"Strange Creatures" Fifty Years Later

 

I struggled through 2019 without celebrating the 100th anniversary of Charles Fort's Book of the Damned, and before this infinitely worse year of 2020 passes I want to make mention of the 50th anniversary of John A. Keel's Strange Creatures from Time and Space [SCFTAS for short]. To quote an old web-page I devoted to the subject:

"The present writer has always been fascinated by monsters, of the movies, the comics, literature, mythology, folklore and even (maybe) reality. By age eleven I thought I knew all there was to know about ghosts, monsters and bizarre creatures in general.

"Then one night my father took my brother and me to the bowling alley. We were expected to entertain ourselves while he bowled for the Warren Petroleum Company league. I slipped over to a nearby drugstore and scanned the bookracks. Nothing. For some unknown reason, I dug past the front layer of books on one rack and found a neat paperback with the compelling title Strange Creatures from Time and Space in canary yellow on a somber violet-blue background. A Fawcett Gold Medal book written by someone named John A. Keel, it featured a fantastic cover painting by Frank Frazetta. I plunked down my six bits and spent the evening reading.

I had never heard of the Mothman of West Virginia, or of the Beast of Bungay, or of the Men-in-Black who harassed UFO witnesses. I had never heard of the Burning Man of Germany, or of Thomas, the Winged Cat, or of the Bigfoot-type creatures reported from such unlikely places as New Jersey and Florida. Far from being knowledgeable about Strange Creatures, I was merely a novice."

****

In the years following I collected news clippings, magazines, books, articles and newsletters of cryptids, UFOs and other matters, mostly because I was a geeky Fortean, but with an agenda hidden in my subconscious.

I remember I dream I had in the late 1970s, in which I found a copy of "the expanded, updated, annotated Strange Creatures from Time and Space." I even remember the cover illustration of this dream-book: A nineteenth-century steam train is chugging over a canyon-spanning trestle in some desert area [probably the American West]. A Godzilla-sized Tyrannosaurus rex is menacing the train, a creature so tall its head is level with the cars even though it is standing in the canyon. (There is no story like that in SCFTAS, of course.) Since then I've worked on my own Expanded Edition (very occasionally, not constantly, or I'd have been finished long ago).

As I wrote, this much-maligned year of 2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of SCFTAS, and for years I hoped I'd have the Expanded and Updated Edition ready in time. Circumstances -- and the ever-increasing number of cases I wanted to include -- precluded that. Instead, I concentrated on a few key subjects, simply to get an idea of what the whole mess might look like. For instance, I took a page-long reference to what are now known as "phantom panthers" or "alien big cats" and blew that up into a forty-two page, twenty-three thousand word mini-book in itself. I'm not going to publish it anywhere, because that would entail up numerous copyright violations. An outline of the contents, however, runs:

-- A quote from Ambrose Bierce's story "Eyes of the Panther"

-- The original excerpt from SCFTAS (a mere 233 words)

-- The trilogy of articles from FATE Magazine that jelled the concept of phantom panthers, those being

-- "Mystery Animals Invade Illinois" by Loren Coleman (March 1971)

-- "On the Trail of Pumas, Panthers and ULAs (Unidentified Leaping Animals) Part I" by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman (June 1972)

--"On the Trail of Pumas, Panthers and ULAs (Unidentified Leaping Animals) Part II" (July 1972)

-- "Mystery Animals" by Charles Bowen (Flying Saucer Review, Nov.-Dec. 1964)

-- "The Surrey Puma," an excerpt from Janet and Colin Bord's Alien Animals (1981)

-- "Ozark Country Panthers," from Vance Randolph's We Always Lie to Strangers (1951)

-- "The Wampus," from Ronald L. Baker's Hoosier Folk Legends (1982)

-- "The Manimal," from Creatures of the Outer Edge by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman (1978) [COTOE for short]

-- "Another Upright Panther" from Herbert Ravenel Sass's “The Panther Prowls the East Again!”, Saturday Evening Post (Vol. 226, no. 37), March 13, 1954

-- "And Another Upright Panther" from Bruce S. Wright's The Eastern Panther (Toronto: Clarke, Irwin and Co., 1972)

-- "Invasion of the Lion People" also from COTOE

-- "At Last, the Final Secret of the Phantom Panthers!" an excerpt from Merrily Harpur's Mystery Big Cats (Loughborough, UK: Heart of Albion Press, 2006)

-- "Pennsylvania Panther" from Stan Gordon's Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures, Casebook Three (Greensburg, PA: Stan Gordon, 2016).

