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Speaker 1: Welcome to this edition of The High Strangers Factor, copyright

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in on the Paranormal UK Radio Network. I'm your host,

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Steve WD along with Susie Bastile and Andy Mercer. The

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High Strangest Factor was created about half a dozen years

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ago and we have covered all aspects of the paranormal.

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Andy and Susie tell us a little bit about yourselves

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and what's going on and how people can can contact you, ladies, Well.

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Speaker 2: People can't contact me, sorry about it, but anyway, I

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had questions for you guys actually before we started, so

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yesterday I was thinking about Lemon spaces and the theories

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that paranormal activity happens in these liminal spaces because it's

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an area of transition and things like that. And I

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was wondering, do you think that's why there's so many

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toilet ghosts and bathrooms.

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Speaker 3: That may be an American phenomena that.

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Speaker 1: You don't have to I'm glad somebody thought to ask

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that question.

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Speaker 3: Any number of reasons for that.

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Speaker 1: Well, let's let's hope they're not around. They have no

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business being there. But anyway, Uh, go ahead and tell

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us a little bit about yourselves. We already already just

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found a lot out a lot about Susie, but we'll move.

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Speaker 3: On disconcerting at least.

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Speaker 4: Well as you know. I'm still plugging. Like one next

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book I'm working on at the moment, which should be

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out of mid spring. It's a transcription of a handwritten

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GRIMWAF from the eighteen hundreds which hasn't been published before,

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so I'm working on that and discovering the various other

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versions of it that are out there, and compiling a

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sort of an essay that will go with the book,

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talking about the development of this particular manuscript, which is

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keep me very busy, which I've enjoyed.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 4: I'm quietly living in the West Country, in a little

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village away from the bright lights of London and Essex

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where I used to live. I'm enjoying the piece and

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quiet out you which is very cool. Because my wife

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Many is away for the weekend. She's off rain dark

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costly music view once, I have the house to myself,

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which is very nice.

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Speaker 1: In need SUSI, so I don't.

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Speaker 2: I don't have too much of anything going on. My

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muggle job has been getting in the way of having

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too much fun and I'm about to be an empty nester.

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In the next couple of months. My son will be

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going off to college in deserting me, but hopefully, you know,

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getting rich so he can support me in my old age.

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So I can't complain too much.

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Speaker 1: You're getting into your excursion season where you go exploring

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now with the weather getting a little bit more easy

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to take.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it was the air outside no longer hurts your face.

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So hopefully I can get in a weekend adventure soon

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and actually probably usually the first stop of the year

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is Anawon Rock, which is up in Rehoboth Math, which

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is part of the Bridgewater Triangle. It is it's near

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where the Redheaded Hitchhiker is spotted. But Anon Rock has

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known for like phantom drumming, and there's been phantom fires

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there as well. Of course I haven't seen anything there,

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but that's generally my first stop in the springs. So

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if I finally do see something, you guys will be

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the first to know.

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Speaker 1: Well, you be an exclusive for the high strangeness factor.

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I attended the Frogman Conference yesterday in Loveland, Ohio. The

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story goes back in seventy two. There were two different

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police officers separated by I think two weeks Ray Shockley

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I think was one of them. They saw this strange

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amphibian creature climb out of the Little Miami River. Somebody

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had seen something like that in nineteen fifty five. And anyway,

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these guys barely show up and they've got their own festival.

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And yeah, you know, Mothman took decades to get his festival.

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It just doesn't seem right somehow. But it was interesting.

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You know, it's just the fourth outing. It's just incredibly crowded,

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and people are dressed in wearing frog ears and wearing

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frog costumes and so forth. There's a lot of books

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and artwork and so forth being sold, and some pretty

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good speakers too. Chad Lewis is someone I know from

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the Van Meter Visitor Festival, and he talked about the

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connection between strange lights and some cryptids, and James Trivett

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he talked a lot about various folklore in Ohio. So

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it was I didn't see all the speakers, but it

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was really a good time. So now let's introduce our

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guest if I can just find.

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Speaker 3: I have to say I'm very jealous of you guys.

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Speaker 4: All these conferences you have almost every weekend is very

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little like that over here we have the occasion conference

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I spect on a few weeks ago, but the sheer

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volume number of you guys have in the States just

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astounds me off. I'm quite jealous.

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Speaker 5: Well, I might begin by making a comment on Anawan

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rock that's not too far from the location that h

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he Lovecraft went to to observe Howie's comment in nineteen ten,

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a little bit closer into to Providence than the Ino

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one Rock. But he also was in his teenage years,

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he and some friends at a clubhouse out not all

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that far from in a one Rock, where they would

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go and uh and have fun. I don't know that

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he ever store any any spirits or phantom fires or anything.

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Speaker 3: However, I don't think he's a strict non believer.

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Speaker 4: If I remember correctly left Craft, I had no real

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belief in any of the paranormal, was caught supernatural or anything.

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Speaker 3: From what I remember reading.

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Speaker 5: He was quite a materialist. I had sent him a

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montage of book covers, and he may be getting into

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trouble trying to display that.

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Speaker 3: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Okay, every time, I guess I was able to do this.

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I was able to find Horace's intro. It's a great

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intro and without losing my image. But Horace, why don't

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you just tell us a little bit about yourself? Since

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I can't seem to. I keep disappearing, which is not

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a good thing.

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Speaker 5: I grew up in Connecticut, not all that far from

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where SUSI grew up, though, though in the metropolis of

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willamant It, Connecticut, and got an education in astronomy there,

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and astronomy has been my career professor of astronomy and

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physics here at Michigan State University up until the point

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I retired and became an emeritus professor, and eventually they

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kicked me out of my office. I'm just working from home,

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but have interested in a variety of subjects, from strange

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things seen in the sky to historical astronomy to more

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academic sub such as post sitting stars. And I became

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very interested in HP Lovecraft at a rather early age,

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and was particularly interested in his own interest in astronomy.

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Many of you may know, in case you have any

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people in the audience who don't know, it should be

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Lovecraft was one of the foremost writers of weird fiction

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in the first part of the twentieth century, and has

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influenced a lot of people subsequently, but it's not always

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viewed favorably by some because he was rather xenophobic in

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terms of not approving of the melting pot of American culture.

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And it is well one of the things disappoints one

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when if one is a Lovecraft fan. But nonetheless I

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thoroughly enjoy his writings and I've tried to track him

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down a little bit, and that is the origin of

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one of my books with co author Edward Guiemott, who

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I think was at one time on Susie's old show

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as well, wasn't he?

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Speaker 2: And I actually I just went to a Nearer conference,

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a New England's Antiquities Research Association, and it was out

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of college, and I kept saying, I know someone who

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works here, And the whole time I'm there, I'm thinking,

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I know, I know someone that works here. As soon

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as I got home, I realized it was Eddie, and

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I so upset that I didn't take that chance to

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visit him there. But yeah, he was on the show.

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He told he told the story of the what it

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is the Gloaucus, which is a local cryptid here in connected.

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Speaker 5: Yes, yes, well it's now I believe chairperson of the

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Department of History at Bristol Community College, not far from

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the the Bridgewater Triangle there, and he is just finishing

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up a book on the history of I'm trying to

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remember the title of it. I think it's the Power

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of the Flat Earth, idea about people through history. I

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believed in the Flat Earth, and that will be coming

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out next year by I think Paul Grave McMillan, publisher.

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Speaker 1: And how did you first discover this year?

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Speaker 5: Now, Lovecraft, I may have read one or two short stories,

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but mainly in nineteen seventy I walked into a department store,

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found the rack of paperback books sitting on the shelf

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and said, this is a pretty cover. And it was

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The dream Quest of Unknown Cadaf, which is one of

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his kind of Dunsanian works where it's kind of a

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dream world. And I read it and said, wow, I'm

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going to read some more of these and others. Some

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of the other things were quite different in style than

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that one, but it was great fun to read. I'm

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not even sure whether it was published in the real

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publication during his lifetime. A number of the of his

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longer work it's like, ah, I remember the case of

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I was dext Ward were not published in in any

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widely available source during his life, and he was mainly

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known for short stories that appeared, many of them in

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Weird Tales magazine and a number of them, a few

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of them in what was it Astounding science fiction at

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the time, And toward the end of his life he

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began to be shifting perhaps a little more toward science

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fiction with public with stories like at the Mountains of Madness,

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but not the kind of science fiction that many of

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the people at the time are writing.

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Speaker 1: Imber, go ahead, go on. I had the first story.

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I think it was in the seventies. I can't remember

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the name of the paperback company, but they started reprinting

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a lot of Lovecraft. And prior to that, I know

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that August Drylth had created Arkham House and it was

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republishing Lovecraft in a lot of hardcovers. And then they

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started to go out of print and started to just

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you know, skyrocket. But I had a collection. My first

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story was Late at Night was The Color Out of Space.

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And I'm reading this and I'm thinking, you know, this

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is a it's like a horror story, but actually when

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you boil it down, it's science fiction, so he had

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this interesting blend of horror and science fiction in many stories.

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Speaker 5: Right. The Color Out of Space is one that he

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particularly thought well of. Begins with a person walking by

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going by an old town that's been flooded to make

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a new being flooded to make a new reservoir, and

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these gets hearing old stories as to what had happened

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in the later eighteen hundreds. This was set in the

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nineteen twenties, that would be the time when he wrote it.

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Lovecraft himself was born in eighteen ninety died rather young

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in nineteen thirty seven. In fact, in one more week

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it'll be eighty nine years since he passed away, And

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so he was writing these stories, in many of them

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in the nineteen twenties into the nineteen thirties. That was

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the contemporary time he was writing about. But in this story,

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The Color Out of Space, he's securing old tales from

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the late eighteen hundreds where the strange meteorite had fallen

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on the town outside of town, on this farm, and

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the whole story is what happens to the people on

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that farm in the time after the meteorite falls, and

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it's not like the blob they don't they don't pick

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up the media right and get this blob growing on them.

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It's it's a little more subtle than that. But it's

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a very interesting fun story to read.

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Speaker 1: Uh when when we talk more about the When the

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Stars Are Right by H. P. Lovecraft? And would you

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pronounce your co author's last name again please? Okay, that's

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that's my favorite.

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Speaker 6: Well, that hit that punched every button.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I just just love it. The uh the

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references to other you know, science literature and science fiction

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and uh, I I never never realized that Lovecraft was

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so fascinated by astronomy, and you know, it's it's such

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an interesting time. Well, they didn't have uh you know,

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there were there were some powerful scopes in other parts

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of the country. There was one in California. Nothing matched

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what we have today, and so they were really kind

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of in the dark ages. But you know what it

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meant that they I guess they Your book says that

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they didn't even know if there was more than one galaxy.

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They didn't know about the life of stars.

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Speaker 5: That's right. When when when Lovecraft? Lovecraft started out as

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an amateur astronomer, when he lived in Providence, the town

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he always loved, and he had his own small telescope,

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but he used to go visit the lad Observatory, which

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is still there today it's part of Brown University, has

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the telescope, which to him seemed very large, was not

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large compared to what we have today, had a lens

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twelve inch is in diameter. And he would became friends

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with the the director of the observatory, who allowed him

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to come in and not so much use the telescope.

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I think it is used the library, and he used

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the self. After that, the self publish his own astronomy

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and science magazines that it would he and right hectograph

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back in the day. Is anyone remember hectographing? I remember

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still when I was in school, occasionally instead of getting mimeographs,

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would get the even more simple method of hectograph. Well

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more laborious probably, but but could be done with just

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a without a meograph machine. And he would make maybe

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twenty five copies of these magazin scenes that would go

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to friends and relatives and fortunately for us, and many

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of them are kept today at the at the Library

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of Brown University and our online and you can read

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them today if you want to see what a teenage

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HP Lovecraft was penning in his youth before. He was

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also doing some early stories at this time, but didn't

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really get into the stories. He wanted to become an astronomer.

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He had dreams of becoming an astronomer, but he said

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he ran into mathematics and.

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Speaker 3: That he was.

