Breaking News: For Sale, Autograph PostCard

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"A fantastic find for the Lovecraft fan - your chance to own an original linen postcard view of the New Providence Cou8nty Court House in Providence, Rhode Island. This postcard handwritten by the master of horror, second only to Edgar Allen Poe. Postmarked August 4 7 AM from Buttonwoods, R.I. and addressed to personal friend Howard Wandrei. The master address his friend, Hail, Spawner of Daemons! Talks of enjoying ICE CREAM at the famous hangout of the master, Warfield's and mentions the addressee's brother Donald Wandrei - another famous horror writer published by Arkham House. Wandrei started writing in 1926 and his writing career took off around 1932. He was active in pulp magazines until the late 1930s. He was a member of the H.P. Lovecraft circle, corresponded with Lovecraft and other members of the circle (Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith, etc). He contributed two stories to the Cthulhu Mythos: "The Fire Vampires" (1933) and "The Tree-Men of M'Bwa" (1933). Wandrei and August Derleth later co-founded the publishing house Arkham House to keep Lovecraft's legacy alive. After World War II he continued writing speculative fiction stories, although at a greatly reduced rate. Awards World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (1984) The message goes on to speak of being by the shore at Buttonwoods. The bonus is that there is also a handwritten note in blue ink with Greetings out of the dark from the unknown but not malefic James F. Norton. What a great item for your collection or exhibition. Cthulhu would be proud. Check or money order in US funds only. s/h costs will be the actual costs once calculated for insurance, postage. No handling fee."

Octopus Update

The Courier-Journal

An octopus hooked in the Ohio River by a fisherman had been put there by a film student who bought it at a seafood store and videotaped the creature.

Zachary Treitz, 21, of Crescent Hill in Louisville, said he bought the octopus -- dead and frozen -- for $26 and put it in the river after shooting the video Sunday for a film project.

Treitz, a film major at Boston University, contacted The Courier-Journal late Wednesday to say he was responsible for putting the octopus into the river.

The 6-foot-wide octopus created a sensation when David Stepp, 20, of Jeffersonville, Ind., reeled it in Monday night while angling for catfish below the dam at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.

Indiana conservation officers speculated that someone had kept it as a pet and then released it in the river. Octopuses live in salt water and can't survive for long in fresh water.

Treitz bought the octopus from the Seafood Connection in St. Matthews and considered eating it after using it in the film. But it began to give off a fishy odor, he said, so he and three filmmaking friends put it in the Ohio below the dam.

They also filmed its launch, showing how it slipped off a boulder into the water. They watched as it swirled in the river's eddies and disappeared from view.

"I thought it might just float down the river to Paducah, or become fish food," Treitz said.

Treitz said the publicity about the octopus was surprising and disconcerting. He said he came forward in part because he wanted people to know that the octopus was never alive in his possession.

"It was very dead by the time we threw it in," he said.

He said it seemed like a harmless act because "there's so much more harmful things" floating in the river.

At the Seafood Connection, the story produced curiosity among customers.

At least 20 called or dropped by, asking where they could get an octopus -- and how to prepare it, said owner Brendan Mullaney.

Reporter Grace Schneider can be reached at (812) 949-4040.


See the movie (as long as it is on-line) here.

Cthulu-like Octopus In Ohio River?

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"Octopus pulled from Ohio River"

(c)By Grace Schneider
gschneider@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal


David Stepp was fishing for catfish with friends on the Ohio River Monday night when he reeled in a bizarre catch — an octopus.

It was dead, but only recently.

Recognizing that nobody would ever believe he had actually caught the creature, the 20-year-old Jeffersonville man loaded it into the trunk of his car and showed it minutes later to a Clarksville police officer and Bill Putt, a park ranger at the Falls of the Ohio State Park.

Putt snapped photos, and Stepp and his surprised companions posed with the purplish-brown animal, which measured six feet from the tip of one tentacle to the other.

It was three and half feet tall when dangled like mop above the ground.

“It was really pretty big,” said Putt, who later deposited the octopus in a park freezer, figuring a marine biologist might want to examine it.

Although he’s seen more than his share of exotic animals turn up at the Southern Indiana park across from downtown Louisville, Putt said he was extremely skeptical when a fellow angler said that someone had caught an octopus below the dam.

“I thought, ‘This guy’s got to be drunk,’ ” Putt said. But “we looked at it and that’s what it was.”

The octopus might take the prize for weird discoveries at the falls, where park crews and visitors have found crocodiles and piranha-like tropical fish over the years — animals probably kept as pets and released by owners into the river and onto river banks.

Octopods are highly intelligent as invertebrates go, according to an article on the National Wildlife Foundation’s Web site.

They are sometimes kept as pets and surprise their owners by escaping from seemingly secure tanks “due to their intelligence and problem-solving skills,” the entry said.

Because they live in salt water oceans, they don’t survive long in fresh water such as the Ohio River, Putt said.

It’s not illegal to own the animals, but releasing it into the wild is, said Mark Farmer, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

“Who’s to say somebody didn’t toss it into the river?” Farmer said. “I found out a long time ago, you never know what’s going to turn up.”

Reporter Grace Schneider can be reached at (812) 949-4040.

** Today, blogger is not taking embedded pix. If the pic disappears, I will come back later and embed it. For right now, it is an img src.