Hmmm. 233 words ended up expanding into 23k-plus words. A hundredfold increase. That implies that the fully-done expansion will weigh in at about ten million words. I'll check in again at the 60th anniversary . . .

Little Stapled-On Flag

 I've moved numerous times over the years.  As a writer, my biggest carbon footprint comes from the boxes, crates and plastic bags full of books, magazines, comics, manuscripts, notebooks, Xerox copies and scribbled notes I haul one carful at a time to my new digs.  Then comes the piles of shirts, pants, underwear, socks, towels, gloves and sweaters, half of which I don't wear anymore.  Number-wise, dishes, eating utensils, glasses, pots and pans come next in their clattering, banging masses.  And then there's furniture.

One item among my myriad possessions just does not behave.  It always pokes out and ends up by itself in some corner of the back seat or trunk.  It is a tiny little American flag, purchased at some forgotten flea market, held to a long dowel stick with only five or six staples.  Long enough that it will not fit into any of my boxes or crates, and it rips through plastic trash bags.  I have to roll it up and just set it somewhere loose.  I remember having to do this every time I've moved since well before 2000.

Even when I'm ensconced somewhere, it sits in the closet most of the time.  I dig it out on Independence Day and find some ledge or window sill in which to wedge it.  Ever since I was a kid, I loved the idea of there being "Flag Day," June 14, a lesser known holiday which was basically an excuse to put up the little flag again.  On 9/11/2001 it came out and waved for several days.

I just now got in my car, two weeks post-moving, and I realized the little stapled-on flag is still rolled up in the back seat.  Seeing as today is November 11 (Veteran's Day), looks like it should finally come out.

A Kingdom of Children

 "When are you going to send new novels in to agents and publishers?" asks a friend of mine.  I'm afraid I've used up all my viable pieces on Amazon.com Kindle.  Such efforts, though more-or-less self-published, count as published to the book industry (as does uploading stories onto your own blog or web-site).  Therefore the world must wait until I churn out more novel-length works.

A Kingdom of Children, a fantasy tale that starts with the Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century then flies off the map into my own world of "Aanuu", is the nearest to completion.  Just yesterday I found the last notebook containing my notes and scribbles for the last section of the book.  This also means, however, that I must bridge a few chapter-length gaps with brand new material before I can safely type "The End."  Then comes the reviewing and rewriting.

The last of my written works were hidden in a small (7" x 5") spiral notebook.  I'm a bit surprised, because I don't like writing in notebooks that small or smaller.  Just as I get up a head of steam, I have to stop and flip the page.  Also, the smaller the book, the easier it is to lose, or just become one of a pile of near-identical booklets.

On the other hand, I don't like college/school sized notebooks either.  It seemingly takes forever to write across a single line, and it feels like longer than forever to finish a page and turn to a fresh new sheet.  Ever since I started writing seriously, I've used mostly Mead 9-1/2" x 6" Spiral Notebooks (or the nearest equivalent), the more pages the better.  Originally they had 200 sheets, but I haven't seen more than 180 per notebook in quite some time, and many are a paltry 150 or even 100 sheets.

Some of you might ask, "Why not compose straight onto the computer?"  Well, I've tried doing that for over twenty years; it ain't happening.  I'll always be faster with pen and paper.  Also, I can pull out a notebook and pen almost anywhere, and I'm limited to my tower PC computer-wise.

