Did H.P. Lovecraft Witness An Alien Autopsy?

Did H.P. Lovecraft witness an alien autopsy? I cannot tell you how happy I am to type that sentence. It's an absolutely insane question even to pose, but it brings together two things I love: horror master H.P. Lovecraft and UFOs. And some people think the answer is "Yes!"

As many people know, Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) was one of the world's most influential horror writers. Lovecraft spent most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island and loved New England deeply. He incorporated New England locations and folklore into stories like "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."

Image from the H.P. Lovecraft archives.

Dreamers, dream-worlds and nightmares also appear often in his work, and many of his stories were even inspired by actual dreams he had. Lovecraft could recall his dreams in great detail and they provided the basis for stories like "Call of Cthulhu," "The Statement of Randolph Carter" and others.

In early 1920 Lovecraft had a dream that he later referred to as the "Eben Spencer plot" because he hoped to use it as the basis for a story. He never did, but the dream is interesting on it's own. In the dream Lovecraft was an army lieutenant and surgeon named Eben Spencer. The year was 1864, and Spencer/Lovecraft was on furlough in his hometown in upstate New York after being injured in the Civil War. While out for a walk he meets a friend:

Soon a very young man of my acquaintance came up to me with an air of anxiety and began to speak in guarded accents. He wished me to go with him to his brother - my professional colleague Dr. Chester - whose actions were greatly alarming him. 

... The doctor for the past two years had been conducting secret experiments in a laboratory in the attic of his home, and beyond that locked door he would admit no one but himself. Sickening odours were often detected near the door... and odd sounds were at times not absent.

Eben Spencer is taken to Dr. Chester's laboratory, where the sinister Dr. Chester shows him something grotesque:

Soon he emerged, bearing on a large glass slab what appeared to be a human arm, neatly severed just below the elbow. It was damp, gelatinous and bluish-white, and the fingers were without nails. 

'Well, Spencer,' said Dr. Chester sneeringly, 'I suppose you've had a good deal of amputation practice in the army. What do you think, professionally, of this job?' 

I had seen clearly that this was not a human arm, and said sarcastically, 'You are a better sculptor than doctor, Chester. This is not the arm of any living thing.' 

And Chester replied in a tone that made my blood congeal, 'Not yet, Spencer. Not yet!' (Selected Letters of H.P. Lovecraft, Volume 1, Arkham House, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1965, pages 100-102).

From behind a curtain Dr. Chester then brings out another, even larger arm. Ominously, Dr. Chester tells Spencer to "Watch the curtain!" but here the dream begins to fade. Lovecraft awoke in his bed, noting "I have never seen Dr. Chester, or his young brother, or that village since. I do not know what village it was. I never heard the name of Eben Spencer before or since. Some dream!"

Civil War surgical instructions from the Mutter Museum.

I agree! That is some dream, but perhaps not an unprecedented one for a writer of horror stories. And since this post has the words "alien autopsy" in its title, what if anything does it have to do with aliens? It seems more like a rehash of Frankenstein than anything else.

In 1997 Joseph Trainor, editor of the now defunct UFO Roundup magazine, decided to investigate what inspired Lovecraft's dream. Trainor thought the severed arms sounded like they could have been from extraterrestrials, and he also knew there had been sightings of strange flying craft in upstate New York in the 1860s. Was there some hidden truth in Lovecraft's dream?

Trainor conducted research in New York and consulted with New York state historian Carol Maltby. He found the following:

• A young army surgeon and lieutenant named Elbridge Gerry Spencer lived in the New York village of Brockett's Bridge in the 1860s. He went by the nickname Gary. He was briefly furloughed with a minor injury around 1862.
• Nearby lived an herbalist, Dr. David Chester Smallwood. Smallwood had a younger brother, just like in Lovecraft's dream. Dr. Smallwood also owned a three-story house with an attic. 
• Spencer left Brockett's Bridge in the late 1860s. His departure was sudden; his sister's obituary notes that he "disappeared from the area..." Searching through census records, Trainor found an E. Gary Spencer in  Iowa working as a farmer. By 1880, Spencer was working as a "commercial traveler," or traveling salesman. 
• Trainor could not ascertain what happened to Dr. Smallwood. 

