The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Interesting Blog

Link

Part of the charming weirdness of Lovecraft is his insistence on odd exposition. Often, weird details creates the meat of his weird tales; in The Shadow (twitch) Out of Time, for example, the main character's body isn't merely taken over by some creature from beyond reason, but, in fact, we get to learn all sorts of things, like the details about said creature's race's system of cataloging books. Because, in Lovecraft, the monsters that will take you over your life quite naturally often have intricate library systems. ...More

Limited Release of The Shadow Over Innsmouth

THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH by H.P. Lovecraft (Limited Edition)
This book was produced the old fashion way…and the best way in my opinion. The type for this book was made of lead and pressed into the paper the same way the Gutenberg Bible was produced. The book is hand made from start to finish and and is a truly unique item indeed.
The total edition is 125 copies, 150 pp, small octavo (5 x 7.5 inches). The book features a fold-out map of Innsmouth, drawn from Lovecraft’s detailed descriptions of the town. The text is set in Centaur and Arrighi, with Gill Shadow for display. The pages were printed letterpress, in two colors, from polymer plates at David Clifford’s Black Stone Press in Vancouver, B.C.

This BATRACHIAN issue comprises 125 numbered (1 - 125) copies printed on Mohawk Superfine (an archival, acid-free paper), sewn & cased by hand in full black cloth with an image gold-stamped on the front board. This issue also features specially printed endpapers.

$175

Innsmouthian Embryos?

Sky 'rains tadpoles' over Japan
The sky has been raining tadpoles over a coastal region in Japan, according to reports
_____

By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
Published: 5:36AM BST 10 Jun 2009
_____



Residents, officials and scientists have been baffled by the apparent downpour of tadpoles in central Japan's Ishikawa Prefecture. Clouds of dead tadpoles appear to have fallen from the sky in a series of episodes in a number of cities in the region since the start of the month.

In one incident, a 55-year-old man who was caught in a tadpole downpour described hearing a strange sound in the parking lot of a civic centre in the city of Nanao. Upon further exploration, he found more than 100 dead tadpoles covering the windshields of cars in an area measuring 10 square metres. Dead tadpole downpours were also reported by local officials 48 hours later in the city of Hakusan in the same prefecture.

Scientists have widely attributed the surreal raining of animals to strong winds, storms and water sprouts sucking up creatures before depositing them further inland. However, this explanation has not satisfied meteorologists in the Ishikawa region.

Officials at Kanazawa Local Meteorological Observatory told local media that they were unsure how the tadpoles had arrived as there had been no reports of strong winds at the time.

Another scientific explanation for raining animals relates to birds carrying the small creatures before dropping them as they fly overland. However, dismissing this theory, a researcher at the Yamashina Institute for Ornithology in Abiko told Kyodo news: "Crows eat tadpoles but if these were spat out (by the birds), a wider area should have been covered."

_____




Deep in a secluded laboratory, heinous minions with batrachian faces hunched over flashing screens and turned dials with webbed hands.

"Our plan has begun. The Ishikawa Prefecture has been infected. Shall we proceed to the enxt level?"

The lead scientist's tongue lolled for a moment, then nodded approval.

"Pro-c-c-c-eed." The repulsive thing lisped.

:)

The Great Frog of India: An Innsmouthian Cousin?

By VIRGINIA WHEELER

Published: click

A FROG that constantly changes colour is being worshipped as a GOD in India.
Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling WHITE colour when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

Then it changed to YELLOW and had gone GREY by the time he got it home.

Lift worker Reji added: “By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs.

"It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

Professor Oommen V. Oommen from India’s Kerala University, said it was not uncommon for animals to change colour.

He explained: “Frogs do change colour to scare away predators.

“But from what I have heard, the frog at Kumar’s place changes colour so frequently it is a bit unusual. I will collect it for study.”

Early 1900's Post Card: April Fool's Day

My French is pretty rusty after all these (30) years (someone help!!), but I think it goes something like:

In April, fish go for lovely walks. So, let's be like them, and skim quickly across the water, friends.