This device they call a Tablet certainly looks interesting, however . . .

Monster Museum

 Between my web page, FaceBook, this blog, Patreon and just writing in general, I'm needing material to write, so here's something a bit random:

I remember it was the 1960s . . . kids at school passed around a rumor that there was a book in the school library about monsters -- not some silly "101 Monster Jokes" book, or a Scholastics paperback 40 pages long, but an actually heavy, hardback book about MONSTERS!  But adult books weren't ever about fun things like that!  I kept trying to check it out, but somebody always got it before  I did.  Finally I got this weird title:  Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum!  And the rest was history.

It was my introduction to Silver John with "Desrick on Yandro."  The next was "O Ugly Bird" in Red Skelton's Favorite Ghost Stories.  Finally, I went to college, and found Who Fears the Devil? -- the original Arkham House version -- in the library.

And -- why not? -- a link to one of my own Silver John stories:  "Away Down the Road a Piece"

Fantasy World Project -- Patreon Edition/Bradbury's 100th birthday

 For good or ill, I've created a Patreon page, The Fantasy World Project.  Between that, this blog, my website, and my stories and novels, I've got to start producing copy!

####

The 20th of August was Ray Bradbury's 100th Birthday, so I have to write something Bradburian!

I almost missed my only opportunity to see Ray in person when he gave a talk at the main public library in Tulsa, OK, about 1996. I was watching a goofy cartoon version of "Tales from the Crypt" ("Tales from the Crypt-Keeper"), and I wanted to see how the running feud between Crypty, the Vault-Keeper, and the Old Witch turned out. Sad, isn't it? But I finally zipped up to the library, where Ray greeted his audience with, "YOU PEOPLE DON'T KNOW WHAT DEATH IS!", which was not quite how I thought he'd start out. He talked about life during and after the flu epidemic, and how high child mortality rates were, and how families had multiple children to make sure there would be a new generation. Finally, however, he started on the more familiar Mr. Electrico and the like.

Anyway, he signed my copy of WONDER Magazine #8, the all-Bradbury issue.

The Empty Warehouse

 As I've written -- on blog, FaceBook or somewhere -- I've been a reader all my life, but frequently I had next to nothing to read.  Before starting college I was proud owner of maybe 50 paperback books, which filled a whole shelf of my made-in-shop-class bookcase.

When I started at Oklahoma State University, however, I was exposed to the McFarlin Library, two million volumes plus thousands of journals, maps, newspaper archives and the like.

They say you can't miss what you never had -- but seeing the OSU library after being used to a shelf of paperbacks -- suddenly my brain felt like an empty warehouse, with my meager collection sitting off in a cobwebby corner.  I had worlds to learn about!  I think I would have had a good education had I simply spent those four years in McFarlin.

Fast Forward to the past few years of (mostly) unemployment.  I was too worried, too nervous to read much.  Heck, I'd start a novel -- fade out halfway through -- and put it back on the shelf.  How could I waste time reading when I should be looking for a job?

This week, however, I realized:  there's that feeling again.  My brain is an empty warehouse.  Mix in with that an added metaphorical sensation of utter starvation, and all I could say was:

"Gaaah!  I can't take it any more!"

I'm reading, ya hear me?  I'm reading Castles by Sidney Toy, the best survey of castles, fortifications, battlements, keeps and siege warfare ever!  I'm reading Lands Beyond by SF great L. Sprague de Camp and science writer Willy Ley, an early history of places that never were, a great resource for fantasy writers.  I'm reading Churchill by Roy Jenkins -- I have 50 or 60 books on World War II, and I have to start somewhere.  I'm reading Popular Science and Scientific American for -- science!

Yes, I'll work on stories, novels and resumes; I'll wash the dishes and clothes; I'll vacuum and scrub the toilet.  But from now on I'm hijacking  chunks of time to fill the empty warehouse.