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Speaker 5: Couldn't get beyond had trouble with algebra, and so he

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couldn't get beyond that. And in fact, some people think

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it was that that was partly responsible for a kind

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of a mental breakdown he had in nineteen o eight

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when he realized that he would not be going on

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to become an astronomer. He never actually even graduated from

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high school in Providence, let alone made it into Brown University,

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and he was rather for the few years after that breakdown.

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This maybe the only time that he could really be

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considered something of a reculus. But as in later years

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he had a lot of friends by letters, he was

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one of the world's greatest letter writers. He is reat

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thousands of letters to friends, many of which have been

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published today. And I think Eddie Gimont said that if

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you were alive today, you can see him writing all

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kinds of things on Facebook and oh Instagram, and being

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a real social media person. I don't know if that's

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true or not, but he was certainly use the ability

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the techniques of the time to to spread his thoughts to.

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Speaker 2: Friends, probably Yelp reviews for sure.

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Speaker 5: He may, he may.

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Speaker 1: I have a volume of letters with here with Clerk

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Ashton Smith, another one of my huge favorite writers of

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weird fiction bizarre short stories. I have a lot more

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questions on this book, but I want to I know

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that both Susie and Andy have some questions for you,

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so I'm gonna step back a little bit, but I

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want to get back to when the stars are right

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just and the fascination that Lovecraft had with the Uh,

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with Venus and the moon and so forth. But guys,

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go ahead and ask some questions.

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Speaker 2: So, Horace, when you were on my show, we talked

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about your feelings towards Charles Fort, and I was just

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right now, as we're talking, I was reminded that I

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had an archaeology professor that had similar feelings towards Lovecraft

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as you do towards Charles Fort. New England, we have

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what we call New England lore or Yankee lore around

299
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the stonework in New England and there's rumors that it

300
00:21:43,079 --> 00:21:49,000
was built by the Phoenicians or Irish monks is another

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big one, and he attributed a lot of that to Lovecraft,

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but never explained why. So I'm curious to know if

303
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you know why he would feel that way.

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Speaker 5: Not quite in the sense that Lovecraft didn't have stones

305
00:22:10,440 --> 00:22:15,880
in New England built by people sailing in from from

306
00:22:15,920 --> 00:22:18,839
Europe so much, but he did have in some of

307
00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:25,200
his stories, like the Dunnich Horror, he would have stones

308
00:22:25,279 --> 00:22:29,440
on mountaintops, but there was supposed to be old stones

309
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going back to ancient times and around which supernatural events

310
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:45,000
and the rituals could be held. So the stones, in

311
00:22:45,039 --> 00:22:51,799
that sense were were not natural, but they weren't anything recent.

312
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And in some of his tails there were mountains where

313
00:22:56,680 --> 00:23:01,359
the people supposed to stay away, as in The Whisper

314
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and Darkness, because they were visited by the Migo, these

315
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:13,440
alien creatures that kind of interacted with the early Native

316
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:19,240
Americans who learned not to go near those places where

317
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:23,440
the migo. Well, although the Migo did interact with some

318
00:23:23,640 --> 00:23:29,839
people and had their minions to do their work, so

319
00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:36,839
I wouldn't think that directly one should think of Lovecraft

320
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:41,000
as being responsible for that many of these old tales,

321
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:50,039
constructions by the people coming over from England or the Vikings,

322
00:23:50,640 --> 00:23:55,079
go back long before Lovecraft's time, back many of them

323
00:23:55,480 --> 00:24:01,160
into at least the nineteenth century, if if not earlier.

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So I think Lovecraft is getting a bit of a

325
00:24:05,279 --> 00:24:10,720
bum wrap in that from your professor. Now, on the

326
00:24:10,720 --> 00:24:16,920
other hand, Charles Fort, Charles Ford, if you've never read him,

327
00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:21,359
he wrote, lived in from the eighteen seventies to he

328
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:26,200
died in nineteen thirty two, so he did overlap with Lovecraft.

329
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And he became most famous for the book The Book

330
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of the Damned, which is a collection of strange things

331
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:41,160
that he thought had been damned by science that is

332
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not included in the usual corpus of scientific knowledge. And

333
00:24:47,079 --> 00:24:50,079
he had some other books after that, like New Lands.

334
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But astronomers were Charles Fort's real, real bete noir where

335
00:25:01,799 --> 00:25:05,440
he was. He didn't think much of astronomers and what

336
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:09,480
they professed to know about the solar system of the universe.

337
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And as an astronomer, I feel obligated to return the

338
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:23,839
sentiment and uh, say Charles Fort, Uh, astronomy, much of

339
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:27,920
astronomy has been proven right since your time. So take

340
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:36,920
that you Charles for I wrote a little thing about

341
00:25:36,920 --> 00:25:40,039
that once, but I never got it published anywhere, so

342
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I just still haven't.

343
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Speaker 3: Known my files.

344
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Speaker 2: I just sent my mother a copy of your book,

345
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Williemann Exkui's Ah, and she she had a couple of stories.

346
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She wanted me to tell you.

347
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Speaker 1: This is very important happy.

348
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Speaker 2: So she thinks these both took place in the late

349
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:05,319
fifties early sixties. But the first one was her mother

350
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had sent her out. She grew up on a dairy

351
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farm and they had an outbuilding where they kept milk.

352
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,400
Her mother had sent her out to go get a

353
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bottle of milk, and she had seen a meteor shower

354
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,319
when she went out to get that milk. Now, this

355
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:29,200
was obviously well before the Internet, and she had no

356
00:26:29,279 --> 00:26:33,599
idea what a meteor shower was, and she thought it

357
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was some kind of like signed from God, right, because

358
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that's she I think she was. She would have been

359
00:26:42,079 --> 00:26:46,799
like single digit age at this point. And then there

360
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:50,000
was another time where she went out at night to

361
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use the outhouse and saw it. Yes, because we didn't

362
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have indoor plumbing and lebanon yet Horace, they only had

363
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:04,480
that in Willimane. But she saw what she now knows

364
00:27:04,640 --> 00:27:08,160
is the northern lights, but at the time thought it

365
00:27:08,359 --> 00:27:10,759
had to have been some other kind of you know,

366
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celestial signal, because she just had no idea that was

367
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something that happened.

368
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 5: The nineteen fifties were a great time for northern lights

369
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because it was a peak of solar activity. There was

370
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one of the strongest peaks of solar activity that we've had.

371
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And in about nineteen fifty seven, my mother took me

372
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out on the back steps and pointed to the north

373
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where I could see these rays rising up in the sky,

374
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going up and down, and I was told there were

375
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northern lights. And within the next few years I was

376
00:27:57,440 --> 00:28:00,519
able to see a number of displays. When I was

377
00:28:00,519 --> 00:28:06,319
a dusty kid and mostly just dragged out and pointed up,

378
00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:14,039
there was some brilliant displays with bright red showing overhead,

379
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:20,759
some really fun northern light displays that I I didn't

380
00:28:20,759 --> 00:28:23,559
know they were anything that all that spectacular. I mean,

381
00:28:23,599 --> 00:28:26,759
as a little kid said on northern lights, hmm, that's

382
00:28:26,839 --> 00:28:29,799
that's pretty Uh, those of us happen all the time,

383
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:35,880
but uh, but I've been following them ever since. And

384
00:28:36,039 --> 00:28:43,359
here in Michigan we've had a few nice displays of

385
00:28:43,519 --> 00:28:46,359
the past few years some have been strong enough to

386
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:49,680
go into the south and and I don't know whether

387
00:28:49,880 --> 00:28:54,319
Steve has seen any lately or if if any of

388
00:28:54,359 --> 00:28:57,480
you have seen them in the past couple of years.

389
00:28:58,079 --> 00:28:59,920
Of course we have to in Michigan, we have to

390
00:29:00,119 --> 00:29:04,559
hope it's a queer sky too, yeah, exactly, which is

391
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:08,079
far from being the case on many occasions.

392
00:29:09,039 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 2: First time sights in Connecticut the last couple of years

393
00:29:15,359 --> 00:29:17,640
in England in the south, which is very unusual.

394
00:29:17,880 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 4: It's not uncommon to get him in Scotland or out

395
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,640
the other the country, but down southwest it's very unusual

396
00:29:22,680 --> 00:29:26,039
the last couple of years, if you were visible, which

397
00:29:26,079 --> 00:29:27,160
is surprising.

398
00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:36,400
Speaker 1: My first time seeing them was the horse was up

399
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,960
on Voice Blank Island in the Straits of Mackinaw, you know,

400
00:29:40,039 --> 00:29:44,359
not too far from obviously Mackinaw Island and the bridge.

401
00:29:44,880 --> 00:29:47,440
We used to My grandmother used to earn property up there,

402
00:29:47,519 --> 00:29:51,039
so we would vacation up there were One time, as

403
00:29:51,079 --> 00:29:54,400
we would as kids, we would have a bonfire on

404
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,599
the beach and we're sitting around and I'm looking up

405
00:29:56,599 --> 00:29:59,559
at the sky and the whole sky is on fire.

406
00:30:00,039 --> 00:30:02,279
Now there wasn't for some reason, there wasn't much cover

407
00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:05,160
in them, but I did figure out that these must

408
00:30:05,200 --> 00:30:08,279
be the Northern lights. But the whole sky was lit

409
00:30:08,359 --> 00:30:12,960
up with these shimmering lights from horizon to horizon. And

410
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,599
then one other time, my then wife and I we

411
00:30:15,599 --> 00:30:19,720
were driving up north and the Lower Peninsula, and we

412
00:30:19,720 --> 00:30:22,839
weren't all that far north, but we started to notice

413
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,240
the Northern lights and there was color green and red

414
00:30:26,279 --> 00:30:28,799
and so forth. And they've even been down here, but

415
00:30:28,839 --> 00:30:30,920
of course I missed them down here in West Virginia.

416
00:30:31,519 --> 00:30:37,319
But yeah, it was pretty amazing to see them.

417
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 5: If you have your camera out and take a time exposure,

418
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,160
you'll often find it shows the color a lot more

419
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,680
than your I can see. And partably that's because if

420
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:52,640
the Northern lights are faint, they don't activate the color

421
00:30:53,079 --> 00:30:55,720
sensors in your eye. They have to get up to

422
00:30:55,759 --> 00:31:00,400
a certain brightness to do that. And so if you

423
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:04,039
have a faint Northern lights glow and you take a

424
00:31:04,079 --> 00:31:07,920
picture with your camera, it'll often show green, for example,

425
00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:14,319
but your eye might just see a ghostly uh grow well,

426
00:31:14,359 --> 00:31:16,599
funny enough, that's exactly what I could see looking out

427
00:31:16,599 --> 00:31:16,960
the window.

428
00:31:16,960 --> 00:31:19,359
Speaker 3: Were actually holiday in a little coastal time. I can

429
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:21,519
see what like static clouds across the.

430
00:31:21,440 --> 00:31:26,200
Speaker 4: Scow very strange and its online about the northern lights.

431
00:31:26,359 --> 00:31:30,279
Take with our cameras off and iPhone someone we both

432
00:31:30,359 --> 00:31:33,279
had some really spectacular pictures. Again, it's slightly time today

433
00:31:33,359 --> 00:31:36,119
to get the effect. But yeah, hardly visible to naked eye,

434
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:37,759
but he's very visible to the camera.

435
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:40,039
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.

436
00:31:41,839 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 4: I got a quick question for regarding sort of going

437
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,000
back to the Lovecraft. I'm a very big fan of

438
00:31:46,079 --> 00:31:46,759
Arthur Mackham.

439
00:31:46,799 --> 00:31:49,720
Speaker 5: Have you come across Oh, yes, I have read his

440
00:31:50,119 --> 00:31:53,920
stories and I enjoyed them very much, as well as

441
00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:57,200
did the Lovecraft, who was a great admirer of him.

442
00:31:57,920 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 3: Definitely, and uh.