On this April Fool's Day, we can remember that Susie was a French language specialist, that Lovecraft hated fish, and would have little to do with superstitions. Or maybe, just consideer these to be Innsmuth Ichthians.

A New Batrachian God?

A spiky orange rain frog ... discovered in Colombia, scientists have revealed.
03 Feb 2009
_____

"Alejandra, you fool! Size? You're thinking so Euclidean. There are things - beings - which dwarf our intelligneces, of which we can't fathom with our puny primate brains, but which are but an inch across. There, in the rainforest, live creatures who were old when primates were clinging to the braches of trees, trembling. Look! My God, Alejandra, look! That batrachian thing! It comes!"

Early Ad (1937) for "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"

The seller States: FANTASY MAGAZINE - January, 1937 Edited by Julius Schwartz

This excellent fanzine featured the twenty year old Robert Bloch in a humorous piece entitled, "Funtasy" wherein Bloch comments and guffaws on subjects and personalities relating to fantasy - "Zombies are people who write travel-books about Vodoo" .

Additionally there is a six-page autobiographette by Neil R. Jones a popular author of the day who primarily appeared in "Amazing Stories". Editor (and one time agent for H. P. Lovecraft) Julius Schwartz provides all the gossip and noteworthy news in the F & SF field. Speaking of Lovecraft, there is a full-page advertisement for his book "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" , "Heavy book paper cloth bound $1.00...leatherbound edition for $2.50".......anyone out there ever hear, or come across a "leatherbound" edition of this book! Telephone me immediately!!

One of the great pioneering fanzines some staining, in very good condition.

Derleth Letter (1953) about Lovecraftiana

ARKHAM HOUSE: PUBLISHERS
Director August Derleth
SAUK CITY, WISCONSIN
22 November, 1953

Dear Phil,
All thanks for yours of’ 16 November. The British edition of CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD has been sent to you. … {ellipsis original} Both those "bound" SHUNNED HOUSE items are Barlow's bindings, yes. The pasted-on copyright notice should appear in all copies of the book or sheets leaving these premises, solely as a matter of oopyright protection of the story. ... {ellipsis original} Of the sets, I should think about 10 complete sets are available, and fragments of others. … {ellipsis original} In re SHUNNED HOUSE, most of these original sets were destroyed long ego, hence their scarcity. … {ellipsis original} About INNSMOUTH - as far as I know, none of HPL’s corrections was {sic} ever made; the book was bound without them. My own copy of INNSMOUTH has HPL’s corrections lettered in.

You may be interested to know that last weekend, while rummaging among Lovecraftiana inherited from Barlow, and soon en route Brown University's Loveereft collection, I came upon notesfor {sic} a story titled THE SURVIVORwhich HPL never lived to write; the notes and tentative outline were clear enough to warrant my doing the story as a collaboration. I have three other such outlines, and may do these too, time permitting. THE SURVIVOR, happily, is done in first draft.

Every good wish to you.
Cordially,
August Derleth

_____

The seller states:

Signed Letter from August Derleth to Phil Garland - 22 November, 1953
on Arkham House stationary

Phil Garland was a noted poet, wit, scholar, bibliographer, raconteur,and collector, from the Pacific Northwest. He was one of the prime movers of the "Non-Profit Press" in Tacoma, and their publications "Kai Lung: Six" and "Hornblower One More Time" are popular, collectible books even now. At the time of this letter Phil was also actively building a legendary Lovecraft collection that was later sold thru "International Bookfinders, Inc" - please see my ebay listing! This half-page letter though fairly brief contains much interesting information regarding "The Shunned House" printed by W. Paul Cook, and an unfinished H. P. Lovecraft story fragments...

"You may be interested to know that last weekend, while rummaging among Lovecraftiana inherited from Barlow...I came upon notes for a story titled "The Survivor" which HPL never lived to write;...the notes and tentative outline were clear enough to warrant my doing the story as a collaboration.."The Survivor", happily, is done in first draft".

As evidenced in this description, August Derleth was a man of immense energy! He could manage Arkham House, ship books, answer letters, teach, write newspaper column, and in the matter of just a few days complete a 1st draft of the story Lovecraft left in only fragmentary form!