20,000 Leagues Launch Party

On Thursday, August 6th, 8:00 to 9:30 PM EDT (7:00 to 8:30 Central), Pole to Pole Publishing is holding a FaceBook Launch Party for the paperback version of "20,000 Leagues Remembered!" Here's hoping everyone will be there!

Each author has five minutes to interact with the reading public and answer all their questions (not to mention self-promote). I hope I can figure out this FaceBook Party thing before then!

https://www.facebook.com/Pole-to-Pole-Publishing-102017331560624

20,000 Leagues Remembered and Underneath

A rather dreary week at least ended well -- at last, 20,000 Leagues Remembered is out (in Kindle form for now), with my story "Leviathan"! Even better, I was paid for it! Here it is on Amazon:

20,000 Leagues Remembered

Meanwhile, for those of you who have actually read my epistolary novel Endangered Species -- heck, even for those of you who haven't -- I've added a little extra to my web-site, The Fantasy World Project.  Endangered Species is composed of several issues of an old fashioned fanzine called OMNIBUS.  The editorials and letters of comment of OMNIBUS mention a frightening little tale from an earlier issue, called "Underneath", which was written by a seven-year-old boy.  The story played no part in Endangered Species, but I linked it to my web-page here:

"Underneath" by Timothy Schneider

Hopefully I'll be adding more extras, addenda, and Easter Eggs to my site in the future, expanding on the mythos of the fantasy world of Aanuu and my various other projects.

Each year I try to watch the 1995 film Apollo 13 on April 13.  Technically the flight limped back to earth on April 17, but, well, it's the 13th, when the Odyssey entered the Moon's gravity at 13:13 hours.  Anyway, I almost missed it this year, which is the flight's 50th anniversary!

Apollo 13 is my favorite movie, and Kolchak: the Night Stalker my favorite TV series, and I've always been intrigued that the original novel The Night Stalker begins in April 1970.  The FBI determines, for instance, that the vampire Janos Skorzeny arrived in Las Vegas on April 10, 1970, and buys a used car on April 18.

I always wanted, somehow, to tie the two together in some fan fiction tale.  That's one of a zillion projects on my burners, however, and very low priority.  But if I do finish it, I already have the last page written:
__________
April 17, 1970 -- Las Vegas Daily News offices

"Hard to believe, Carl, but those NASA eggheads pulled it off.  Apollo 13's back on Mother Earth, her crew safe and sound.  What a headline we'll have on the extras!"

"Huh.  Yeah, Tony.  But if they'd exploded or burned up like everyone expected, it woulda been the biggest story since the Hindenburg."

"You're getting pretty cynical in your old age, Kolchak.  When was the last time you took time off?"

"When I twisted my ankle three years ago.  You remember."

"Oh, yeah.  I was your pasta delivery boy from the Italian American Club three days running."

"Best meatballs in Vegas, Tony."

"Listen, Carl, this Apollo success-from-the-jaws-of-doom stuff's put me in a good mood.  Why not go on that fishing trip you're always talking about?"

"For real?"

"Sure.  I'll run it past Cairncross and Herman, but I don't see a problem.  The elections are months away, and even the muggers have been lying low recently."

"I might just take you up on that, Vincenzo.  It looks to be a quiet spring for once in good ol' Sin City."

Countdown

My usual way of working is to jump around on several projects at once.  This results in never getting any one project done, so I might as well have not worked at all.  I'll call it "multitasking", though, and it will sound impressive.

Now I'm working on Countdown, a collection of stories in which each story will be the same length or shorter than the one before. It ends with micro-tales only a few words long. The trouble with mini-stories: I've put in 65 so far, and I'm at 16.5k words -- about one-fourth of my goal. A long ways to go!

I guess I'll use the mini-story, thought up and written in 15 minutes, I entered into a contest before Christmas (that didn't win): "He Got Game""

____________

Grandpa’s board game was based on his own house, which was now ours.

“Too much like CLUE,” Brandon said.

“He had to do something to occupy his time after Grandma disappeared,” I countered.

I moved my token to a kitchen pantry.