443
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 5: Hes uh. This story has tended to be more tied

444
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:13,920
to some of the places over and in in Britain

445
00:32:14,039 --> 00:32:21,680
and Ireland. Right the settings are I'm unfamiliar with. I

446
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:25,799
although I've visited over there, I've never been off looking

447
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,799
at the places where it's likely there was set his tales.

448
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:31,640
Speaker 1: But uh.

449
00:32:34,279 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 5: Uh. In the way that Lovecraft imbus the stories with

450
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:43,960
with New England and Providence, mac and I think has

451
00:32:44,079 --> 00:32:48,039
imbued his stories with some of the background of the

452
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,640
areas of the British isles that he was living.

453
00:32:51,359 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 3: In particularly in South Wales.

454
00:32:54,160 --> 00:33:00,559
Speaker 5: So Wales sounds like a great place for a haunted

455
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:04,480
stories and the apparitions.

456
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:05,960
Speaker 3: This hometown of Kellyon.

457
00:33:06,039 --> 00:33:08,960
Speaker 4: But I went there last year and I went to anniversary,

458
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:11,000
stayed in the hotel and didn't realize it is actually

459
00:33:11,000 --> 00:33:14,279
next door to his house, which wasn't That was very

460
00:33:14,839 --> 00:33:17,759
as well, Yes, and it's the kind of thing I

461
00:33:17,839 --> 00:33:21,480
think we identify South Wales often in his stories and

462
00:33:21,880 --> 00:33:25,240
some of the local there's a Roman villa nearby.

463
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:28,920
Speaker 5: Is was he Welsh? Was mac in the Welsh?

464
00:33:29,680 --> 00:33:32,599
Speaker 3: Absolutely? Yeah, myself are very proud of that.

465
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:37,559
Speaker 4: Yes there was, were there kind of constituted there, but

466
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,559
really highlighting your own local area has been the.

467
00:33:40,559 --> 00:33:42,359
Speaker 3: Area of most interest New England.

468
00:33:44,279 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 4: Mac in the South Wales, but Wells and London for

469
00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:51,079
a long time as well, and was related into London too.

470
00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:54,039
So also I'm part of the exciting Robert Chambers, if

471
00:33:54,079 --> 00:33:55,640
you have an opinion, whose work too.

472
00:33:55,880 --> 00:34:01,400
Speaker 5: I have a little, but not so much. Was he

473
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:06,680
the fellow who wrote the The King and Yellow or differently.

474
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:08,280
Speaker 3: No, absolutely The King of Yellow.

475
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,760
Speaker 4: That's probably his main falling into some of the more

476
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,440
weird fiction type writing. To talk about his writing became

477
00:34:16,519 --> 00:34:18,719
much more conventional later on. But in those early stories,

478
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,400
particularly the King in Yellow series, very I found them fascinating.

479
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:25,800
There was a I like the style again. Obviously love

480
00:34:25,840 --> 00:34:27,960
cross board a little bit some of the ideas. But

481
00:34:28,079 --> 00:34:31,320
this seems normal usus reading. And they'll tell you some

482
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:36,239
very strange happens which concerning He's just very matter of

483
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:38,719
fact that it's very odd observation about something going. I

484
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:44,400
always found that, particularly enjoy chambers of early writing. Okay,

485
00:34:44,599 --> 00:34:46,559
that same kind of stuff as well.

486
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:54,119
Speaker 5: Lovecraft wrote a a short book which is you can

487
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:58,519
buy today. It was just published. The serial during his

488
00:34:58,679 --> 00:35:04,239
lifetime from most but called Supernatural Horror and Literature, which

489
00:35:05,199 --> 00:35:08,079
gives his views of a number of these writers, those

490
00:35:08,239 --> 00:35:12,639
known to him. Uh and of course people only up

491
00:35:12,719 --> 00:35:17,159
to the twenties or whenever he wrote the thing. But

492
00:35:17,679 --> 00:35:22,599
but Macin is in there. It brought Blackwood, Elgernon Blackwood.

493
00:35:23,079 --> 00:35:23,679
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

494
00:35:23,800 --> 00:35:31,920
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the Willows he liked, Yeah, and Montagu wrote James.

495
00:35:33,039 --> 00:35:38,480
Lovecraft sent a letter to James with one of his publications,

496
00:35:38,639 --> 00:35:44,039
but evidentely h James was not that big of a

497
00:35:44,119 --> 00:35:50,000
fan of Lovecraft's work, so the admiration was not mutual.

498
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: Have you, gentlemen, read The Wind to Go by Elgermon Blackwood?

499
00:35:57,320 --> 00:36:01,519
Speaker 5: Yes, I have a man, what a what an.

500
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:07,679
Speaker 1: Amazing story that is? And who wrote the Great God Pan?

501
00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:08,480
Was that marching?

502
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 3: That?

503
00:36:11,079 --> 00:36:11,320
Speaker 1: Okay?

504
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:18,519
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's good. The Willows I like, and uh the

505
00:36:18,599 --> 00:36:22,119
Wind to Go and uh I do like some of

506
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:25,320
Montaca wrote James's books, but they do tend to be

507
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:30,159
a little bit repetitive if you sit down and read

508
00:36:31,079 --> 00:36:35,719
a series of them all at one time. Many of

509
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,719
them have kind of the same kind of ghostly appearance,

510
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:44,079
so they're fun, but I'd read them not all in

511
00:36:44,239 --> 00:36:46,599
the in the Night m.

512
00:36:49,119 --> 00:36:52,480
Speaker 1: Susie. Was there a something that some information you had

513
00:36:52,599 --> 00:36:55,000
on the mysterious pook Wedgies.

514
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,960
Speaker 2: Oh, last time we talked, Harris, you had asked me

515
00:37:00,119 --> 00:37:04,599
if I knew anything about how I think Cotton Mather specifically,

516
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,639
but the Puritans in general felt about Puckwagies.

517
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:09,079
Speaker 1: Yeah.

518
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:14,800
Speaker 2: I looked into it a bit. There was one reference

519
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:19,239
that I had thought was a Puritan. It turned out

520
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,400
to be a merchant. So during that time period, the

521
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:25,559
merchant probably wasn't a Puritan but had just come over

522
00:37:25,639 --> 00:37:31,480
to make some money. But he had called puckwagies, little devils.

523
00:37:32,719 --> 00:37:38,960
But after some research, what I have come to think

524
00:37:39,199 --> 00:37:43,559
was that the Puritans just did not care because it

525
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:48,559
wasn't them. It is kind of the impression I got,

526
00:37:48,719 --> 00:37:53,000
like those are, you know, the native people's things. They're

527
00:37:53,079 --> 00:37:56,079
bad because it's not ours, and we're not going to

528
00:37:56,119 --> 00:37:56,599
think about it.

529
00:37:57,400 --> 00:37:58,280
Speaker 4: Is kind of.

530
00:38:00,599 --> 00:38:04,320
Speaker 2: The idea I got from what I've read.

531
00:38:06,480 --> 00:38:11,639
Speaker 5: Well that willemantic Sky's book does have a chapter of

532
00:38:11,679 --> 00:38:18,639
the first chapter that connects Cotton Mather up with northern lights,

533
00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:25,920
and it goes back to seventeen nineteen when in a

534
00:38:26,159 --> 00:38:32,360
dark December night, suddenly these lights began to appear in

535
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:37,119
the sky, and many people around Boston and all of

536
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:42,159
New England were quite affrighted by these lights. It just

537
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:46,800
how they hadn't seen northern lights much before, because it

538
00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:49,400
was during the month before that had been the time

539
00:38:49,480 --> 00:38:53,000
of the Manda Minimum, where the sun was very quiet,

540
00:38:54,199 --> 00:38:58,360
and there were so many northern lights at middlelanitude. So

541
00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:03,039
this was a not only an astounding thing to see

542
00:39:03,119 --> 00:39:07,440
as thoas is, but something that was fresh for them.

543
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:12,119
And Cotton Mather wrote a book a pamphlet about it

544
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:17,000
called A Vice from Heaven, where he said, yeah, this

545
00:39:17,239 --> 00:39:21,719
is the Northern Lights, and it's a natural phenomena, but

546
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,000
it could also be a sign from God. He was

547
00:39:25,119 --> 00:39:29,039
that was on the lookout for evidence for the imminent

548
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:34,639
Second Coming, and he said, if these Northern lights could

549
00:39:34,679 --> 00:39:39,360
awaken us the righteous sorts thoughts of the righteous, they

550
00:39:39,400 --> 00:39:44,599
would be doing some good. So his Northern Lights is

551
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:48,760
rather different than my own, and he had some rivals

552
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:51,360
at the time who viewed them as more of a

553
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:57,360
purely natural phenomenon, Thomas Roby for one. But it's interesting

554
00:39:57,480 --> 00:40:02,320
to see how striking them all the lights appeared when

555
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:07,159
there'd be been largely absent from New England for decades

556
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:10,400
before the return seventeen nineteen.

557
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:18,039
Speaker 1: Before we get back to when the stars are right when,

558
00:40:18,039 --> 00:40:21,440
I definitely want to do that because one of my

559
00:40:21,679 --> 00:40:26,519
favorite all time Lovecraft stories, actually it's almost a short novel,

560
00:40:26,880 --> 00:40:29,559
The Whisper and Darkness, and that kind of ties in

561
00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:32,920
with his fascination with astronomy. But I have to ask

562
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:35,639
you you mentioned and some of the things you'd like

563
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:41,440
to talk about about your interest and fascination with nineteen

564
00:40:41,519 --> 00:40:45,880
fifties as much science fiction and horror movies, all those

565
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:47,760
sort I grew up on and loved.

566
00:40:48,679 --> 00:40:51,159
Speaker 6: Did you go to like a local theater that had

567
00:40:51,239 --> 00:40:54,840
Mattine's where they showed these or they did in Willamantic.

568
00:40:55,800 --> 00:40:59,840
Speaker 5: There were two theaters mattine Theaters when I was a little.

569
00:41:01,119 --> 00:41:04,039
One of them closed fairlier. It was called the Gem Theater,

570
00:41:04,159 --> 00:41:08,039
and that was kind of the cheapest the theater around

571
00:41:08,920 --> 00:41:12,920
for matinees anyway, you could get in for a dime

572
00:41:13,119 --> 00:41:16,519
or fifteen cents. And the Capitol Theatre was the other one,

573
00:41:16,559 --> 00:41:20,719
but that was a little bit more ritzy, was slightly newer,

574
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,320
and we're to go into the Gem Theater and they'd

575
00:41:24,400 --> 00:41:32,000
be showing Rodin or or Earth versus the fine Saucers

576
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:42,960
or giant car alconom My critical faculties were not too

577
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:47,280
extreme at the time. When I was five or six

578
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,800
or seven, I can even remember seeing Plan nine at

579
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:55,599
the theater, and I didn't think there was anything that

580
00:41:55,800 --> 00:42:01,760
extraordinary about it, that bad about its tombstones that wobbled

581
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:07,000
when someone fell against him, or fighting sauces that were

582
00:42:07,079 --> 00:42:13,639
clearly just things held by strings and set on fire.

583
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:19,119
So one should think my critical faculties were limited. One time,

584
00:42:19,599 --> 00:42:24,360
I've told this before on a different program. One time

585
00:42:25,079 --> 00:42:29,400
I went with my sister and our father came to

586
00:42:29,480 --> 00:42:35,159
the Saturday matinee that turned out not to be perhaps

587
00:42:35,280 --> 00:42:38,800
the best thing. I think it was Rodin, though it

588
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:43,039
might have been Jack Card that we were watching. And

589
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,960
it's the middle of it. All the kids are excited,

590
00:42:47,639 --> 00:42:52,599
Rodan is this giant I should say reptilian flying monster.

591
00:42:52,719 --> 00:42:58,360
It's a Japanese movie. And all us kids are sitting

592
00:42:58,519 --> 00:43:03,079
on the edge of seats, thrilled by the appearance of

593
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:10,039
the giant flying monster, and my father lets everyone's quiet hushed,

594
00:43:10,960 --> 00:43:14,599
and my father lets out in the loud voice, well

595
00:43:14,760 --> 00:43:18,360
this is the silliest blanky movie I have ever seen.