Very interesting letter! Signed.

A Day in the Life of Lovecraft: 16 July 1927

It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for government inquiry and action brought on the whole reported episode. I was willing enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain; but now that it is an old story, with public interest and curiosity gone, I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly-shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality. The mere telling helps me to restore confidence in my own faculties; to reassure myself that I was not the first to succumb to a contagious nightmare hallucination. It helps me, too, in making up my mind regarding a certain terrible step which lies ahead of me. - The Shadow Over Innsmouth

Some feel that Innsmouth had roots in Essex County. This is an image of the rare book: The Wheelman's Handbook of Essex County which allegedly contains brief sketches of cities and towns previous to it's printing date of 1884. The woodcut image is very eerie, isn't it!

Bibliographic Listing From 1960's

(Epegana) A BIBLIOGRAPHIC CATALOG:CLARK ASHTON SMITH & H. P. LOVECRAFT Roy A. Squires - bookseller, bibliographer, printer, publisher, raconteur - issued twenty catalogs during his lifetime, and those catalogs have become treasured bibliographic and anecdotal references.This issue is an unnumbered catalog from the late 1960's being "...the largest collection ever offered for sale of the works of Clark Ashton Smith & H. P. Lovecraft".Roy Squires offered near complete collections of the book works of these two famous "Weird Tales" writers, including such pieces as "The Shunned House - bound by Robert H. Barlow & signed by him ", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", "The Cats of Ulthar - initialled by Barlow" and Clark Ashton Smith's copies of Lovecraft books and an entire run of the works of CAS. Fascinating reading!This entire catalog was printed from handset type and is in as new condition.

Stuart Gordon's "H P Lovecraft's Dagon" (2000)

I just had a chance to watch this for the first time. Contemporary horror movies are bloody, in that they show a lot of blood, spilled intestines, the insides of people which should not be seen except by a coroner. All that said, this is surprisingly low on the gore factor. A Brian Keene or Edward Lee book is far worse than the images Gordon shows.

Still, he has a tense and intense movie which moves along at a nice clip. It's definitely for the fan, though I'm sure it plays to the non-initiated.

I found that it smacked more of The Shadow Over Innsmouth than Dagon, per se. There's a smidgeon of Arthur Jermyn, too.

The requisite topless girls are featured, naturally. There are some jokes and pranks that Gordon also injects - though one has to look carefully. Crotch kicking jokes work in a horror movie as well as in "Home Alone."

All in all, the movie plays well as a nice diverting genre movie. Mr. Gordon is a good story teller. It will be a bit before I get to watch the commentaries - one of my favorite DVD features; I just love commentaries.

Ray Bradbury's circa 1950 Parody of HP Lovecraft

I have spent weeks tracking this down and it just arrived. {Lovecraft research can be tiring and expensive}. As far as I can tell, no one has mentioned this in decades. I suppose it's forgotten? If not, I can find little mention of it on the internet.

Here are the few snippets I did find, and ONLY after I had the full story, "Exiles" in my hands to know what to google.

Ray Bradbury board: Greetings, all!I have a question regarding one of my favorite Bradbury short stories, "The Exiles".Some years ago, I happened across an anthology of short stories which had all been edited by Anthony Boucher (IIRC). One of them was "The Exiles". The odd part was, this version of the story included a paragraph in which the two main characters (Poe and Bierce?), on their way through the castle, visit Lovecraft as he sits eating ice cream before a raging fire.This was odd because in every subsequent anthologized version of this story, that paragraph is omitted. Given Bradbury's famous resistance to having well-meaning but ultimately misguided editors deleting things from his work, my suspicion is that this paragraph was added _at the request of_ the editor - Boucher, in this case - and removed later, when Bradbury regained control over the text.Fond as I am of Lovecraft, and amusing as the paragraph was, I think the story works better without it.Does anyone know anything more about this (admittedly obscure) detail?Sincerely,Robert Walker-Smith

With the foillow up: Two ways you could find out would be: Look at the original magazine version (from Maclean's (Canada), September 15, 1949) and see if it's there. If you can't acquire a copy, ask a collector who has one to look for you.Check the date of the Boucher anthology vs. the others. Perhaps it was merely a case of a paragraph from the magazine story duplicated in the first anthology in which it appeared, and then being removed--you are correct, probably by Bradbury himself.