“That pantry’s not in the real kitchen,” observed Brandon.

We took a hammer to the plaster. We found Grandma.

Well, while other people are self-isolated, dressing cats in silly costumes and making art out of cardboard boxes and plastic trash bags, I intend to do something in line with my profession.

Years back it looked like my father was fighting off the illness affecting his mental faculties (which eventually turned out to be Alzheimer's).  I felt I could actually move away and start my "real" life (which seemed to be continually on hold), which would include becoming a professional writer.  I felt so good, in fact, I took my first stab at a romance (or at least a beginning-of-romance) story I called "Mr. Litterbug".

Unfortunately family circumstances took a turn for the worse, and "Mr. Litterbug" ended up at the bottom of a pile of paper two feet thick.  A couple of days ago, however, I uncovered it, reviewed and rewrote it, and I gave it "the works" (which is putting a story on my PC, a memory stick, printing a hard copy which I put in a little box along with [when they show up] rejection/acceptance letters).

I'm aiming high with "Mr. Litterbug": The Saturday Evening Post.  Why not?  First, however, I have to write a synopsis of the story for my cover letter.  It's supposed to be 500 words or less . . . I just wrote one 850 words long.  We'll have some extreme cutting, then -- off it'll go!

Friday night, at nearly midnight, I put the final touches on EXTINCTION EVENTS, the third volume of THE ULTIMATE ALPHA. the trilogy I've been working on (off-and-on) since 1994. I was 99% done last November, when I landed my present job, which (with its hour-and-a-quarter drive each way) takes up most of my days. That slowed the last percent for months -- really frustrating. But I finally, finally uploaded it onto Amazon.com. It feels like my major, or at least one of my major goals in life has been accomplished.

Just in time, apparently. For the last week I've been having weird visual problems: I could look straight at a book or a computer screen and not see some words; I'd know the cursor was there, but I couldn't see it; I could see the keys on the keyboard -- but not the letters (unless I hunted along as for a lost contact lens -- "A! I'm pretty sure this is A!"). Not good for writing! The Warren Clinic people suggested it might be due to my blood pressure -- which is way up again. Guess I will have to take those pills, side-effects or no. 😐

Extinction Events: The Ultimate Alpha, Volume Three

Hard on the heels of the multiple cliffhanger ending of Followers of the Gray, the fantastic adventures of Rex Gardner, his wife Winnie and his sister Clarissa continue in Extinction Events, Volume Three of The Ultimate Alpha.*Rex has eluded the Followers of the Gray, the “self-help”...

About this website

Hard on the heels of the multiple cliffhanger ending of Followers of the Gray, the fantastic adventures of Rex Gardner, his wife Winnie and his sister Clarissa continue in Extinction Events, Volume Three of The Ultimate Alpha.*Rex has eluded the Followers of the Gray, the “self-help”...

Sneaky Werewolves

Douchan Gersi (1947-2015), explorer, adventurer, actor, and producer/director of the TV series Explore (shown on PBS and the Discovery Channel), had quite a bit to say about werewolves in his book Faces in the Smoke.

In a small village somewhere in Haiti, Gersi came upon a group of men carrying a coffin with a “werewolf” in it.  The coffin contained only a little man in his fifties, wearing pajama bottoms and a shirt.  The man had a crucifix driven into his chest, another driven into his forehead, and his hands and feet had been nailed to the coffin.  A couple of villagers claimed to have seen the man, named Sophocle, change from werewolf to human, so he was slain in this weird fashion.

A week or so later, in the town of Saint-Marc, Gersi struck up a friendship with the mayor, the chief of police, and the local army commander.  The mayor had been educated in Paris, and the other two in the USA, so they were not backward villagers.  Gersi told them of Sophocle the unfortunate werewolf, “concluding with a remark to the effect that I was amazed at what people living in the back country could believe in.  The mayor looked at the men sitting at our table and then at me and said, very seriously, ‘You shouldn't laugh about that.  Werewolves really do exist!’”