596
00:43:19,159 --> 00:43:21,159
But he didn't see his blankety blank.

597
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:25,639
Speaker 1: I'm afraid he didn't find it gripping then, huh, he

598
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:26,159
did not.

599
00:43:26,480 --> 00:43:30,639
Speaker 5: And I don't know how many of the kids were

600
00:43:30,760 --> 00:43:35,079
shocked by his language. But after that, it is better

601
00:43:35,199 --> 00:43:40,599
if if dad didn't go along to those Saturday matinees.

602
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:43,280
Did you have a screaming kids?

603
00:43:44,400 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: Did you have a local horror host on television in

604
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,679
those days, like on a Friday or Saturday night showing

605
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:51,760
uhr movies?

606
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 5: I don't remember one because I couldn't stay up to

607
00:43:56,000 --> 00:43:59,079
probably when they were on. But what I did, yet

608
00:43:59,559 --> 00:44:03,239
I did when I was a little bit older, and

609
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:08,599
this is probably around nineteen sixty or so. I would

610
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,320
go in once a month or once every couple months,

611
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:16,039
depending upon how many dimes I had in my pocket,

612
00:44:17,079 --> 00:44:21,079
and I would purchase some magazine famous monsters of.

613
00:44:21,159 --> 00:44:26,679
Speaker 7: Film, Forrest j Ackerman, Forest Day Akermen, and he would

614
00:44:26,719 --> 00:44:29,280
have There would be pictures in there, not only of

615
00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,000
the monsters, but of horror hosts.

616
00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:36,760
Speaker 5: And I think that was my first introduction to the

617
00:44:37,559 --> 00:44:40,719
horror house. It was only when I got a little

618
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:43,719
older and could stay up a little later that I

619
00:44:44,119 --> 00:44:47,599
began to encounter them myself, and by that time they

620
00:44:47,639 --> 00:44:53,000
were perhaps past the peak on the local channels. So

621
00:44:54,159 --> 00:45:01,079
I wish that I had stories, childhood tales of horror hosts,

622
00:45:01,199 --> 00:45:04,000
but I didn't really have them at the time.

623
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 1: Well, I have to tell you I went. I was

624
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:08,719
in the Navy in the early eighties and a friend

625
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:10,760
of mine had moved out there from Michigan. He lived

626
00:45:10,800 --> 00:45:15,199
in Bloomfield Hills before that, and he became friends with

627
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:18,920
Forrest j Ackerman. So I went up to h I

628
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:24,280
went to Los Angeles from the Debates via bus, and

629
00:45:24,639 --> 00:45:27,199
I went into the Acro mansion. Now this is before

630
00:45:27,519 --> 00:45:29,440
they moved all this stuff to it like a museum.

631
00:45:30,119 --> 00:45:33,079
But man, I was just I was bumping into walls.

632
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:37,320
He had the blasters from Forbidden Planet, he had parts

633
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:41,079
of the dinosaurs from King Kong. He had an amazing

634
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:46,719
collection of books, obscure science fiction books. Man, and it

635
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,519
was just and he was he was a great guy,

636
00:45:50,119 --> 00:45:53,079
and I was just my head was spinning.

637
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:57,519
Speaker 5: I gather he was a somewhat controversial character in some

638
00:45:57,679 --> 00:46:02,440
ways with some riders, but I don't know really the

639
00:46:02,599 --> 00:46:05,440
story there. But I would have loved to have seen

640
00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:15,239
that array of material from those movies and and would

641
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,559
have been delighted to have been able to do that. Now.

642
00:46:18,599 --> 00:46:23,480
I guess it's been broken up somewhat now, and I

643
00:46:23,599 --> 00:46:25,800
don't know how much of it is all retained in

644
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:26,960
one place anymore.

645
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:31,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know either, But boy, he really had

646
00:46:31,079 --> 00:46:33,320
a collection. As an assign I have to tell you.

647
00:46:34,000 --> 00:46:38,239
I attended Wayne State University for a while and I

648
00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,800
took Astronomy one oh one, and I thought, oh, this

649
00:46:42,000 --> 00:46:45,280
is great. And then I took took Astronomy one O

650
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,079
two and I ran into that that math thing, which

651
00:46:49,199 --> 00:46:52,199
was kind of a roadblock so I thought, Hey, I

652
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:55,480
want to talk about spaceships and planets and so forth.

653
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:57,159
I don't want to. I don't want to do algebra.

654
00:47:01,199 --> 00:47:07,480
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, if you get too far into astronomy, if you

655
00:47:07,599 --> 00:47:14,960
want to understand the why a star as a lifetime

656
00:47:15,599 --> 00:47:19,000
it does, and not take people's word for it, you

657
00:47:19,159 --> 00:47:21,840
have to do the math and calculate it for yourself.

658
00:47:24,679 --> 00:47:29,800
I am a little surprised that Lovecraft couldn't have gotten

659
00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:37,360
through that. But he was often very much self taught.

660
00:47:39,519 --> 00:47:44,400
I don't think he liked learning and classes all that much.

661
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:49,400
He did very well in physics in high school the

662
00:47:49,519 --> 00:47:53,639
classes he took. He did very well in chemistry, but

663
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:57,119
I think he knew more of that on his own

664
00:47:59,159 --> 00:48:03,320
then he learned in the classes he took there. But

665
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:05,800
when he got to a point where he couldn't teach

666
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:11,079
himself the math all that well, then it seemed to

667
00:48:11,119 --> 00:48:12,639
be a roadblock to him. Right.

668
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:18,800
Speaker 1: He was early on he was fascinated by the Moon

669
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:24,039
and Venus as well. Venus, the planet that is hard

670
00:48:24,119 --> 00:48:26,920
to see now because of his cloud cover, was really

671
00:48:26,960 --> 00:48:31,159
hard to see them. And he was fascinated by what's

672
00:48:31,199 --> 00:48:33,480
the name of the crater Aristosanes.

673
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:40,039
Speaker 5: Yeah, I get that right. There was a Harvard astronomer,

674
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:45,320
William Henry Pickering, who in the later eighteen nineties and

675
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:49,039
into the early nineteen hundreds was arguing that he had

676
00:48:49,159 --> 00:48:53,719
seen signs of life on the Moon, and there were

677
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:58,440
these changes in the shadows and lights on the floors

678
00:48:58,559 --> 00:49:04,599
of certain Craterstasines was one of them, that were signified

679
00:49:05,679 --> 00:49:09,039
the growth of plant life at least maybe even the

680
00:49:10,159 --> 00:49:14,440
motions of migrating critters during the course of the lunar

681
00:49:15,199 --> 00:49:21,599
day from full moon to the next full moon. And Lovecraft,

682
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:26,280
when he got his small two and a quarter inch telescope,

683
00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:30,400
said I'm going to see if I can see this,

684
00:49:31,320 --> 00:49:33,400
and for a while he thought he was going to

685
00:49:33,639 --> 00:49:40,119
be a great discoverer with the small telescope of that

686
00:49:40,519 --> 00:49:44,559
that life on the Moon and of the then unknown

687
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:50,199
rotation period of Venus. Later on he realized, no, with

688
00:49:50,360 --> 00:49:53,880
this little back telescope, I can't really do that. But

689
00:49:54,039 --> 00:49:57,559
he published a number of things at time, and for

690
00:49:57,679 --> 00:50:01,599
a while he thought he he was seeing changes in there.

691
00:50:01,679 --> 00:50:08,880
Aretosnees that that we're indicating life on the planet. Later on,

692
00:50:09,079 --> 00:50:12,760
when he got his somewhat bigger telescope, he said, I

693
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:15,400
can't verify all these things I was seeing with my

694
00:50:15,519 --> 00:50:20,320
little telescope, and he became much more critical. I don't

695
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:22,840
know if the people he knew at the lad Observatory

696
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:29,280
were kind of pushing him that way, or saying, no,

697
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:33,719
you're you're with your with your telescope there, that's only

698
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:38,400
two inches across. You're not really being able to see

699
00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:44,320
all these details on the Moon and Venus set people

700
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:48,199
with bigger telescopes are seeing. And he became more skeptical.

701
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:52,159
But he toward the end of his life he was

702
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:57,000
back enjoying immature astronomy again. He went to meetings of

703
00:50:57,159 --> 00:51:03,159
the Skyscrapers the Immature Nomy Club in Providence in the

704
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:07,480
last year of his life, and I'm sure had he

705
00:51:07,599 --> 00:51:10,400
lived long enough, he would have enjoyed the space age.

706
00:51:11,360 --> 00:51:18,719
Early on in his life he was actually pretty realistic

707
00:51:19,119 --> 00:51:21,960
about what would be needed to go into space. You

708
00:51:22,039 --> 00:51:25,280
read science fiction and all these people of the nineteen

709
00:51:25,360 --> 00:51:28,480
twenties and all these people just jump in their spaceship

710
00:51:28,519 --> 00:51:33,480
and go zooming off. But Leftkoff said, well, he thought

711
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:36,320
that people would eventually go to the Moon, but might

712
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:39,880
take another century. And he was betting that the first

713
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:45,519
people who tried, would probably die along the way. And

714
00:51:45,760 --> 00:51:48,239
it was a little bit more realistic to the viewpoint

715
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:53,960
actually than many people at the time who were science

716
00:51:54,039 --> 00:51:59,519
fiction enthusiasts. But I'm sure him had he lived to

717
00:51:59,639 --> 00:52:02,239
the day of SPOTNK, you would have been out there

718
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:07,519
in his backyard looking up, watching to see the satellites serily,

719
00:52:07,639 --> 00:52:08,679
satellites go over.

720
00:52:09,719 --> 00:52:12,119
Speaker 2: What do you think you would have thought of? What's

721
00:52:12,159 --> 00:52:16,079
it called? The three I atlas a vlobes thing that

722
00:52:16,519 --> 00:52:17,920
has been going around.

723
00:52:19,559 --> 00:52:27,760
Speaker 5: The av Lobe is looking at this inter stellar comment

724
00:52:28,119 --> 00:52:32,559
that came in. Now this is uh, this observed initially

725
00:52:32,559 --> 00:52:36,679
identified as a comet, and when you tracked it slaw it.

726
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:40,639
So it wasn't just within our own solo system as

727
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:44,960
most comments are. It had come in to the Solar

728
00:52:45,039 --> 00:52:48,840
System from from beyond, kind of like if you've read

729
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:52,880
the author of C. Clock's story Rendezvous with Rama Yep,

730
00:52:53,039 --> 00:52:57,679
where a spaceship comes in from beyond the Solar system

731
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:04,559
and heads out again. Abby Lobe was wondering whether this

732
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:12,280
could be something like that, and he made a list

733
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:17,920
of things that were odd about this comment that atlas. Yeah,

734
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:20,480
and there are a number of things that are odd

735
00:53:20,559 --> 00:53:23,039
about this comet. But on the other end, we've only

736
00:53:23,159 --> 00:53:31,079
seen three interstellar meters or comments kind of an asteroid.

737
00:53:31,159 --> 00:53:34,639
But this is some outgassing, so you call it a comet,

738
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:42,920
I suppose. And it's not clear that they were any

739
00:53:43,079 --> 00:53:48,039
really any signs of it being an artificial object. So

740
00:53:48,159 --> 00:53:52,159
I think it's likely natural, and I think we're gonna

741
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:57,199
find more of these fainter ones. The Vera Ruben telescope

742
00:53:57,440 --> 00:54:01,480
down in Chile has recently gone into operation that over

743
00:54:01,559 --> 00:54:05,480
a few nights, skims the whole sky down to a

744
00:54:05,559 --> 00:54:09,280
deep level, and I think we're going to find faint objects,

745
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:14,239
lots of faint asteroids and things more readily than we

746
00:54:14,679 --> 00:54:18,239
could before. Now it's not going to be so good

747
00:54:18,360 --> 00:54:24,840
for looking for If ray Harry Howsen fine saucer flew over,

748
00:54:25,360 --> 00:54:28,760
it wouldn't get that because it's pointed that too small

749
00:54:28,840 --> 00:54:32,239
a part of the sky and too narrow. I did

750
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:36,079
see something odd when I was observing down in Chile once.