And this by Robert Weinburg who devilishly leaves out all details save: Lovecraft appeared in a number of short stories as a character. ... HPL appeared in one of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles," indulging in one of his (Lovecraft's) favorite pastimes, eating ice cream.

Finally at The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies I found this: 168.23–24 The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth,] The original Maclean’s printing reads The Horror at Innsmouth, perhaps an unintentional conflation of Lovecraft’s The Horror at Redhook and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The error was corrected (perhaps by Boucher) to reflect the original 1936 Lovecraft title in the F&SF version of “The Exiles,” but for The Illustrated Man Bradbury revised to The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth, the title of the 1944 first paperback edition of this Lovecraft work; this reading remains in all subsequent Bradbury collections containing “The Exiles.” Clearly, Bradbury’s final intention for the Lovecraft title surfaced very early on—during the summer of 1950, less than a year after the Maclean’s first printing, he was lightly revising “The Exiles” for The Illustrated Man. Of the two correct forms, The Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth is more reliably Bradbury’s, and is emended into the present edition.

This note will amke a little more sense once you see the context in a future blog post.

As soon as I can get the energy, I'll type in as much as possible without offending Mr. Bradbury's copyrights. It deserves to be discussed, in my humble opinion.

Just as an aside, this 2nd issue of F&SF seemed to be mostly reprints, however nary a word is spoken of 15 September 1949's Macleans. It does speak of a new Ray Bradbury book coming out in Spring, a collection of his many stories up until then about Mars - something called "Martian Chronicles" - and that this WOULD NOT be a part of it.

A Rare Copy of Fantasy Magazine, March 1936

Ok, this one is starting at $199.00. Whew. You'd think it was a lettered edition of Brian Keene's new book or something. Heh. Again, this is one that doesn't surface very often.

Seller states: FANTASY MAGAZINE, March, 1936 issue, Vol 6, No 2.
New York: [No Publisher]. 1936.
Contains the first appearance in print of the short fantasy story THIRTEEN PHANTASMS by Clark Ashton Smith, later collected in his 1970 Arkham House collection OTHER DIMENSIONS.
Small octavo, original printed wrappers, stapled. Edited by Julius Schwartz, Raymond A. Palmer, Forrest J. Ackermann and Clay Ferguson, FANTASY MAGAZINE (previously titled SCIENCE-FICTION DIGEST) is a legendary fan magazine. This issue also contains A Biographical Sketch of August Derleth by Ray Palmer.
Cheap paper browning, spine mostly split (but holding, as the staples are side-saddle), a few tiny tears.
The rear cover bears a full-page ad for the Visionary Press edition of Lovecraft's THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH. A very good copy of a very rare item.

Lovecraft's Legacy: Fantasy Advertiser (1950)

It's astonishing how pricey items are going for on ebay. An HPL related 'zine went for nearly $90 this week. Whew.

***edit*** This one went for $24.29 + $4.50 postage on 17 January 2008 *** 4 bids ***

Anyway, here;s a rare item that's surfaced. The seller states: FANTASY ADVERTISER Mar'50 w/Lin Carter on H P LOVECRAFT, Malcolm Ferguson on Thomas Burke of Limehouse, illustrations by Jon Arfstrom, Lin Carter, Jack Gaughan. Of particular interest is the first auction put on by editor/publisher/long-time collector Roy A Squires. 77 fabulous items offered up for bid with no minimum. A complete set of Futuria Fantasia, 1912 All-Story mag with TARZAN complete, SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH, Ray Bradbury signed manuscript, original Amazing Stories cover art & lots more. VG-FINE copy.

Rare Copy of Bound Shadow Over Innsmouth (1936?)

Starting Bid: $1500.00 !!