Whereupon the three important men of Saint-Marc told Gersi the following:  One night, the same trio was driving through the town, the commander at the wheel and the mayor and the police chief with him in the front seat.  They were looking for a street vendor, hoping to buy a late dinner.  At an intersection they spotted a glow shining several feet above the macadam of a side street.  Food peddlers in Haiti carried a pan of burning coals on the top of their heads, so they assumed that was what they saw.

When they turned down the cross-street, however, the car’s headlights lit up something that was not only not a peddler, but not even human:  “it was completely covered with long, black hair and had a long, hairy tail.  Its head was the head of a huge dog, with red, luminescent eyes, and a glow emanating from it.” [Gersi p. 192]

The creature ran off on two legs.  The commander gave chase, and the police chief pulled out his pistol and shot at the thing.  “It stopped, turned to face the car for a few seconds, and then crossed the street, running on all fours, and vanished between two houses.  Despite their search, they could not find the beast again.”

Even before this eye-witness sighting, the officials knew such beast-men existed, because they had been called out to local villages to examine their mutilated victims.  The manner of these violent deaths convinced them that werewolves were not the product of imagination or superstition.

"I began reading the local newspapers more carefully,” finishes Gersi, “and found that, indeed, more often than I would have thought, there were many official reports of people who had seen werewolves, as well as reports of murders supposedly committed by werewolves."

#

Gersi’s story is a rare example of modern werewolfery.  For some reason I found myself mulling over it and over legends of lycanthropy from medieval and early modern Europe.  I had the curious image in my head of old “Sophocle” puttering around innocuously in his cottage when suddenly an angry mob of villagers broke in and killed him.

I had a vague memory of several old werewolf stories where witnesses chased after a horrible predatory monster, lost it momentarily in the trees or shrubbery – then found some bedraggled fellow who was obviously the bloodthirsty shapeshifter in human form.

Ye Olde Wer-Wolfe

It is said that he was hunted down with mastiffs, and that at the moment they were closing in on him he metamorphosed before their eyes from the shape of a wolf into that of a man . . . What probably happened was that the men and the dogs pursued what they thought was a wolf into a woods or thicket.  More likely they never saw a wolf at all.

So Bernhardt J. Hurwood describes the capture of Peter Stubbe (or Stump, Stumpf, Stube, among other variants), an infamous lycanthrope of 16^th century Germany.  There is no doubt Stubbe was a serial killer and cannibal, and he was so practiced at necromancy and sorcery that, as described in his trial manuscript (1590):

“The Devil gave him a girdle which, being put around him, he was transformed into the likeness of a greedy, devouring wolf, strong and mighty, with eyes great and large, which in the night sparkled like brands of fire, a mouth great and wide, with most sharp and cruel teeth, a huge body and mighty paws.” [Otten, p. 69]

It was fortunate for his pursuers that he turned into a mortal man when they caught him, but poor timing on Stubbe’s part.  Did they really see a wolf – or something like one – when searching for the local monster?

Another famous lycanthrope was Gilles Garnier, of Dole, France, who was put on trial for murder, sorcery, and werewolfery in 1573.  Witnesses claimed to have seen something “in the form of a wolf” attack several young children, and once the beast was “hindered” from eating a girl by three brave locals.  They must have been close enough to see whether the monster was human or animal.  However, during his last attack, upon a boy of the village of Perrouze, “the said Gilles Garnier was then and at that time in the form of a man and not a wolf.” [Summers, p. 227]

Again a lupine beast was seen, but when captured, the perpetrator was conveniently human.

Then there’s the 1584 case of Perrenette Gandillon, a female of the species:

“Benoist Bidel of Naizan [France], a lad some sixteen years old, and his younger sister were attacked, whilst plucking wild fruit, by a huge wolf without a tail.”  Several peasants ran up and fought off the beast; too late for Benoist, who died from his wounds.  The shaggy killer, however, was mortally injured as well:  “the animal . . . in its last throes crawled behind a thicket, where when it was followed they discovered no wolf but the dead body of Perrenette Gandillon.”  [Summers, p. 229.]

