Hemlock Gorge, and another one in the Town Forest. I think the one in Hemlock Gorge is larger and easier to access, but I'm jealous that Needham has two Devil's Dens. I can imagine it might cause confusion, though, if you're invited to the Devil's Den for nefarious deeds (or just a hike) but the location is not specified. 

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Places in Massachusetts named after the Devil

Devil's Back, Hull 

Devil's Basin, Newbury

Devil's Bridge, Gay Head 

Devil's Brook, Sharon

Devil's Brook, Stoughton 

Devils Cavern, Amherst (see also Devil's Garden)

Devil's Coffin, Sutton 

Devil's Corncrib, Sutton 

Devil's Den, Andover (now often called Den Rock)

Devil's Den, Aquinnah 

Devil's Den, Arlington (now Menotomy Rocks Park)

Devil's Den, Ashland

Devil's Den, Goshen 

Devil's Den, Hemlock Gorge, Needham and Newton

Devil's Den, Needham

Devil's Den, Newbury

Devil's Den, Oxford 

Devil's Den, Rockport

Devil's Den, Weston

Devil's Dishfull Pond, Peabody 

Devil's Foot Island, Woods Hole

Devil's Football, Hadley  

Devil's Footprint, Ipswich 

Devil's Footprint, Norton

Devil's Garden, Amherst (see also Devil's Cavern)

Devil's Garden, Lynnfield 

Devil's Hollow, Marshfield 

Devil's Hopyard, Shelburne Falls 

Devil's Kitchen, Lynnfield

Devil's Landslide, Wellesley

Devil's Lane, Warren 

Devil's Oven, Sherborn 

Devil's Oven, Westwood

Devil's Peak, Warren

Devil Pond, Westport (now called Devol Pond because it is more family friendly)

Devil's Pond, Rehoboth (sometimes called Sabin Pond)

Devil's Pool, Pelham 

Devil's Pulpit, Great Barrington

Devil's Pulpit, Housatonic 

Devil's Pulpit, Leominster 

Devil's Pulpit, Nahant

Devil's Pulpit, Newbury (historic, may no longer exist)

Devil's Rock, Rochester

Devil's Rock, Sharon

Devil's Rock, Swansea