Seller States: LOVECRAFT, H[oward] P[hillips] (1890-1937). The Shadow Over Innsmouth.Everett, Pennsylvania: Visionary Publishing Co., 1936. 8vo. Illustrated by Frank A. Utpatel. First and last leaves are used as front and rear pastedown endpapers. Scarce printed errata slip laid in. Original black cloth, lettered in silver on front cover and spine (the present copy with lettering on the front cover in upper and lower case letters, one of two known bindings with no priority established). In the rare publisher's dust jacket, white paper with silver lettering on the front panel and spine matching that from the cloth binding, with no illustration. Condition: A few small areas of cloth slightly soiled, else a fine, bright copy in a like dust jacket. h.p. lovecraft's first published book and the only published during his lifetime, preceded only by the pamphlet The Sunned House (1928). According to publisher William H. Crawford, of the approximately 400 copies printed, perhaps 200 copies were bound with the remainder destroyed at a later date. Adding to the scarcity of the present copy, Crawford notes that the dust jacket and errata slip were prepared after publication, and copies are often found with one or both lacking. "No writer since Poe has had more influence on the field of macabre fiction than Howard Phillips Lovecraft. His tales of Cthulhu-malevolent beings from another dimension bent on invading our world and destroying mankind-have inspired dozens of writers (among them August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner and J. Ramsey Campbell) to perpetuate the mythos with tales of their own. However, Lovecraft also wrote other types of horror and supernatural stories, some of the best of which are Poesque in design and effect." (Pronzini, Malzberg & Greenberg, Great Tales of Horror & The Supernatural, page 177).

Rare Lovecraft Volume of The Shadow Over Innsmouth

The seller states: LOVECRAFT, H[oward] P[hillips] (1890-1937). The Shadow Over Innsmouth.Everett, Pennsylvania: Visionary Publishing Co., 1936. 8vo. Illustrated by Frank A. Utpatel. First and last leaves are used as front and rear pastedown endpapers. Scarce printed errata slip laid in. Original black cloth, lettered in silver on front cover and spine (the present copy with lettering on the front cover in upper and lower case letters, one of two known bindings with no priority established). In the rare publisher's dust jacket, white paper with silver lettering on the front panel and spine matching that from the cloth binding, with no illustration. Condition: A few small areas of cloth slightly soiled, else a fine, bright copy in a like dust jacket. h.p. lovecraft's first published book and the only published during his lifetime, preceded only by the pamphlet The Sunned House (1928). According to publisher William H. Crawford, of the approximately 400 copies printed, perhaps 200 copies were bound with the remainder destroyed at a later date. Adding to the scarcity of the present copy, Crawford notes that the dust jacket and errata slip were prepared after publication, and copies are often found with one or both lacking. "No writer since Poe has had more influence on the field of macabre fiction than Howard Phillips Lovecraft. His tales of Cthulhu-malevolent beings from another dimension bent on invading our world and destroying mankind-have inspired dozens of writers (among them August Derleth, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner and J. Ramsey Campbell) to perpetuate the mythos with tales of their own. However, Lovecraft also wrote other types of horror and supernatural stories, some of the best of which are Poesque in design and effect." (Pronzini, Malzberg & Greenberg, Great Tales of Horror & The Supernatural, page 177). A key title to any collection of fantasy, horror and supernatural fiction.

Lovecraft's Legacy: 1940 - One of A Kind Ephemera

This is a remarkable find. A promotional card mailed by the Visionary Publishing Company of Cleveland Ohio upon the release of their series of fantasy novels. This card promoted The Titan by P. Schuyler Miller (which appears never to have been released as it was later published in 1952) and the first edition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft.

The card states that Innsmouth is ". . . a first edition you will treasure all your life. Only four hundred copies have been been (sic) printed and most are already distributed. Your copy will be mailed iwthin 24 hours after your order arrives. It is on heavy book paper, bound in black cloth stamped in silver." No mention is made of the dust wrapper, which was apparently printed after the book was published. A total of 200 copies of this book were rumoured to have been destroyed.