Jacques Roulet, 1598:  “some countrymen came one day upon the corpse of a boy of fifteen, horribly mutilated and bespattered with blood.  As the men approached, two wolves, which had been rending the body, bounded away into the thicket.  The men gave chase immediately, following their bloody tracks till they lost them; when suddenly crouching among the bushes, his teeth chattering with fear, they found a man half naked, with long hair and beard.” [Baring-Gould, p. 81]

I’m starting to see a pattern.

As mentioned elsewhere in this book and in I Heard of That Somewhere, reports of “dogmen” have been increasing over the past 20 years.  Researchers use the word dogman instead of werewolf because, although the creatures are bipedal and very wolflike, there is no evidence they are people who transform into lupine monsters.  And yet –

Dogmen appear to have no fear of human beings whatsoever.  They are often seen lurking around houses and mobile homes and peering into windows.  Perhaps they watch us as we watch television.  They may know quite a bit about certain individuals.

Let’s say a dogman, usually Ninja-like when skulking about human habitations, is less careful one night and gets seen by the locals, who gather quickly to chase the monster.  It lopes toward a house or cottage it has watched before, where some poor Schmoe lives alone.  It trots up to the house then vanishes into the darkness in whatever fashion dogmen use to elude humans.  To the approaching mob, however, the beast has run back home to hide.  So they kick in the door and find the owner, who has obviously just changed back into human form.  Then the poor guy is dragged out of bed and killed in some painful fashion.  That would be a dirty trick.  Those sneaky werewolves!

Heck, a werewolf or dogman doesn’t even have to be involved in a case of mistaken identity.  The Land Beyond the Forest by Emily Gerard was the book about Transylvania and its folklore that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.  Ms. Gerard reports that the Romanian word for werewolf is prikolitsch.  Apparently it didn't take much to get those Transylvanian peasants stirred up:

"This superstition once proved nearly fatal to a harmless botanist, who . . . was observed by some peasants, and, in consequence of his crouching attitude, mistaken for a wolf.  Before they had time to reach him, however, he had risen to his feet and disclosed himself in the form of a man; but this in the minds of the Roumanians, who now regarded him as an aggravated case of wolf, was but additional motive for attacking him.  They were quite sure that he must be a prikolitsch, for only such could change his shape in this unaccountable manner, and in another minute they were all in full cry after the wretched victim of science." [Gerard, p. 322]

The botanist, fortunately, gained his carriage and fled before the peasants caught him.  One wonders if pitchforks and torches were involved.

Baring-Gould, Sabine.  Book of Were-Wolves (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1865).

Gerard, Emily.  Land Beyond the Forest:  Facts, Figures, and Fancies from Transylvania, Vol. 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010 [1888]).

Gersi, Douchan.  Faces in the Smoke:  An Eyewitness Experience of Voodoo, Shamanism, Psychic Healing, and Other Amazing Human Powers (Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc, 1991).

Hurwood, Bernhardt J.  Vampires, Werewolves, and Ghouls (New York: Ace Books, 1968).

Otten, Charlotte F. (editor).  Lycanthropy Reader:  Werewolves in Western Culture (New York: Dorset Press, 1986).

Summers, Montague.  Werewolf (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1973 [1933]).

A Few Random Book Reviews

The Lady in the Lake

Raymond Chandler

(Mystery novel; Philip Marlowe series)

This is less a review of this specific novel than an attempt to recapture the feelings I had upon first encountering Raymond Chandler. Some years ago I bought an anthology of mystery tales called 3X3, which contained three entire novels as well as numerous short stories. On the verge of dumping it again, I happened to open it to the first page of one of the novels, The Lady in the Lake.

I read the first paragraph, about the sidewalk made of rubber blocks. For some reason this made me read the first page. Then I read the first chapter, and the idea of dumping the book vanished.