751
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:44,440
This is back in the nineteen seventies. I'm down at

752
00:54:44,679 --> 00:54:53,000
Sarahtoola Interamerican Observatory on the mountaintop in the Andes in Chile,

753
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:58,519
and I'm out looking at the night spectacular night sky

754
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,760
from that loca in the center of the galaxy passes

755
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:07,440
nearly overhead from that location. But what I saw is

756
00:55:07,519 --> 00:55:11,440
this a little fuzzy thing, kind of like a smoke ring,

757
00:55:12,239 --> 00:55:17,679
moving across the sky and it comes up. I didn't

758
00:55:17,760 --> 00:55:20,639
catch it right when it appeared, but it was already

759
00:55:20,679 --> 00:55:24,159
there and moved over, kind of maybe expanding a little

760
00:55:24,159 --> 00:55:27,519
bit as it went. So as a UFO for me,

761
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:33,039
but I bet it was probably something to do with

762
00:55:33,159 --> 00:55:36,519
a space launch at the time, and that what I

763
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:41,000
was seeing was material released. Because we didn't have the

764
00:55:41,079 --> 00:55:45,039
internet back then, you can just look up what was

765
00:55:45,199 --> 00:55:50,119
going on in the sky so easily. So I think

766
00:55:50,199 --> 00:55:55,079
I actually sent a report on that to j L

767
00:55:55,159 --> 00:56:03,199
and Heinech is Aque Center, but I don't know. I

768
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:06,480
just got a brief acknowledgement, so I imagine they thought

769
00:56:06,519 --> 00:56:12,519
it was just a outgassing from a satellite thing too. Yeah.

770
00:56:12,679 --> 00:56:16,880
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, all of the UFO sightings in the Bridgewater Triangle

771
00:56:16,960 --> 00:56:21,239
the past couple of years have been almost definitely starlink

772
00:56:21,440 --> 00:56:26,559
sightings and not alien related. Unfortunately, there are.

773
00:56:26,599 --> 00:56:30,039
Speaker 5: So many satellites now it's hard in the evening and

774
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:32,760
before dawn in the morning to be out there without

775
00:56:32,840 --> 00:56:38,639
seeing a bunch of them going over not so astronomers

776
00:56:38,719 --> 00:56:41,800
are not so happy with that because they're taking their

777
00:56:41,960 --> 00:56:46,280
photos and you have all these satellite trails going through.

778
00:56:46,960 --> 00:56:52,400
Speaker 2: It's like skytrash at this point. And even like with

779
00:56:52,519 --> 00:56:56,119
all the light pollution we have, you can't. And I

780
00:56:56,320 --> 00:56:59,679
live in a much larger town than I grew up in,

781
00:57:00,159 --> 00:57:02,920
about twice the size now, but without the light pollution,

782
00:57:03,119 --> 00:57:05,079
you can't just go outside and look up at the

783
00:57:05,199 --> 00:57:08,760
sky and enjoy it like you used to be able

784
00:57:08,800 --> 00:57:09,400
to as much.

785
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:13,119
Speaker 5: Right even from the town of Warmantic when I was

786
00:57:13,159 --> 00:57:16,239
a kid growing up, you could see fairly faint objects

787
00:57:17,079 --> 00:57:21,480
in the night sky. Ah, but the lighting has grown

788
00:57:22,239 --> 00:57:26,519
much brighter and you can't anymore, which was a disappointment.

789
00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:32,159
Speaker 4: Advantage a snech in the West Country of England, it

790
00:57:32,320 --> 00:57:33,440
is pretty dark outside.

791
00:57:33,480 --> 00:57:36,199
Speaker 3: It's not a little light pollution, thankfully, so to care

792
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:38,320
that moment, I.

793
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:40,679
Speaker 4: Had a lot of stars, But unfortunately they're going to

794
00:57:40,679 --> 00:57:42,599
be building on the field behind me in the next

795
00:57:43,159 --> 00:57:47,320
year or so. All going to change, fortunately for me.

796
00:57:47,920 --> 00:57:52,199
I have a question with the throwing, which in honest

797
00:57:52,639 --> 00:57:55,079
I thought we're kind of related. I'm quite fascinated with

798
00:57:55,159 --> 00:57:58,840
the whole concept, the faster than light travel, the possibilities

799
00:57:58,960 --> 00:58:01,679
or the non possibility. Is it becoming a reality only

800
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:05,760
what your thoughts are on that we will achieve that

801
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:06,199
or not.

802
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:12,440
Speaker 5: Funny thing about that. When I was a sophomore in college,

803
00:58:14,119 --> 00:58:19,280
I spent this summer working on the physics of tachions,

804
00:58:20,679 --> 00:58:26,800
which are faster than light particles. I didn't really know

805
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:30,719
what I was doing, but someone had a summer program

806
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,400
and I was in there. They have imaginary rest masses,

807
00:58:34,559 --> 00:58:38,400
so they're odd particles, but they always go faster than

808
00:58:38,440 --> 00:58:42,760
the light. They can never go slower than light, but

809
00:58:42,920 --> 00:58:49,119
alas they've not been detected so far. So some people

810
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:54,880
working on the physics of something analogous to warp drive,

811
00:58:56,599 --> 00:59:00,840
and sometimes they seem to get physics that works but

812
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:06,800
takes an impossible amount of energy or something on those sides.

813
00:59:07,960 --> 00:59:10,480
So I think I'd love it to be true, because

814
00:59:10,920 --> 00:59:14,679
I'd hate that we had to just trundle and spend

815
00:59:15,039 --> 00:59:20,760
thousands of years getting from one star to another. But

816
00:59:21,079 --> 00:59:24,159
I don't know that it's true. However, some people have

817
00:59:24,320 --> 00:59:27,719
suggested that even if you're limited to lower than light speed,

818
00:59:29,000 --> 00:59:35,519
you send out thousands and thousands of robotic space probes

819
00:59:36,039 --> 00:59:40,280
that don't mind trundling along from star to star for

820
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:44,880
thousands of years, and eventually they find an interesting star

821
00:59:45,119 --> 00:59:49,000
system and they investigate it and then report back to you.

822
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:53,280
And maybe some civilization has the ability to do that.

823
00:59:56,000 --> 01:00:04,079
But it's something that would love to be true, but

824
01:00:04,199 --> 01:00:11,000
then I can't say is true. Now, Uh, you've had

825
01:00:11,119 --> 01:00:15,679
some There are interesting visitors from somewhere that are in

826
01:00:15,800 --> 01:00:18,480
the in probably in all your neck of the woods.

827
01:00:18,519 --> 01:00:26,039
I think of Steve's area in particular. And uh, where

828
01:00:26,199 --> 01:00:32,119
is the the was it the flat Woods Monster.

829
01:00:33,480 --> 01:00:37,000
Speaker 1: In? Uh? It's near Sutton in flat Woods, West Virginia.

830
01:00:40,559 --> 01:00:45,079
What's that so Soussie? Okay, it's it's about maybe an

831
01:00:45,119 --> 01:00:47,480
hour and a half, maybe a little longer from Point Pleasant,

832
01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:48,480
West Virginia.

833
01:00:49,840 --> 01:00:52,440
Speaker 5: Now is there a flat Woods Monster Museum?

834
01:00:53,880 --> 01:00:57,079
Speaker 1: Yes, there is, Uh, not as not as fast as

835
01:00:57,199 --> 01:01:03,679
the Mothman Museum, but uh it's They even have their

836
01:01:03,719 --> 01:01:09,719
own festival. You know, everybody is h is celebrating their

837
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:13,920
local monsters these days. From the Loveland frog Man that

838
01:01:14,400 --> 01:01:16,920
you know. I mean, I'm not begrudging him a festival,

839
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:19,239
even though they only showed up a few times. But

840
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:23,960
let me do the brief intermission. Here you are listening

841
01:01:24,039 --> 01:01:27,159
to The High Strangeness Factor, copyrighted on the Paranoble UK

842
01:01:27,360 --> 01:01:30,719
Radio network. Today we are talking to Horace Smith about

843
01:01:30,800 --> 01:01:36,800
his writings which cover Meteors Lovecraft, his writings and Lovecraft's writings,

844
01:01:37,280 --> 01:01:41,639
and his interest in astronomy and much much more. I

845
01:01:41,760 --> 01:01:45,320
have to tell you again, my favorite all time story

846
01:01:45,840 --> 01:01:49,239
of Lovecraft is The Whisper in Darkness, which is basically

847
01:01:49,679 --> 01:01:53,880
about a a an evasion from space and a little

848
01:01:53,880 --> 01:01:57,199
spoiler there, but uh, so I was I have to

849
01:01:57,239 --> 01:01:59,400
tell you again. I'm going to mention boys Flank Island again.

850
01:01:59,760 --> 01:02:02,440
I was reading this story at about two in the

851
01:02:02,559 --> 01:02:06,320
morning in a cottage on boys Blank Island in the dark,

852
01:02:06,880 --> 01:02:09,519
and man, oh man, I had to make a pilgrimage

853
01:02:09,519 --> 01:02:11,719
to the little boys room and I did not want

854
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:16,199
to leave the bedroom. But it was uh and in

855
01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:19,360
the uh and it was it was written around the

856
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:23,639
time that Pluto was discovered. And I'm still a little

857
01:02:23,679 --> 01:02:27,119
bit ticked off that they demoted Pluto from a planet,

858
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:32,079
but anyway, that that was uh, it was just it

859
01:02:32,239 --> 01:02:35,039
was just that was kind of the conclusion of the story.

860
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:39,119
The the protagonist is kind of freaking out because he's

861
01:02:39,159 --> 01:02:42,719
thinking that these beings are now allowing their planet to

862
01:02:42,800 --> 01:02:45,880
be seen, and what does that mean the.

863
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:51,199
Speaker 5: The planet he called it jagath Yep, And when the

864
01:02:51,239 --> 01:02:54,679
Pluto was found, he actually wrote to some of his

865
01:02:54,880 --> 01:03:02,480
friends saying, this new planet they found is obviously from

866
01:03:02,559 --> 01:03:06,360
my story. The other thing about that the wistmer in

867
01:03:06,519 --> 01:03:10,800
darkness is if you follow the h the pattern of

868
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:14,519
the moon in the story, and you're very careful, the

869
01:03:15,559 --> 01:03:18,599
creatures come around the house more in the dark of

870
01:03:18,679 --> 01:03:23,639
the moon. He's very accurate in doing his moon phases

871
01:03:24,079 --> 01:03:27,519
and the time when the moon he was always critical.

872
01:03:27,960 --> 01:03:30,360
The stars had to be right and the moon had

873
01:03:30,400 --> 01:03:34,159
to be right, not only in terms of when Great

874
01:03:34,239 --> 01:03:38,840
Kohu Thulhu, however you choose to pronounce it, comes back,

875
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:42,719
but the stars had to be right in people's stories

876
01:03:43,599 --> 01:03:46,920
so that they matched what you would actually see in

877
01:03:46,960 --> 01:03:53,800
the sky. And he actually sent some little starmap planispheres

878
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:57,400
rotating star maps to some of his friends who were

879
01:03:57,519 --> 01:04:01,840
also authors. They would be able to get the stars

880
01:04:02,079 --> 01:04:06,039
right in their short stories, which he said they hadn't

881
01:04:06,119 --> 01:04:11,599
done in some of his earlier work. So I think

882
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:15,719
Frank net Long and some of the others got this

883
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:21,159
a little bit of chastising from Lovecraft for not getting

884
01:04:21,239 --> 01:04:26,280
the stars of the moon or other things right he was. However. Lovecraft, however,

885
01:04:26,480 --> 01:04:34,000
was far kinder than Ambrose Bierce, who wrote an essay

886
01:04:34,159 --> 01:04:39,840
called The Moon in Literature that savaged some people, particularly

887
01:04:40,119 --> 01:04:43,840
h writer Haggard, for getting the moon all messed up

888
01:04:44,159 --> 01:04:52,760
in King Solomon's mind. Minds, And there's no doubt Haggard

889
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:55,960
did get the moon all messed up in King Solomon's mind,

890
01:04:56,599 --> 01:05:00,679
but Berce was not going to let it pass with

891
01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:03,960
just a few notes, savaged them over that.

