The clear morning sky was overtaken by one very large storm cloud. It threatened and grumbled, but never let loose of any rain or real wind. It just hung there in the sky looking grumpy and still. It was a giant bruise adding a beautiful background contrast to the nearly violent green of the summer trees. I ventured out to enjoy the appearance of a storm without the somewhat wet and bothersome benefits of a real one.

As I was walking through the forest behind my house I heard strange giggling. It wasn’t really childlike, but neither did it belong to an adult. There was a metallic quality to it. I pulled back a gnarled juniper tree branch and was greeted by a collection of creatures I’d rather not describe. I had read about these creatures, in fairy tales meant more for adults in need of some type of morality lesson, but the descriptions could have been better as I sat looking at the real thing. One of the strangely hooded creatures, with terribly long horns, held a piece of paper and was reading from it.

Maliciousness and strife,
and all kinds of vice,
that’s what scary little girls are made of.

Dark clouds and thunder
and creeping bed monsters under
that’s what scary little girls are made of.

Dead teddy bear picnics
tainted places and broken doll faces
that’s what scary little girls are made of.

As I watched the other creatures in attendance giggle, that strange sound of theirs collectively echoing around the forest, I decided it was time to go. Artwork by Bethalynne Bajema, three of nine in the collection. Available here.

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Upon arriving to the Archive this morning I was greeted by a small crowd of people hanging about the bulletin board in the front hall. It appears Myke Amend slipped into the Archive last night and once again favored us with some of his artwork. We’re not sure if his intent is something meant for a child’s room or to harass the interns. If it’s the former, I fear for the temperament of a child that would it enjoy it on their walls. If it’s the latter, well, one can never harass the interns enough. Available here.

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Travel Log, 27th of June, 2008, or 1908, I can never tell anymore.
Mechanical Insects in the Forest Read the rest of this entry »

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Archive Staffers and Visitors alike: We here in the Elder Staff members department have decided it might be beneficial to those who have gotten behind on Archive happenings, or for persons who are new to the Archive, to have a newsletter that collects together Archive events and articles. Please find enclosed your copy of The Miskatonic Archive Newsletter.
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I was greeted by the most extraordinary collage creations this morning, with a small note trying to convince me the artist responsible for them had come into being by a crazy night of elderberry wine and a strange rendezvous between a gentleman octopus and a charming selkie. Luckily this biography was included in with the artwork to dispel this rumor:

“There aren’t any castles in the suburbs of Delaware and there aren’t any haunted mansions with gloomy mansard roofs, either, and because that fact was nearly too tragic for me to bear as a child, Winona Cookie came to comfort me.

“Appearing in a shower of cookie crumbs one rainy thunderstruck afternoon, she has been my lifetime antidote to boredom. While I trudged through graduate schools and internships, Winona has followed her own path, leaving a trail of fanciful stories, watercolors, ink drawings, collages and jewelry in her wake. She favors the darkest faeries, legendary women, arcane subject matter and inventors that never were. She is currently obsessed with the steampunk genre and is running me ragged with collages and stories. They are frankly beginning to pile up! We live in San Diego where I practice psychotherapy and try to find a place for my ill-tempered cat to sit in my studio.”

All of these lovely creations are available for purchase at Ramona and Winona’s Etsy shop, located at winonacookie.etsy.com. Ramona and Winona are also members of EtsySteamTeam – search “steamteam” on the Etsy site for lots of imaginative and astonishing items. More of Winona’s work can be seen at winonacookieillustration.com.

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Attention Archive Staff:

It is with great sadness that I must inform the Archive staff that our annual trip to Chicago for the Wizards and Warbles conference had to be canceled due to difficulties being sustained by the Archive’s means of transportation. Our good auto the Magdalene, simply could not make the trip and had to be taken into the auto fixers for a good going over. We are happy to report it looks as though she will pull through this time, however, enough was not done within time for us to send our representatives to the conference.

In light of recent events, staffers are pooling together resources to hopefully make other conferences taking place over the summer months. In an effort to facilitate this endeavor, we’ve placed a variety of Archive items in Miss Etta Diem’s dry goods shop for immediate purchase by interested parties.

Most Archive staff are familiar with Miss Diem, but for those of you who have not spent an afternoon drinking or nibbling on any one of her strange teas and lunch concoctions, her old Victorian house is just a few kilometers down the road from the Archive. She runs an eccentric cafe and dry goods shop that a good many Archive staffers have used for exotic supplies in a pinch. Now we’re partnering with Miss Diem and allowing her to sell on consignment a variety of our token items. If you happen to have anything you would like to submit to the “auto fund” please feel free to contact any of your chief Archive staff members… with the exception of Professor Zolty, which we wish to continue reminding you that he is dead and should not be encouraged into believing he is still among us.

Anyone wishing to purchase any valued Archive items that have been turned over to Miss Diem’s shop, need only visit her. Below is a short list of a few items we’ve released into Miss Diem’s trustworthy care.

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In the late 1900’s at the height of the Spiritualist movement, Huxley Auspex took his place among the movement’s elite by creating and ushering into the world the Auspicmoriscope. The fantastic claims of this invention were simple: the user looked into the eyepiece and turned the handle and the spirit realm became visible within the instrument’s view finder.

The instrument caused a stir among even the most hardened in the community and Auspex became a quick celebrity, embraced by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He followed this rise to celebrity by creating a variety of variations on his original device, each offering claims more brilliant and fabled than the next. The final version of the auspicmoriscope was a heavy contraption that came complete with a strange scrying board and typewriter like letter box that was meant to allow the user to type in messages or relay the names of those they wished to contact. Auspex claimed the additions to the device allowed for better locating and displaying of those the viewer desired to see.

Though Auspex was a darling of the spiritualist movement and the auspicmoriscope one of its most valued tools, these things only served to make him a vocal point for the debunkers of the movement’s claims. Auspex even came under the wraith and dedicated attention of the infamous Harry Houdini, the renowned skeptic and revealer of spiritualist trickery. Houdini was one of the first to step up and proclaim Auspex’s invention nothing more than a charlatan’s tool and he sought every method and means to prove this theory. The problem was that the auspicmoriscope was not so easy to debunk and expose for the hoax it was seen to be. When most any viewer put their eyes to the eye piece, the simple fact was they did see a vision of this world as it was not seen through normal eyes. The darker shades of the shadows were highlighted and brought into deeper detail. The bright blue skies no longer looked as simple as they did on a spring day. And all too often thick vaporous forms seemed to dominate the viewfinder with no reasonable explanation as to why. What was more disturbing was how these vaporous forms seem to show more definition the longer one viewed them. Faces emerged and bodies slowly became outlined. Even those who were dead set on not seeing anything within these forms came away from the auspicmoriscope with the unsettling feeling that they had indeed viewed something other worldly.

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The Aristocrats of the Metropolis care for nothing more than years, making dynasties obsolete as they persevere into one decade after another, buoyed by ‘rejuvenation treatments’ that leave them dusty and raw. - Eliza Gauger

To see more of Eliza’s work, visit: http://www.elizagauger.com

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