Trainor speculated that while gathering herbs in the woods Dr. Smallwood found a damaged UFO that had crashed - and some of its injured occupants. Perhaps he showed the remains of the aliens to Lt. Spencer, who fled town soon after seeing the strange limbs. At one point Trainor thought that Lovecraft's dream was some kind of past life memory, but he developed another theory later. He speculated that while working as a traveling salesman Spencer met Lovecraft's father, who was also a salesman. He told the strange tale to Lovecraft's father, who in turn told it to his young son. Lovecraft perhaps did not remember the story consciously but it appeared in his dreams.

I can hear you asking, "Is any of this true?" I honestly can't say. It sounds like Trainor found some interesting information that is similar to Lovecraft's dream, although the names don't quite match entirely. I suppose your acceptance of this story hinges on your feelings about UFOs in general. I just find it fascinating whether or not the story is true.

What I find particularly interesting, though, is that this is another myth that's developed around H.P. Lovecraft's life. Although there are probably others this is the third one that I've encountered. The other myths are:

1. Lovecraft's stories contain real occult knowledge. In this myth, Lovecraft either consciously or unconsciously (through his dreams) incorporated actual magic and occult secrets into his stories. The Necrononmicon is real, entities like Cthulhu exist, and Lovecraft traveled to other dimensions in his sleep. This myth started to form while Lovecraft was still alive but was popularized by the British occultist Kenneth Grant. Thanks to Grant's influence, you can now buy many books about Lovecraftian ritual and magick online and in New Age bookstores. 

2. The Necronomicon is hidden under the campus of Bradford College (now Northpoint Bible College) in Haverhill, Massachusetts. According to this legend, Lovecraft dated a co-ed at Bradford College and hid a copy of The Necronomicon, a book of blasphemous knowledge, in one of the tunnels underneath the school. 

I think the alien autopsy story fits in nicely with those other two, don't you?

I don't like to debunk stories on my blog. Instead I like to think about what they mean and what they say about New England. Myths are stories that people find meaningful and that are important, regardless of their literal truth. Why do people create these myths around H.P. Lovecraft and his fiction? Clearly people still find his stories to be powerful and convincing. And something so convincing can't just be fiction, can it?

Encountering Fairies at Mount Monadnock

One of the many nice things about this blog is that people tell me stories about the strange things they've encountered. I've heard quite a few ghost stories, but it is very rare that people tell me stories about fairies.

Very rare, but it does happen. The other day some friends came over for brunch, and I showed my friend James a copy of Magical Folk, a book about fairy folklore to which I had contributed a chapter.  In response, James told me the following story.

*****

A few years ago James, his spouse Kevin, and one of their friends went camping near New Hampshire's Mount Monadnock. The campground at Monadnock State Park has around thirty standard campsites close to parking lots, plus five remote campsites that can only be reached by hiking. James and his companions chose to stay at one of the standard campsites.

After they set up their tents they decided to go for a hike along one of the trails that led to the more remote sites. The trail led them up away from the other campers and deeper into the park. After hiking for a while they still hadn't seen any of the the remote campsites, but instead found a beautiful clearing in the woods.

James described it as looking like a "fairy dell." There was a waterfall, and a small wooden bridge going over a stream, and lots of lush flowers. It was an idyllic space, but as they absorbed its beauty James became uneasy. Although they were ostensibly alone in the clearing he felt like there was someone there with them. James sensed that they were being watched. His companions began to fell uneasy too and they soon left, making their way back to their campsite.

A beautiful photo of Mt. Monadnock from Wikipedia. 