892
01:05:07,360 --> 01:05:10,440
Speaker 1: Now you have to. Now, another thing that just fascinated

893
01:05:10,519 --> 01:05:13,639
me about that time is that, you know, you mentioned

894
01:05:13,679 --> 01:05:17,079
the watching the craters and the what they thought it

895
01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:23,320
changes in the shadows, and that perhaps it maybe reference vegetation,

896
01:05:23,519 --> 01:05:27,440
maybe even construction, and of course Mars and the canals

897
01:05:27,480 --> 01:05:29,679
and so forth. That was really a time when they

898
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:32,960
thought maybe just maybe there was life on the Moon

899
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:37,519
and or even on Mars and so forth. But you know,

900
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:41,519
you've got to tell us about the Great Moon hoax.

901
01:05:43,639 --> 01:05:46,360
I actually bought the book where I can read about

902
01:05:46,440 --> 01:05:51,559
the about the claims that were made and the people

903
01:05:51,639 --> 01:05:53,320
that were suckered into it.

904
01:05:54,719 --> 01:05:57,519
Speaker 5: This goes back to I believe in the eighteen thirties

905
01:05:58,360 --> 01:06:02,519
and one of the chief astronomers of the time was

906
01:06:02,679 --> 01:06:06,400
the son of William Herschel, who had discovered the planet Uranus.

907
01:06:07,000 --> 01:06:13,639
He was John Herschel, and the southern sky had not

908
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:18,960
been seen as deeply with telescopes as the northern sky.

909
01:06:19,800 --> 01:06:25,360
So John Herschel went down to the Cape, South Africa

910
01:06:26,239 --> 01:06:31,119
and took with him built there a relatively large telescope

911
01:06:31,599 --> 01:06:35,760
for the time, and he's going to survey the southern sky.

912
01:06:36,800 --> 01:06:40,440
So people knew he was going down there. But back

913
01:06:40,599 --> 01:06:45,920
New York City, the writer for the was a New

914
01:06:46,000 --> 01:06:49,760
York's son, I believe newspaper Yes, took advantage of this

915
01:06:49,920 --> 01:06:55,599
and said, Okay, not only is John Herschel observing the

916
01:06:55,679 --> 01:06:59,000
heavens from down on the Cape, we have reports back

917
01:06:59,079 --> 01:07:02,159
from him. And what he's seeing are He's got this

918
01:07:02,480 --> 01:07:07,760
fantastic telescope with multiple lenses. You give these incredible views

919
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:11,679
of the Moon. And what he's seeing are creatures on

920
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:15,800
the moon. Uh, these these winged creatures that fly around.

921
01:07:15,840 --> 01:07:19,920
There's life on the moon there, there're civilization there. These

922
01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:25,960
I don't have the picture right now. There's some drawings

923
01:07:26,039 --> 01:07:28,519
that were made to go with the the articles and

924
01:07:28,599 --> 01:07:32,920
the sun, showing the inhabitants of the moon.

925
01:07:34,079 --> 01:07:36,400
Speaker 1: Then he have a rangetans with wings.

926
01:07:36,519 --> 01:07:41,599
Speaker 5: I think there were hairy creatures and down there, but

927
01:07:41,800 --> 01:07:45,199
they were a crust between the rang and things and

928
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:52,039
people kind of And this is fabulous for sales for

929
01:07:52,199 --> 01:07:57,320
the Sun. The sales of the newspapers zoomed up. Of course,

930
01:07:57,400 --> 01:08:01,639
no one could just send a telephone call or a telegram,

931
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:06,559
even to John Herschel, to say if it's true. You'd

932
01:08:06,599 --> 01:08:08,360
have to wait for a ship to go down and

933
01:08:08,480 --> 01:08:16,760
come back, so that there was no way to immediately

934
01:08:16,920 --> 01:08:22,239
debunk the stories. Eventually, I don't know how long it

935
01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:26,640
lasted before the story of of the.

936
01:08:28,199 --> 01:08:30,119
Speaker 1: I think it was a six part article, but I

937
01:08:30,159 --> 01:08:33,439
don't know what the span of time was. But didn't.

938
01:08:35,359 --> 01:08:40,840
Speaker 5: Poe, who some people have accused of being responsible for

939
01:08:41,760 --> 01:08:45,359
creating part of that tale, turned out to be a

940
01:08:45,479 --> 01:08:50,000
debunker two of it. If he was, because he was

941
01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:55,159
an amateur astronomer too. Actually he did some writing that

942
01:08:55,359 --> 01:09:00,239
actually contributed to the progress of astronomy, though it's very

943
01:09:00,399 --> 01:09:09,359
oddly written, and he eventually I'll say, no, this can't

944
01:09:09,399 --> 01:09:15,960
be right, and the sales. Everyone agreed it was a

945
01:09:16,079 --> 01:09:21,479
hoax eventually, and alas for the Sun, their sales went down,

946
01:09:21,840 --> 01:09:27,560
but no one was ever took. I think there was

947
01:09:27,720 --> 01:09:31,399
no admission of trouble. As I remember that it was

948
01:09:31,520 --> 01:09:37,279
a hoax and set the pattern for others in the

949
01:09:37,399 --> 01:09:40,720
nineteenth century, I think to try to duplicate it. But

950
01:09:40,840 --> 01:09:44,079
I don't know if any New York newspaper ever was

951
01:09:44,199 --> 01:09:48,680
able to achieve the celebrity of the Great Moon Hoax

952
01:09:48,800 --> 01:09:51,680
of the eighteen thirties. By the time you got into

953
01:09:51,760 --> 01:09:55,279
the later eighteen hundreds, people could send a telegram and

954
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:02,279
get an instant debunking. Wasn't the same later on. And

955
01:10:02,960 --> 01:10:08,439
alas those flying orangutan humans whatever they were, the moon

956
01:10:08,520 --> 01:10:13,079
men where were not real And sure would be nice

957
01:10:13,079 --> 01:10:15,319
to have a telescope that would show that amount of

958
01:10:15,399 --> 01:10:20,239
detail on the Moon, But even John Herschel didn't have that.

959
01:10:22,279 --> 01:10:27,239
Speaker 1: Sort of like H. G. Wells short story The Crystal.

960
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:31,560
Speaker 5: Egg, We're all say, a view through to the planet Mars,

961
01:10:31,840 --> 01:10:36,039
right right, yeah, and it said he just founds finds

962
01:10:36,079 --> 01:10:39,039
it in a antique shop or something.

963
01:10:39,159 --> 01:10:40,159
Speaker 1: Is it right right?

964
01:10:40,960 --> 01:10:49,920
Speaker 5: Uh? Yeah it h I don't know if the Martians

965
01:10:50,039 --> 01:10:54,800
were using that to get information for their invasion in

966
01:10:54,920 --> 01:10:55,760
the War of the World.

967
01:10:57,840 --> 01:11:01,479
Speaker 1: They look quite a bit different. The invaders were looked

968
01:11:01,479 --> 01:11:05,119
a little more like occupy then I think the things

969
01:11:05,159 --> 01:11:08,079
that they were H. G. Wells was talking about in

970
01:11:08,159 --> 01:11:09,279
that particular.

971
01:11:08,880 --> 01:11:18,359
Speaker 5: Story, that's true, but it's a fine little story. And yeah,

972
01:11:18,439 --> 01:11:23,800
if you've only read H. G. Wells major novels, The

973
01:11:24,560 --> 01:11:28,479
Time Machine, The War of the World's uh, The Invisible Man,

974
01:11:28,560 --> 01:11:33,239
that the science fiction which he's most famous, I would

975
01:11:33,479 --> 01:11:38,319
encourage you not to miss his short stories too. A

976
01:11:38,479 --> 01:11:45,079
number of them are very interesting. There was one I

977
01:11:45,199 --> 01:11:49,399
recalled that he had a man who was suddenly given

978
01:11:50,960 --> 01:11:55,039
the power to be omnipotent, but unfortunately it was not

979
01:11:55,239 --> 01:12:01,479
all wise too, and it and all kinds of trouble

980
01:12:01,640 --> 01:12:02,840
with his omnipotence.

981
01:12:06,359 --> 01:12:08,960
Speaker 1: Well, another another great thing that you guys do in

982
01:12:09,039 --> 01:12:14,239
the novel you go through many many authors that may

983
01:12:14,279 --> 01:12:18,039
have had may have touched and an influence you know what,

984
01:12:18,159 --> 01:12:21,960
it may have influenced some of Lovecraft's writings. And you

985
01:12:22,079 --> 01:12:26,720
talk a lot about various really obscure stories and novels

986
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:29,880
about the moon, not just h not I mean, not

987
01:12:30,039 --> 01:12:33,600
just Jules Verne from the Earth to the Moon. But uh,

988
01:12:34,000 --> 01:12:36,399
it's you know, I mean you you hit everything you

989
01:12:36,520 --> 01:12:39,640
hit aker Rice Burrows, the Moon made, and and and

990
01:12:39,840 --> 01:12:42,399
so many. I kept I kept reading your book, and

991
01:12:42,520 --> 01:12:46,399
I what I do is I put I put these

992
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:50,319
these books in my my Amazon shopping cart for later,

993
01:12:51,039 --> 01:12:52,920
and then I once in a while I total them up,

994
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:54,760
and I think, no, I'm going to have to re

995
01:12:54,880 --> 01:12:57,560
mortgage my house to buy all this stuff. So we're

996
01:12:57,600 --> 01:13:01,359
not going to do that. You even mentioned Edmund Hamilton,

997
01:13:01,680 --> 01:13:05,000
one of my favorite authors of all time. Lovecraft didn't

998
01:13:05,079 --> 01:13:07,560
like him very much, and you know, he was a

999
01:13:07,600 --> 01:13:10,319
little bit repetitive, and he was kind of the guy

1000
01:13:10,439 --> 01:13:13,680
that he and his wife Lee Brackett kind of created

1001
01:13:13,800 --> 01:13:18,199
space opera, didn't he one of the early The Earl

1002
01:13:19,119 --> 01:13:19,560
was early on.

1003
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:24,760
Speaker 5: I should say that Eddie Gimmott is responsible for tracking

1004
01:13:24,840 --> 01:13:30,079
down and finding many of those obscure uh stories that

1005
01:13:30,439 --> 01:13:34,840
I mentioned. But Edmund Hamilton became famous early on, I

1006
01:13:34,920 --> 01:13:42,760
think partly because he had a lot of catastrophe Earth

1007
01:13:42,840 --> 01:13:46,880
being destroyed by stories before he began to to get

1008
01:13:46,960 --> 01:13:50,640
him on into space opera. And I seem to remember

1009
01:13:50,760 --> 01:13:56,439
one where he had someone built giant robots in the

1010
01:13:56,560 --> 01:14:01,439
wilds of Pennsylvania that were in the way there and

1011
01:14:01,720 --> 01:14:08,520
sudden were released to to destroy the towns. And there

1012
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:13,159
was one where someone invented, I think, as is Edmund Hamilton,

1013
01:14:13,720 --> 01:14:18,560
a way to connect up with different times in the past,

1014
01:14:19,239 --> 01:14:23,479
and suddenly dinosaurs are walking down this, uh the street

1015
01:14:23,560 --> 01:14:27,399
of this town and causing similar havoc.

1016
01:14:28,119 --> 01:14:28,239
Speaker 1: Uh.

1017
01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:32,600
Speaker 5: So I enjoyed some of those early tales that are.