This card was sent to Arthur Saha, a science fiction notable who later edited anthologies and worked with Donald Waldheim (Ebay seller means Wolheim). The card was sent to Saha at his address in Hibbing, but was misaddressed to Michigan instead of Minnesota. The card was sent in January 1940 (although the book was noted to be published in 1936), and Saha was only 17 years old at the time. According to Wikipedia, Saha coined the term Trekkie.

T Peter Park Review of Kim Newman's Big Fish

Dear Chris and fellow Lovecraftians,

How many of you are familiar with the story "The Big Fish" by Kim Newman? It was originally published in the October 1993 Interzone, and reprinted in Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology, edited by Jim Turner (Arkham House, 1995; Ballantine, 1999). I believe it has also been reprinted in some other Lovecraftian horror anthologies as well.

I read "The Big Fish" about a month ago, and found it an excellent sequel to HPL's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." Set in a Southern California seaside town in February 1942 a couple of months after Pearl Harbor as Japanese-Americans are being interned, it is narrated by a hard-boiled whiskey-gulping private eye out of Dashiell Hammett who discovers that a far bigger and older war than the one with Hirohito and Tojo is going on off the beach of Bay City. He has been hired by jungle-flick B-picture actress Janey Wilde to locate her racketeer boy-friend Laird Brunette who has disappeared along with their baby boy Franklin after ditching her for rival film-goddess Janice Marsh and joining a crackpot Southern California religious cult called the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Visiting the Venice CA headquarters of the cult, he meets none other than their high priestess--Janice Marsh with her bulging eyes, the cult's official "Captain's Daughter," born in Innsmouth MA and a great-great-granddaughter of Captain Obed Marsh and his Polynesian bride. Checking up on one of Brunette's gangster buddies who might know something of the missing racketeer's whereabouts, he finds the gangster murdered--and runs into a multi-national crew of gumshoes, including a beefy FBI agent, an Englishman, and a Frenchwoman, who ask him if he knows anything about Cthulhu, R'lyeh, Y'ha-nthlei, the Deep Ones, or the Esoteric Order of Dagon. The FBI agent, it turned out, had led the 1928 FBI raid on Devil's Reef off Innsmouth.I won't give away the ending--except to say our hero later on meets a decidedly ichthyoid naked Janice Marsh as a truly weird "mermaid," and finds out about a decades-old second war against an ancient sea-borne enemy far more serious than the Japanese!

All in all, I found it an immensely enjoyable story!

Cheers,T. Peter

LOvecraft: 1936 (Shadow Over Inssmouth) & Fantasy Magazine

FANTASY MAGAZINE, March, 1936 issue, Vol 6, No 2.
New York: [No Publisher]. 1936.
Contains the first appearance in print of the short fantasy story THIRTEEN PHANTASMS by Clark Ashton Smith, later collected in his 1970 Arkham House collection OTHER DIMENSIONS.
Small octavo, original printed wrappers, stapled. Edited by Julius Schwartz, Raymond A. Palmer, Forrest J. Ackermann and Clay Ferguson, FANTASY MAGAZINE (previously titled SCIENCE-FICTION DIGEST) is a legendary fan magazine. This issue also contains A Biographical Sketch of August Derleth by Ray Palmer.
Cheap paper browning, spine mostly split (but holding, as the staples are side-saddle), a few tiny tears.
The rear cover bears a full-page ad for the Visionary Press edition of Lovecraft's THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH.

T Peter Park's Latest Essay

{By Permission, here is an essay by one of the most notable Fortean Lovecraft scholars}

H.P. LOVECRAFT'S "INNSMOUTH" AND REAL-LIFE MERBEINGS
by T. Peter Park

Did unknown real-life sea creatures resembling the mermen and mermaids of traditional folklore inspire the amphibious monsters of a twentieth century American master of macabre fiction?

Many cryptozoologists believe that the merbeings–mermaids and mermen–of legend may be partly based on actual encounters with unknown marine animals with seemingly human-like heads ad upper torsos and somewhat fish-, seal-, or porpoise-like hindparts. Such creatures have occasionally been sighted by credible European and American witnesses in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Some Pacific Islanders claim that such merbeings are a common, familiar part of their local marine fauna. Those allegedly common Pacific merbeings include the “ri” of New Ireland and the “fishwoman” supposedly seen by American sailor Rein Mellaart during World War II on Morotai in Indonesia.