When James fell asleep that night he had a strangely vivid dream. He dreamed about his mother. She had cooked something really delicious and kept urging James to eat. In the waking world James had a very good relationship with his mother, but something didn't seem quite right in the dream. Although it looked like his mother, James had the uncomfortable feeling that the figure in his dream was not really his mother but was instead someone pretending to be her. She kept offering him food, but he kept refusing it. Finally he woke up.

Over breakfast he told Kevin and their friend about his strange dream. To his surprise, they both said they had very similar dreams that night. They had both dreamed that trusted, loving people from their lives had offered them food, but they both had felt that somehow things were not quite right. Neither of them had accepted the food.

*****

When James finished his story he said to me, "You know, in a lot of traditional stories the fairies try to get humans to eat fairy food. If a human eats it they're trapped in the fairy world forever. I feel like we encountered something in that clearing, and it wanted us to stay there. I'm glad none of us ate the food in our dreams."

I'll try to put James's story into a regional context. When the Puritans first came to New England they said that there weren't any fairies here. The Puritans had mostly come from East Anglia, a part of England that had a lot of witch lore but not much in the way of fairy lore. Unsurprisingly, New England has a lot of folklore about witches. And had a lot of witch trials.

However, the Indian tribes that lived in New England did have a lot of folklore about small magical beings that lived in the woods, mountains and rivers. This folklore became part of the mainstream culture in the 19th century when it was shared with anthropologists and folklorists. European immigrants from places like Ireland and Scotland also moved into New England around the same time, bringing their fairy folklore with them. People began to see fairies in New England. And in the 20th and 21st century, local fairies called pukwudgies gained prominence in the national media.

New England is no longer a place without fairies. Different cultures describe fairies in different ways, but they seem to agree on a few things: fairies live in the woods, fairies are tricky, and fairies try to entice people to join them. Did my friend actually have a fairy encounter in Monadnock Park? I can't say for sure, but his story is definitely part of a long tradition of people encountering strange things in the New England woods.

Omens for A Gloomy November: Horses, Death, and Other Dreams

November is a melancholy month. The gleeful morbidity of Halloween serves as the gateway to November, but this month reveals the actual truth behind the colorful masks and cartoony skeletons: the year is winding down. The trees are becoming bare, the skies are gray, and the days get shorter and colder.

The year is slowly dying, and it makes me want to sleep. A lot. The ancient Greeks claimed that Sleep was the brother of Death, and I can understand the connection, particularly at this time of year. Both involve a loss of consciousness, a dissolving of self into the welcoming darkness, but at least when we sleep we get to dream. Those wise Greeks said that Morpheus, the dream-god, was the son of Sleep.

November in my neighborhood. Gloomy.

I tend to remember my dreams more during this time of year than during others. Upon reflection I can usually figure out what my subconscious is trying to tell me, but some dreams are just puzzling.Why was I carrying a book and cup as I walked down the stairs? What did that turtle mean? Sometimes I could use a guide to interpret my dreams.

New Englanders of past generations had a long list of dream interpretations. One of their key principles to interpreting a dream was the rule of opposites. Things that are bad in real life are good omens when seen in dreams, and vice versa. For example, to dream about a wedding means you will soon be invited to a funeral, but dreaming about a funeral means you'll hear about a wedding. Seeing a dead person in your dream means you'll receive news or a letter from a living one. Dreaming about eating or about picking blackberries is an omen of impending illness. OK, that may not be an exact opposite but you get the idea.

In this dream, recounted to author Clifton Johnson by elderly woman and included in his 1896 book What They Say In New England, an ominous thunderstorm actually was a harbinger of good news:

"It was after midnight, and I was dreaming a dream about a terrible thunder-storm. It grew worse and worse till there was one clap so loud it seemed as if the skies had broken to pieces. Right after it I woke up, and I heard a knock on the outside door of the sitting-room. I knew that instant what my dream meant and who was there. It was Charlie! I went to the door and it was. There he had been gone seven or eight years. He'd been a sailor on the ocean, and we hadn't heard a word from him, and didn't know but he was dead, and that dream came to show me he was alive and near."