I know I'm coming pretty late in the game to Chandler, his poetry in prose and the contrasting dark, sleezy world of Philip Marlowe, but I didn't read many mysteries in my youth. More's the pity. Marlowe's world, Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s, is a palpable reality in Chandler's novels. You can see every lash on a gorgeous woman's eyelid, smell the sweat and cigarette butts in the police station, feel a muscular goon's knuckles smack your chin. It is a land corrupt and decaying, yet beautiful and alive, full of the good, the bad, the tired, and the sad.

I've heard that reading Chandler means you're something of a snob, in that Chandler detested most detective fiction and consciously tried to improve on it. I don't know how to answer that but to say I was pretty much a blank slate in the mystery field; few of the mysteries I did read held my attention. But The Lady of the Lake reached right out of the book, grabbed me by the lapels, and pulled me in with a splash. Read it, read more Marlowe, read the short story prototypes Chandler wrote before he came up with his archetypal detective. *****

---

The Kinsey Millhone Series: A Is for Alibi through K Is for Killer

Susan A. Grafton

(Mystery novels)

I have probably never read a series as fast as I've been reading the Kinsey Millhone mysteries of Sue Grafton. About two years ago, in the depths of the worst depression I ever felt, the "alphabet" mysteries were literally the only things I could bring myself to read, not because they were easy or light but because they were so engaging. A true disciple of the Raymond Chandler school of writing, Sue Grafton's eye for detail is thorough without dragging on too long -- a detective's eye view, Kinsey taking in everything around her. However, though a case can become dark and grim, even deadly, Kinsey is a definite spirit of life, bouncing back in the next volume to solve another case.

The small city of Santa Teresa, California, comes to life through Kinsey's POV, the grittier, darker side as much as the pretty tourist side. Background characters appear and reappear in each volume, populating Grafton's world, and sometimes staging their own little soap operas: Lieutenant Dolan, who (naturally) hates private eyes but who respects Ms. Millhone; Rosie, the bossy Hungarian restaurant owner who varies Kinsey's diet beyond her usual McDonald's fare; and especially Henry Pitts, the old retired baker who rents Kinsey her tiny apartment, who might really have been the man of her dreams had he been a few -- just a few -- years younger.

I won't even try to rate all the Millhone books individually; the first three were the best in my opinion, yet the letters I'm reaching now ("J" and "K") are climbing in quality and entertainment value to equal the earliest books. Altogether : ****

The Night Land V. 1

William H. Hodgson

(Horror/SF novel)

I ought to read both volumes first, but. . . One of the greatest and strangest fantasies ever produced, with the inhabitants of the last structure on earth, the Great Redoubt, faced with monsters and horrors that roam the land beneath a burnt-out sun. The hero learns of a second Redoubt, where lives a woman he loved in a previous life, and he ventures across the Night Land to find her. Slows a little halfway. If it had been cut in three parts, with a slight pause between each volume, I think there would have been no "slowing". The only bad part is the long first chapter, written as if by a 17th century English dandy (the previous incarnation of the hero). Actually, the archaic language trying to explain SF ideas kind of grows on you. ****½

The Night Land V. 2

William Hope Hodgson

(Horror/SF novel)

And now the second half. (I didn't mention above that this is the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition I own, printed as two paperbacks.) Night Land's second half has our hero reach the Lesser Redoubt to escort the maid Naani back to the Great Redoubt. Here adventure mixes with the couple's growing romance, which many have found cloying, but unnameable horrors pop up often enough to interrupt the saccarin-sweet bits. Hodgson again drops many give-away ideas in this apocalyptic work, such as Naani's mention of a previous incarnation when entire cities on railway tracks rolled along endless plains (perhaps the inspiration for Christopher Priest's The Inverted World). The Night Land truly is a world/universe unto itself; wading through the whole epic takes a bit of time and effort, an ever-more-unlikely occurrence in these days of instant gratification. Still, I say it's worth it to know this weird, frightening, yet strangely beautiful world created by William H. Hodgson. ****