Pacific Island traditions of merbeings resembling the New Ireland “ri” and Morotai “fishwoman” may have inspired a 20th century literary echo. The American weird fantasy and horror writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) depicted monstrous aquatic humanoids in “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “Dagon,” and “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.” The Morotai and New Ireland traditions seem especially relevant to Lovecraft’s 1932 novelette the “Shadow Over Innsmouth,” where the “Deep Ones” had an explicitly South Pacific origin.

In Lovecraft’s tale, economically hard pressed mid-nineteenth century sailors from the declining Massachusetts fishing port of “Innsmouth” encountered Polynesian islanders who worshipped and intermarried with evil, immortal merbeings. The sailors made a “devil’s bargain” with the Deep Ones, who gave the Innsmouthers gold and good fishing in return for worship and interbreeding. The sailors and their merbeing allies set up a cultist dictatorship in Innsmouth devoted to worship of the Deep Ones’ master the sea-god Dagon, driving their opponents into flight or frightened submission. By the early 20th century, the town is almost wholly populated by human-merbeing hybrids, with few remaining normal humans except an elderly drunkard and a teen-age boy from a nearby town working as a clerk in a local grocery store. Lovecraft’s narrator, a young Midwesterner of New England extraction doing genealogical and antiquarian research in his ancestral New England in 1927, narrowly escapes being captured and murdered by Innsmouthers who resent his poking around their town and discovering the dark secret of their part-merbeing ancestry. He reports his bizarrely horrifying discoveries to U.S. government officials. As a result, Federal agents raid Innsmouth in the winter of 1927-1928, arresting many hybrids who are shipped off to military and naval prisons. Civil libertarians protesting the seemingly arbitrary arrests acquiesce after being confidentially shown the inhuman-looking hybrids.

Lovecraft’s ocean-dwelling fish-like humanoid Deep Ones, originally worshipped by Pacific islanders, sound like a more sinister version of the Morotai and New Ireland merbeings. I wonder if the erudite, widely-read Lovecraft got his the idea from reading some missionary’s, trader’s, or anthropologist’s report on some Polynesian or Melanesian islanders’ merbeing beliefs. In his prodigious reading, Lovecraft might have seen early reports of Morotai or New Ireland merbeing beliefs long antedating the 20th century American visitors to those islands who claimed to have themselves seen the merbeings—or of similar beliefs among another Pacific Island population. He need not have seriously believed those “native” accounts of merfolk—but could have welcomed them as literary raw material. Lovecraft used his literary license as a horror writer, however, to depict the harmless, edible marine animals of Pacific belief as demonic servants of a sinister sea-god.

In the 20th century, “merbeings” or “merfolk” have been reported from waters near certain South Pacific islands, notably Morotai in Indonesia and New Ireland southeast of Papua New Guinea. The Pacific “merbeings” are described as air-breathing marine animals with human-like heads, arms, and upper torsos and fish-like lower torsos and tails. The Morotaians and New Irelanders regard them as a familiar part of their local fauna, consider them animals and not rational beings, and sometimes eat them. Some American visitors--sailor Rein Mellaart on Morotai during World War II, anthropologist Roy Wagner on New Ireland in the 1970's--claimed to have seen the creatures themselves. [1] Are these real animals, still surviving in the Pacific after becoming extinct in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in the last century? Or, are they rather what Fortean researcher Jerome Clark has called“experience anomalies”?