But the rule of opposites didn't always apply. Sometimes bad things just mean bad things. Dreaming of lice means illness, and dreaming about snakes foretells making an enemy. Personally I like snakes, but I understand the general symbolism here. I don't think anyone likes lice.

Some of the old New England dream interpretations are cryptic and very specific. Why would dreaming of a white horse be an omen of death? I am not sure, but that was an accepted interpretation. Here is another account from Johnson's book:

"You will have great trouble if you dream of a white horse," said Uncle Timothy. "I've always found that to come true. There was one time in particular I remember. It was winter; and I was at work a good many miles from home in a logging-camp. One night I had a terrible dream about a white horse that got angry with me, and bit me. I knew something would happen in consequence of that dream, and I was afraid I was going to get killed. I wa'n't good for much workin' that day, I felt so gloomy about my dream; but I went out with my axe same as usual. I wa'n't noticing things as I ought to; and when I was cutting a tree, it came down and knocked me senseless. The rest of the fellows carried me to camp. I can't tell you how relieved I was when I come to and found myself alive. I thought myself lucky to get off so easy after such a dream."

Johnson collected that story from Western Massachusetts, but the white horse's ominous reputation may have been widespread. For example, Fanny Bergen notes in Current Superstitions (1896) that people in Maine also said dreaming of a white horse means a family member will die within a year. She found similar beliefs in New York and the Maritime provinces as well.

So what should you do if you dream about a white horse? First of all, don't panic. Other informants told Johnson that a white horse means riches will be coming your way, which is a good thing. So which is it, a good omen or a bad one? I suppose in the end it is really a matter of your perspective. Good things and bad things will happen to all of us. Even the increasing gloom of November is leavened by Thanksgiving, and soon after comes the December holiday season, when we light candles against the encroaching darkness. Nightmares end when we wake up, and hopefully there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Ghosts for Christmas: "What the Reef takes, the Reef will give back..."

There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago
It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Andy Williams, It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (1963)


So what is it about Christmas that goes so well with ghosts? Such a question inevitably brings up the issue of why we celebrate Christmas in December at all.

Jerome K. Jerome, Told After Supper (1891)

************

A few years ago Tony and I went to visit a friend around Christmastime. We looked at her tree, we had appetizers and cocktails, we talked about our lives. As we talked our friend mentioned that she thought her apartment might be haunted by a ghost.

She had heard strange banging noises in the middle of the night. Lights would turn themselves off and on. Items that she placed on her bedside table would vanish, only to show up later in another room. Doors would slam shut when no one was there. She had mentioned these phenomena to her neighbors, who told her that a previous tenant had committed suicide in the apartment. Maybe this former tenant was still lurking around?


When I got home that night I dreamt about a friend who had died recently. I saw him standing in a subway station next to a rack of postcards. He didn't seem sad or scary, simply present. The one odd note was that while alive this friend always wore a brown leather jacket, but in my dream his jacket was black.

Then next morning I told my dream to Tony. Surprisingly, he had dreamt something similar, but about a different friend. It was definitely an interesting coincidence and a little spooky. The Roman poet said that Sleep was the brother of Death. Maybe ghosts are the siblings of dreams?

 

I am something of an agnostic about ghosts. I can't decide if they are objective or subjective phenomena. Many people I know and respect have experienced ghostly phenomena, but most of the uncanny phenomena I've experienced have happened while I am asleep or in that liminal time between dreaming and waking. Something weird even happened to me this week.

I was lying in bed sleeping when I felt someone sit down next to me. I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and heard a man whisper something unintelligible. I woke up quickly and kicked off the covers. There was no one there. It was 3:30 am. I thought, "It must have just been a dream..."

I started to fall back asleep when I heard my cell phone buzz, signaling that someone had sent me a text. I briefly worried it was my mother texting me to say that someone in the family had died. What if the presence I felt on my bed was a relative saying farewell en route to the afterlife? But then I realized my mother doesn't text and I fell back asleep. When I finally checked the phone in the morning there was no text message at all. No one had passed away.