1018
01:14:35,199 --> 01:14:39,079
Speaker 1: But they called the world savor Hamilton, I think for

1019
01:14:39,159 --> 01:14:39,720
a while.

1020
01:14:41,239 --> 01:14:43,239
Speaker 5: Yeah, someone always had to come up with a way

1021
01:14:43,319 --> 01:14:48,359
to keep the Earth from being totally destroyed by by

1022
01:14:48,479 --> 01:14:55,600
whatever creature or or monster or whatever or comet or

1023
01:14:55,640 --> 01:14:58,600
whatever it was that was going to wipe us out.

1024
01:15:00,159 --> 01:15:02,439
Speaker 1: But you know his uh, he would he would do

1025
01:15:02,600 --> 01:15:06,439
formulas sometimes, but I think that his imagination was was

1026
01:15:06,520 --> 01:15:09,439
so good that he kind of uh surpassed that a

1027
01:15:09,479 --> 01:15:10,760
little bit. He wrote.

1028
01:15:11,039 --> 01:15:13,560
Speaker 6: Did you ever read any of the Captain Future stories?

1029
01:15:14,880 --> 01:15:16,560
I did not, unfortunately.

1030
01:15:17,720 --> 01:15:21,119
Speaker 1: I actually I actually have the original pulp magazines of

1031
01:15:21,199 --> 01:15:24,319
my collection, but I first started reading them in in

1032
01:15:24,439 --> 01:15:27,600
the reprinted paperbags. Huh.

1033
01:15:28,720 --> 01:15:32,680
Speaker 5: Well, I remember when I started reading, uh, my introduction

1034
01:15:32,880 --> 01:15:36,800
the space Opera was the Skylark Smith and.

1035
01:15:36,880 --> 01:15:43,680
Speaker 1: Things like that. I that for the people that don't

1036
01:15:43,720 --> 01:15:48,159
know who Captain Future was. He was more believable than

1037
01:15:48,239 --> 01:15:52,319
Flash Gordon, not quite as believable as Captain Kirk. And

1038
01:15:52,800 --> 01:15:55,000
it was it was so much fun because all the

1039
01:15:55,079 --> 01:15:58,600
planets were inhabited, and he tooled around in his spaceship

1040
01:15:58,640 --> 01:16:01,359
to comet. He had his on the moon. He had

1041
01:16:01,399 --> 01:16:06,279
an android, a robot, and uh a scientist. Who's the

1042
01:16:06,359 --> 01:16:09,560
guy's just a brain in a in a cube, a

1043
01:16:09,680 --> 01:16:13,479
translucent cue that would fly around on tractor beams, and

1044
01:16:13,880 --> 01:16:15,840
uh it was. It was one of these deals like

1045
01:16:16,079 --> 01:16:20,560
like Doc Savage, where a uh the the publishing company

1046
01:16:20,800 --> 01:16:23,319
would set it up. They would create the characters and

1047
01:16:23,359 --> 01:16:26,560
then they would hire a writer, usually under a pen name,

1048
01:16:26,640 --> 01:16:29,800
not always to write the stories. And so he was.

1049
01:16:30,520 --> 01:16:32,920
He had to put in something there about sports every

1050
01:16:33,000 --> 01:16:37,039
time the villain had to escape three times. So he

1051
01:16:37,239 --> 01:16:39,880
was he was restricted in that way. But I always

1052
01:16:39,880 --> 01:16:42,920
thought he came up with, uh, you know, interesting stories,

1053
01:16:43,039 --> 01:16:47,119
and uh, I just I still uh still love Captain Future,

1054
01:16:47,479 --> 01:16:50,319
even though Captain Future is quite impossible.

1055
01:16:51,680 --> 01:16:53,079
Speaker 5: Maybe I shall have to read him.

1056
01:16:54,239 --> 01:17:00,960
Speaker 1: Uh you'll get a kick out of him. Oh, go ahead,

1057
01:17:01,079 --> 01:17:01,760
go ahead for us.

1058
01:17:02,039 --> 01:17:07,439
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say the Golden age of science

1059
01:17:07,560 --> 01:17:13,119
fiction was still hanging around but getting passed into the

1060
01:17:13,199 --> 01:17:17,520
New ages. I started reading in the nineteen sixties. I

1061
01:17:17,680 --> 01:17:23,920
came across the science fiction magazines that were so prominent

1062
01:17:24,039 --> 01:17:29,479
at the time and have mostly disappeared today. A few

1063
01:17:29,560 --> 01:17:38,720
of them are left, things like Analog Worlds of If Galaxy,

1064
01:17:42,560 --> 01:17:46,880
stories like that that. Many of the major writers would

1065
01:17:46,920 --> 01:17:51,760
have their stories appear in those magazines before they were

1066
01:17:51,960 --> 01:17:56,319
came out in paperback books, and it was wonderful to

1067
01:17:56,399 --> 01:18:00,279
come across them at that time. And I also would

1068
01:18:00,279 --> 01:18:04,720
also occasionally have non fiction, and two of my favorites

1069
01:18:04,880 --> 01:18:10,760
kind of went against each other in different magazines. One

1070
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:17,119
of those isoc asim Off would have a a monthly

1071
01:18:17,880 --> 01:18:19,840
I think it was monthly at the time, or almost

1072
01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:27,079
monthly article. And Willie Lay, who was a cryptologist Sought

1073
01:18:27,159 --> 01:18:31,479
to Know, would also have in Galaxy magazine, he'd have

1074
01:18:31,640 --> 01:18:36,960
his non fiction tale and they were so very different

1075
01:18:37,119 --> 01:18:41,720
in style that you can enjoy reading them, even if

1076
01:18:41,760 --> 01:18:46,399
they covered by accident the same subjects. But Willie Lay

1077
01:18:46,479 --> 01:18:49,239
I used to get all his books if I when

1078
01:18:49,279 --> 01:18:52,520
I could afford them, and he was an expert in

1079
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:57,760
the space age, rockets, missile and space travel at the time.

1080
01:18:58,279 --> 01:19:04,199
But he also was interested in zoology and what on

1081
01:19:04,399 --> 01:19:11,600
would think of as cryptid stories today. What is the

1082
01:19:11,720 --> 01:19:15,880
creature on the but there's the dragon like creature on

1083
01:19:16,039 --> 01:19:22,039
the gates of the the old fortresses in Baghdad, or

1084
01:19:23,239 --> 01:19:26,760
or things like that. And I enjoyed him very much.

1085
01:19:26,880 --> 01:19:29,720
I don't know how much of his cryptid work has

1086
01:19:29,800 --> 01:19:33,520
stood the test of time. Probably we know a lot

1087
01:19:33,600 --> 01:19:36,600
more about many of those topics than they did in

1088
01:19:36,720 --> 01:19:40,039
his day, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading them.

1089
01:19:45,920 --> 01:19:49,720
Speaker 2: Excuse me, does Michigan have any cryptids?

1090
01:19:50,560 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 5: Oh, of course it has scripteds, but I don't know

1091
01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:58,880
if there are any around me that are particularly local

1092
01:19:59,000 --> 01:19:59,640
to the area.

1093
01:20:00,319 --> 01:20:05,520
Speaker 1: There a big man man, there's some Battle Creek area sidings,

1094
01:20:05,600 --> 01:20:08,840
but most of them are up around Traverse City, or

1095
01:20:09,760 --> 01:20:12,600
you know Bigfoot that that guy just shows up everywhere.

1096
01:20:12,720 --> 01:20:15,319
I don't know if I remember the reports in Monroe,

1097
01:20:15,399 --> 01:20:20,079
Michigan back in the mid sixties. I think that was

1098
01:20:20,159 --> 01:20:22,760
a hoax, though I think that was was before I

1099
01:20:22,960 --> 01:20:25,479
was in Michigan, So okay, all right.

1100
01:20:26,840 --> 01:20:30,960
Speaker 5: The thing I heard from about Michigan was earliest, was

1101
01:20:31,159 --> 01:20:37,119
probably the swamp casts UFO siding. I knew it was

1102
01:20:37,159 --> 01:20:40,359
in Michigan, I didn't have I have no idea where

1103
01:20:40,399 --> 01:20:42,720
the town is. And if you go to the place today,

1104
01:20:43,279 --> 01:20:48,399
it's pretty much built over. It's been developed so well.

1105
01:20:48,920 --> 01:20:53,199
The UFO was seen in the in the Swamp Gas Tales.

1106
01:20:53,399 --> 01:20:57,840
Speaker 1: Yes, that was a March of sixty six. Doctor J.

1107
01:20:57,960 --> 01:21:01,359
Aalen Heinech was still attached to Project Blue Book, and

1108
01:21:02,359 --> 01:21:05,800
they kind of wanted him to defuse it, to bunk it.

1109
01:21:06,520 --> 01:21:10,880
So he suggested that some of the sightings in Hillsdale,

1110
01:21:10,960 --> 01:21:14,239
for example, might be swamp gas, and of course that's

1111
01:21:14,279 --> 01:21:17,640
all they needed to solve the UFO mystery. But I

1112
01:21:17,760 --> 01:21:21,239
actually saw him Horace ten years later at a Michigan

1113
01:21:21,479 --> 01:21:26,119
upon meeting at the Weber Inn in Ann Arbor, and

1114
01:21:26,279 --> 01:21:30,760
he had left Blue Book started the Center for UFO Studies,

1115
01:21:31,239 --> 01:21:34,000
and the name of his talk was Swamp Gas plus

1116
01:21:34,119 --> 01:21:35,159
ten and counting.

1117
01:21:37,960 --> 01:21:41,359
Speaker 5: I wrote a book which a little book which was

1118
01:21:41,479 --> 01:21:46,560
the history of our campus of observatories on the campus

1119
01:21:46,720 --> 01:21:51,039
of Michigan State University called Stars over the Red Cedar,

1120
01:21:52,479 --> 01:21:57,039
And at one point J. Allen Heinech enters the tale.

1121
01:21:57,720 --> 01:22:04,319
Because in the nineteen fifties, a late fifties. Excuse me,

1122
01:22:05,399 --> 01:22:10,760
there was a Moonwatch station set up here. Now. I

1123
01:22:10,840 --> 01:22:14,399
don't know if you remember Project Moonwatch, but this was

1124
01:22:15,399 --> 01:22:20,000
amateur astronomers mostly who were gathered together to be helped

1125
01:22:20,119 --> 01:22:25,640
track the first artificial satellites, and one of them was

1126
01:22:25,760 --> 01:22:32,199
set up upon the Physics building of the time, it

1127
01:22:32,319 --> 01:22:36,199
must have been much darker than than there is today

1128
01:22:36,319 --> 01:22:40,840
around that building. And when they were setting it up,

1129
01:22:41,000 --> 01:22:44,640
jo and Heinek was actually involved in helping to direct

1130
01:22:45,159 --> 01:22:51,039
the organization of these amateur satellite working groups, and they

1131
01:22:51,159 --> 01:22:54,359
sent a letter to the Michigan group when they were

1132
01:22:54,439 --> 01:23:02,479
being organized, saying, now you're so like you have everything

1133
01:23:02,520 --> 01:23:07,000
you need to get going. You're accepted into the Moonwatch group.

1134
01:23:08,039 --> 01:23:13,439
Why don't you tell your your local papers and TV

1135
01:23:14,159 --> 01:23:17,600
people because you have some news that is worth telling.

1136
01:23:18,399 --> 01:23:21,840
He was trying to get publicity for the Moonwatch teams

1137
01:23:21,960 --> 01:23:27,159
at the time, and that's the letter I came across

1138
01:23:27,880 --> 01:23:31,600
when I was doing the history of the Moonwatch project.