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman and Anomalist editor Patrick Huyghe have seen “merbeings” as true cryptids, unknown animals. They discussed “merbeings” as possible aquatic primates in The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (2006) Their Field Guide includes a chapter on aquatic and semi‑aquatic humanoids, in both oceanic and fresh‑water settings, and describes numerous encounters. They believe that there are two main types of aquatic primates, a peaceful fishy‑tailed marine variety and an aggressive, carnivorous bipedal fresh‑water variety. The former, they believe, are the source of traditional legends of "mermen" and "mermaids." The latter include creatures like the Latin American and southwestern U.S. "chupacabras" and the Japanese "kappa," and may also underlie reports of “lizard-men” and “frog-men.” [2]

Coleman and Huyghe described one particularly interesting "merbeing" sighting in their The Field Guide. As a young man stationed on the small South Pacific island of Morotai in Indonesia during World War II, Rein Mellaart watched native fishermen drag a 7‑foot‑long fishy‑tailed "mermaid" to shore and leave it on the beach to die. The "bottom part" of the fish‑woman was "exactly like a dolphin, with a double fin on the end," Mellaart recalled, but "from the navel up" it looked perfectly human. She was not a beautiful siren as in sailors' folklore, but rather had "coarse" features and a long pointed nose. However, she had a "beautiful" complexion of "lovely pinky red," and thick long hair reaching down to the beginning of her "fishy" part. The islanders told Mellaart that the "merbeings" traveled in schools and were very frightened of contact with humans. Whenever native boats approached, the creatures signaled each other and dived to great depths. The "merbeings" used their hands‑‑each with 4 fingers and 2 thumbs‑‑to drag themselves up on the beaches at night. The Morotaians saw the "merbeings" as part of their natural environment, and killed and ate them as food. [3]

The closest parallel to Mellaart’s Morotai “fishwoman” is the “ri” of New Ireland northeast of Papua New Guinea. Male, female, and juvenile “ri” were often sighted by fishermen, occasionally netted or found dead on beaches, and sometimes eaten by New Irelanders. The “ri” were air-breathing mammals with human-like heads, arms, upper trunks, and genitals, subsisting on fish in the seas around the Bismarck and Solomon archipelagoes. Their legless lower trunks ended in a pair of lateral fins. The New Irelanders claimed that the “ri” reminded them of the mermaids on tunafish cans, though they did not consider them intelligent beings.[4] American anthropologist Roy Wagner, who visited New Ireland in the late 1970's, felt it unlikely that the “ri” were dugongs or porpoises, both familiar to the natives. Wagner himself once saw a “long dark body swimming at the surface horizontally,” which his companions identified as a “ri.” He wrote a sympathetic paper on “The Ri: Unidentified Aquatic Animals of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea” in _Cryptozoology_, (1982). [5] Wagner was convinced that the “ri” were not dugongs, but New Irelanders living further north considered “ri” just another name for dugong. A February 1985 expedition to New Ireland by American cryptozoologists produced underwater photographs of a “ri”--showing an unambiguous dugong--in Jerome Clark’s view solving at least part of the puzzle. Expedition member Thomas R. Williams, however, pondered the remaining mystery, for which he had no answer, of “how myths of merfolk can arise and persist in the face of the obvious reality of the dugong” [6]

REFERENCES CITED:

1. Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe, The Field Guide to Bigfoot to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (New York: Paraview, 2006), pp. 152-153, on Mellaart’s Morotai “Fishwoman”; Jerome Clark, Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences & Puzzling Physical Phenomena, New Edition (Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 1999), pp. 467-468, on New Ireland “ri,”
2. Coleman and Huyghe, The Field Guide to Bigfoot to Bigfoot…, pp. 37-39.
3. Coleman and Huyghe, The Field Guide to Bigfoot..., pp, 152-153, citing Rein Mellaart, "Mermaids" in William Marks, ed., I Saw Ogopogo! (British Columbia. Special Collection of Peachland–Okanagan Review, 1971), pp. 18‑20.
4. Jerome Clark, Unexplained!, pp. 467-468.
5.“The Ri: Unidentified Aquatic Animals of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea” in Cryptozoology, 1 (1982). 33-39 (cited in Clark, Unexplained!, pp. 467-468, 471, and in William R. Corliss, ed., Science Frontiers Online, No. 27, May-June 1983, “Does Ri=Mermaid?”).
6. Thomas R. Williams. “Identification of the Ri: Through Further Fieldwork in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea,” Cryptozoology 4 (1985), 61-68, cited in Clark, Unexplained!. pp. 468. 471.