Christmastime has traditionally been the season for ghost stories. Here in North America we tend to celebrate ghosts and the restless dead around late October, when the dark season has only just begun, but in Europe ghosts more often make their appearance around Christmas. For example, ghost stories were an important part of Christmas festivities in Victorian England. Many Victorian families would gather by the fireplace to tell ghost stories after supper on Christmas Eve, and Charles Dickens drew on this tradition when he included the four ghosts in A Christmas Carol.

It makes perfect sense to me. The Northern Hemisphere is at its darkest now, and most of us are walking around in a somnabulant state even during the day. It just seems reasonable that ghosts would pervade our waking consciousness at this time of year. Christmas celebrates the return of the light but we have to go through the darkness first to get there first.

All of which brings me to this week's main story, which is about a haunted lighthouse.

Penfield Reef Light is located about a mile off the shore of Fairfield, Connecticut. The reef is said to be one of the most treacherous areas in Long Island Sound, and the lighthouse was built in 1874 to guide ships safely past it.

Penfield Reef Light at high tide, from Wikipedia

In December of 1916, the light was staffed by two men: lighthouse keeper Fred Jordan and assistant keeper Rudolph Iten. On December 22 Jordan decided to row ashore to see his family for Christmas. It wasn't that far a distance, and he was an experienced boater. Sure, the waters were rough but he was determined to spend the holiday with his loved ones.

It was a terrible mistake. The waves were rougher than Jordan estimated, the winds wilder. His small boat capsized a short distance from the lighthouse as Iten watched in horror, unable to aid his partner because of the rough seas. Jordan's body was recovered a few days later on the shore.

Two weeks later Iten was on the ground floor in the lighthouse when he saw Jordan walk down the stairs and enter the room where the log was kept. When Iten followed him into the room Jordan was gone, but the log had been opened to the day of Jordan's death.

From that time on Jordan's ghost appeared regularly at the lighthouse. Iten told the local newspaper:

I have seen the semblance of the figure several times... and so have the others [two assistant keepers], and we are all prepared to take an affidavit to that effect. Something comes here, that we are positive. There is an old saying, ‘What the Reef takes, the Reef will give back.’ 

(Quote from Jeremy D'Entremont's Lighthouse Digest site.)

Although Iten was spooked by the appearance of the ghost, Jordan's spirit was not malevolent. For example, two boys whose rowboat capsized reported that a man pulled them ashore onto Penfield Reef Light. They assumed that it was the lighthouse keeper, but as they looked for their rescuer they realized they were completely alone on the island. The man who saved them had vanished.

Similarly, a man in a power boat reported that he was guided to safety by a man in a rowboat. Once the power boat was safe the rescuer and his rowboat vanished. Many other sailors have reported seeing a shadowy figure on the lighthouse during stormy weather. Of course, the lighthouse had been automatic and unmanned since 1971...

It shouldn't be surprising that Fred Jordan's ghost is friendly. He was committed to guiding people through the darkness while alive, and kept that commitment even after death.

Sources for this week's post: Joseph Citro's book Passing Strange, Wikpedia, Jeremy D'Entremont's Lighthouse Digest, and The Deseret News.

Witchcraft, Poltergeists and Animal Magnetism

Absolom Lawrence of Pepperell, Massachusetts had a pretty good life. He had a loving wife, he had land to farm, and he had healthy children.

Well, most of them were healthy. At some point in her thirteenth year, one of his daughters had begun to act strangely and suffer from painful fits. At random times she would curl into a fetal position with her head contorted head backwards. When this happened her jaws would clamp shut and she could only ingest liquids when a damp cloth was stuck into her mouth.

At first Absolom thought his daughter had an illness, but he changed his mind when some other strange things began happening around the house. No matter how much Mrs. Lawrence churned the butter it wouldn't come together. The pots and pans hanging in the kitchen would rattle and bang when no one was in the room. Uncanny groans emanated from thin air. It seemed as though something supernatural was assaulting their home. Were they being attacked by a witch?