1139
01:23:32,840 --> 01:23:36,640
And they actually did see some of the moon, the

1140
01:23:36,720 --> 01:23:41,159
early moons, the artificial moons, but they weren't the US

1141
01:23:41,319 --> 01:23:44,840
ones that they were expecting to be watching. The first

1142
01:23:44,920 --> 01:23:53,560
one they saw were Russian satellites, so that it's an

1143
01:23:53,600 --> 01:24:01,600
interesting story. Nonetheless, and they're probably unidentified objects hidden in

1144
01:24:01,760 --> 01:24:05,319
those Moonwatch records because they would make get together at

1145
01:24:05,960 --> 01:24:09,199
certain times and make the equivalent with the little Moonwatch

1146
01:24:09,319 --> 01:24:15,159
telescopes of a picket fence across the sky waiting for

1147
01:24:15,640 --> 01:24:20,359
objects like satellites to cross through when they know when

1148
01:24:20,840 --> 01:24:25,279
and where the satellite crossed. And that was before everything

1149
01:24:25,359 --> 01:24:30,520
could be done with the radar right and later on,

1150
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:35,920
so occasionally I'm sure they must have seen things cross

1151
01:24:36,079 --> 01:24:40,319
through that were never matched up with any satellite or

1152
01:24:40,399 --> 01:24:41,000
non object.

1153
01:24:44,039 --> 01:24:46,199
Speaker 1: The last time you will go ahead? Were you finished

1154
01:24:46,239 --> 01:24:46,840
with your thoughts?

1155
01:24:47,279 --> 01:24:50,279
Speaker 5: That SE's all I need to say, Probably more than

1156
01:24:50,319 --> 01:24:51,159
I needed to say.

1157
01:24:52,600 --> 01:24:54,199
Speaker 1: I can say as much as you want, no extra

1158
01:24:54,319 --> 01:24:57,199
charge that the last time you and I were on

1159
01:24:57,279 --> 01:25:00,880
a show, I brought up the Curious book Shop on

1160
01:25:01,000 --> 01:25:03,960
the main Drag in East Lansing, And how I used

1161
01:25:04,000 --> 01:25:07,079
to haunt that all the time. And uh, I mean

1162
01:25:07,159 --> 01:25:13,479
for Pulp Magazine's UFO books. Uh Lovecraft sometimes in hardcover

1163
01:25:14,079 --> 01:25:18,720
and and and some of the authors that published Lovecraft

1164
01:25:19,359 --> 01:25:23,439
style stories. But did you ever go to the Ableman

1165
01:25:23,600 --> 01:25:25,279
Bookshop in ham Trammick?

1166
01:25:26,880 --> 01:25:30,439
Speaker 5: I do not think I did. Of course, a curious bookstar,

1167
01:25:31,319 --> 01:25:32,560
I was that many a time.

1168
01:25:32,920 --> 01:25:33,279
Speaker 1: And the.

1169
01:25:34,880 --> 01:25:38,079
Speaker 5: Archived bookstore when it was around later on, and the

1170
01:25:38,199 --> 01:25:40,720
number of the ones in the n Armor, I don't

1171
01:25:40,720 --> 01:25:43,720
think I ever went to one in him tramm Well.

1172
01:25:44,119 --> 01:25:46,159
Speaker 1: For people that don't know, Ham Trammick is a captive

1173
01:25:46,239 --> 01:25:49,560
suburb in Detroit, just a couple of miles down, and

1174
01:25:49,680 --> 01:25:53,279
there was this it's not there anymore, but this two

1175
01:25:53,439 --> 01:25:58,760
story ableman bookstore, dirty dusty. It had you know, paperbacks

1176
01:25:58,800 --> 01:26:01,479
and books on the lawera. I would go and ask

1177
01:26:01,600 --> 01:26:04,560
the guy if I could go upstairs because that's where

1178
01:26:04,560 --> 01:26:08,640
all his pulp magazines were. Oh my god, I mean

1179
01:26:08,680 --> 01:26:10,399
I had to. I didn't have a lot of money,

1180
01:26:10,680 --> 01:26:12,680
but I bought. I got a lot of issues of

1181
01:26:13,000 --> 01:26:16,600
things like Amazing Stories, startling stories, you know, way before

1182
01:26:16,720 --> 01:26:19,760
these went to a digest size. And I got, you know,

1183
01:26:19,840 --> 01:26:23,199
some original stories by Ray Bradbury. I have a story

1184
01:26:23,600 --> 01:26:26,880
in a beat up Weird Tales by Robert D. Howard,

1185
01:26:27,479 --> 01:26:31,479
a Conan story, and it was I found some some

1186
01:26:31,920 --> 01:26:34,920
I've found some very hard to find, the hero pulps

1187
01:26:35,000 --> 01:26:37,439
like Doc Savage and the Shadow, but I found a

1188
01:26:37,479 --> 01:26:40,399
few of those so that was, Uh, well, I take

1189
01:26:40,520 --> 01:26:45,199
my my Measley pay check and go there. I should

1190
01:26:45,239 --> 01:26:47,479
have been saving my money, but you know, hey, you

1191
01:26:47,600 --> 01:26:50,159
only live once. So I would go there and just

1192
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:53,680
dole out a few bucks, and uh I built up

1193
01:26:53,840 --> 01:26:54,920
a nice little collection.

1194
01:26:55,199 --> 01:26:57,399
Speaker 5: So that was a hard bargain.

1195
01:26:57,520 --> 01:27:01,720
Speaker 6: Nowadays there's oh good lord, too many things on the web.

1196
01:27:01,800 --> 01:27:09,159
And know what they have, Andy and Susie, any any

1197
01:27:10,279 --> 01:27:12,079
any other questions? Parting words?

1198
01:27:14,520 --> 01:27:18,239
Speaker 2: I thought I did want to mention that in honor

1199
01:27:18,399 --> 01:27:22,399
of Lovecraft, I am drinking the official drink of Rhode Island,

1200
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:24,039
which is coffee milk.

1201
01:27:27,720 --> 01:27:32,000
Speaker 5: Loved coffee and with lots of sugar. In his case

1202
01:27:33,680 --> 01:27:37,399
he was a teetotal or other in terms of alcohol,

1203
01:27:38,159 --> 01:27:40,920
but coffee he loved with lots of sugar.

1204
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:46,720
Speaker 2: And for anyone not from New England, coffee milk is

1205
01:27:47,359 --> 01:27:50,640
it's almost like chocolate milk or strawberry milk, where you

1206
01:27:50,720 --> 01:27:55,520
have a concentrated coffee flavored syrup that you mix in

1207
01:27:55,640 --> 01:28:01,000
with milk. It's a New England delicacy that pairs very

1208
01:28:01,079 --> 01:28:04,800
well with a fluffer nut or sandwich. Recommendation.

1209
01:28:05,199 --> 01:28:05,560
Speaker 7: Everyone.

1210
01:28:06,720 --> 01:28:10,319
Speaker 5: I'm sure that Lovecraft would would appreciate.

1211
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:14,520
Speaker 1: That very good and uh Andy, any any parting words,

1212
01:28:14,520 --> 01:28:19,199
any questions, both.

1213
01:28:19,039 --> 01:28:20,640
Speaker 3: Conversation to give up weird fiction.

1214
01:28:21,079 --> 01:28:23,359
Speaker 4: I've really I'm a big fan of the last few

1215
01:28:23,399 --> 01:28:26,159
years especially you've got really gone back into just one

1216
01:28:26,319 --> 01:28:30,359
brief thing. Have you ever come across the Dark Adventures

1217
01:28:30,439 --> 01:28:32,600
radio theater? They hate love Crofts.

1218
01:28:33,319 --> 01:28:35,840
Speaker 5: I have, and they have listened to a number of them.

1219
01:28:36,520 --> 01:28:40,039
Speaker 3: I think I would recommend their version of Lookers Through

1220
01:28:40,159 --> 01:28:42,560
to anybody because it turns into it as you know

1221
01:28:42,680 --> 01:28:45,680
you heard. It turns up a story with characters actually

1222
01:28:45,680 --> 01:28:48,880
speaking of their experiences rather than just a narrative. What

1223
01:28:49,000 --> 01:28:51,039
we did with that would make a brilliant movie. I

1224
01:28:51,119 --> 01:28:54,199
think it is fantastic.

1225
01:28:56,960 --> 01:29:00,479
Speaker 1: Well, Horace, we're gonna have to have your back. I mean,

1226
01:29:00,560 --> 01:29:03,199
we just barely spashed the service, and uh, this has

1227
01:29:03,319 --> 01:29:05,680
just been a lot of fun, you know. I And again,

1228
01:29:06,359 --> 01:29:08,439
I know we all have our favorite books here, but

1229
01:29:08,800 --> 01:29:12,359
ladies and gentlemen, when the stars are right, uh HP

1230
01:29:12,560 --> 01:29:17,920
Lovecraft and Astronomy. Horace a smith and Edward with his

1231
01:29:18,000 --> 01:29:22,920
last name said, Okay, very good. I'm glad you said it. Okay,

1232
01:29:23,439 --> 01:29:26,000
but it's just it's just a fascinating book. It covers,

1233
01:29:26,159 --> 01:29:29,560
uh like in some of the areas we talked about tonight.

1234
01:29:29,600 --> 01:29:33,279
It just covers everything, and it is such a fun book.

1235
01:29:33,800 --> 01:29:36,079
And you don't even really necessarily have to be a

1236
01:29:36,159 --> 01:29:38,840
fan of Lovecraft too. I mean, if you enjoy h

1237
01:29:39,680 --> 01:29:43,279
history and and uh you know the past and how

1238
01:29:43,359 --> 01:29:48,399
they were, uh, you know, they were so new at

1239
01:29:48,479 --> 01:29:50,800
trying to explore the heavens.

1240
01:29:51,239 --> 01:29:51,319
Speaker 3: Uh.

1241
01:29:51,399 --> 01:29:54,840
Speaker 1: This is just a fascinating book. So I guess with

1242
01:29:55,039 --> 01:29:56,760
with that, we'll close it out and let you have

1243
01:29:56,800 --> 01:29:58,039
any parting words. Horace.

1244
01:29:58,800 --> 01:30:02,239
Speaker 5: No, I'm very glad to have been here, and we

1245
01:30:02,319 --> 01:30:04,279
could go on all night, but we better.

1246
01:30:04,239 --> 01:30:09,399
Speaker 1: Not, especially since Andy is in Uh. I don't know

1247
01:30:09,479 --> 01:30:11,920
how many time zones he's away, but he could just

1248
01:30:12,039 --> 01:30:16,159
pass out any second. I could pass out any second.

1249
01:30:16,199 --> 01:30:18,399
That was a that was a wild trip to Frogman.

1250
01:30:18,680 --> 01:30:21,039
But I'll go ahead and close out the show. Thanks

1251
01:30:21,119 --> 01:30:25,079
everybody for being here. The High Strangeress Factor was created

1252
01:30:25,119 --> 01:30:28,000
by Steve Ward and Andy Mercer and his copyright on

1253
01:30:28,119 --> 01:30:33,520
the Paranormal UK Radio Network. Our Fearless production team Steers

1254
01:30:34,039 --> 01:30:37,359
Steers the Rudder for the network. Andy Mercer is the

1255
01:30:37,520 --> 01:30:41,359
producer for The High Strangest Factor along with other shows.

1256
01:30:42,000 --> 01:30:46,000
I can be heard on a panel on Paul Dale

1257
01:30:46,199 --> 01:30:51,920
Roberts Show from time to time, and I do some

1258
01:30:52,119 --> 01:30:56,039
Mothman one on one shows which go way beyond the Mothman.

1259
01:30:57,720 --> 01:31:02,720
Andy Mercer completed the ending for the show and Brian

1260
01:31:02,880 --> 01:31:06,279
Zilver composed the opening theme for the High Strangers Factory.

1261
01:31:07,000 --> 01:31:10,720
And I am Steve Ward along with Andy Mercer, I

1262
01:31:10,880 --> 01:31:14,920
am a displaced Michigander deep in the Ohio Valley, living

1263
01:31:15,039 --> 01:31:18,239
on the same road that the Mothman chased cars back

1264
01:31:18,279 --> 01:31:21,600
in the middle sixties. Thank you all for listening and

1265
01:31:21,680 --> 01:31:22,880
we will see you again soon.