If the Lawrences had lived in the 1600s they would have thrown their daughter's urine into the fire to break the witch's hold on her, but this happened in 1843. Science and industry were changing America, so the Lawrences looked through their local newspaper to find professional help. They decided to hire Dr. J.M. Nevens.

Dr. Nevens was a wandering magnetist. This doesn't mean that he worked with magnets, but rather he was versed in "animal magnetism", or hypnosis. Nevens traveled with a female colleague whom he put into a trance so she could cure "cure all complaints the human frame is subject to."

Nevens claimed to be skeptical about witchcraft, but he took the job anyway. When he and his co-worker arrived at the Lawrence's house he hypnotized her so she could diagnose the young girl. After she went into the trance she saw something uncanny.

An unknown woman was riding towards the Lawrence's house on a white horse which had no horseshoes. When it reached the front yard the woman dismounted and walked to the front door, which was closed. She squeezed herself under the door and entered the house through a tiny crack.

The woman, who was apparently a witch, clearly intended to once again torment the Lawrence's daughter but this time she was unable to reach her. The mangetic power that surrounded Dr. Nevens repelled her from the house, and she fled through a cellar door. As she did her groans and footsteps could be heard.

After being treated by Dr. Nevens things got better for the Lawrence's daughter, but only improved completely once the family moved to another farm.

*****

What a great account! It's from Owen Davies' new book America Bewitched, and originally appeared in the Nashua Gazette in 1843. I'd love to get my hands on the original newspaper to see if there are any more details.

In a lot of witchcraft stories there is a certain person, usually a jealous or angry neighbor, who is suspected of being the witch. But there's no mention of a neighborly feud in this story. Instead we get the cryptic woman on a white horse. Is she even a real woman? Maybe she's a purely spiritual or psychological being. She's like a bad fairy come to cause trouble. It's significant that her horse has no shoes, because of course horseshoes repel witches. White horses are also associated with magic in a lot of New England folklore. Dreaming of a white horse meant trouble was on the way.

The mysterious groans and banging pots remind me of stories about poltergeists. Poltergeists are often associated with troubled adolescents, and in the past they were also associated with witches. Poltergeists (and troubled adolescents) are still encountered today but usually without the witchcraft. They're now attributed to demonic activity or the latent psychic powers of repressed teens.

I think what I find most interesting about this story is the tension between the old, supernatural, witch-haunted view of the world and the newer, scientific worldview.  Young farm-girls have been afflicted by witches for centuries, but in 1843 you could consult your local newspaper and hire a scientific professional to help out. Well, maybe Dr. Nevens was really pseudo-scientific but it seemed to work.

If the Lawrences were alive today and had these problems they'd probably consult Google to find the nearest ghost-hunters or paranormal investigators. The same phenomena keep popping up but we just deal with them in new ways. The more things change...

White Horse Magic!

Feeling lucky?

My last post I noted Ethan Allen wanted to reincarnate as a white stallion (and may have done so). It's no accident he selected a white horse for his next body, because they loom large in the folklore of New England.

Here are some examples of lore about white horses:

• A person should count the horses that walk by them, but only those that are white. After three white horses have gone by, the wisher should shake hands with the first person they see, and make a wish. The wish will come true.
• To bring yourself riches, spit over your pinky when you see a white horse.
• It is said that dreaming about a white horse is a sign of trouble. This is an example of the well-known oneiric principle that dreaming of something positive (for example a marriage, a birth, or a lucky white horse) often foretells its opposite (spinsterhood, death, or misfortune). However...
  
• Some 19th century Yankees claimed instead that dreaming about a white horse foretold riches for the dreamer.

Clearly, these all made a lot more sense when New England was rural, agricultural, and horses were the transportation of choice. I think it would take me a lifetime to see three white horses go by in my neighborhood today.

(All horsey magic courtesy of Clifton Johnson.)