"Historic and Unprecedented Vermont Floods"

As I write, there is flooding in Vermont. I don't want to take anything away from real-life peril and loss, but there is flooding in Vermont in weird fiction as well. In August 1931, Weird Tales published "The Whisperer in Darkness" by H.P. Lovecraft. Once you get past Lovecraft's first introduction, there is this second:

     The whole matter began, so far as I am concerned, with the historic and unprecedented Vermont floods of November 3, 1927. [. . .]. Shortly after the flood, amidst the varied reports of hardship, suffering, and organised [sic] relief which filled the press, there appeared certain odd stories of things found floating in some of the swollen rivers [. . . ].

     The tales thus brought to my notice came mostly through newspaper cuttings; though one yarn had an oral source and was repeated to a friend of mine in a letter from his mother in Hardwick, Vermont. The type of thing described was essentially the same in all cases, though there seemed to be three separate instances involved--one connected with the Winooski River near Montpelier, another attached to the West River in Windham County beyond Newfane, and a third centring [sic] in the Passumpsic in Caledonia County above Lyndonville. Of course many of the stray items mentioned other instances, but on analysis they all seemed to boil down to these three. In each case country folk reported seeing one or more very bizarre and disturbing objects in the surging waters that poured down from the unfrequented hills [. . .].

We recently saw the place name Winooski in "The Ape-Man" by J.B.M. Clark, Jr. (Weird Tales, Mar. 1923). There is also mention in "The Whisperer in Darkness" of newspaper clippings à la Charles Fort. (Fort is a character in the movie adaptation of Lovecraft's story.) And there is mention of the Mi-Go:

No use, either, to point out the even more startlingly similar belief of the Nepalese hill tribes in the dreaded Mi-Go or "Abominable Snow-Men" who lurk hideously amidst the ice and rock pinnacles of the Himalayan summits.

I'm not sure how anything can "lurk hideously." Remind me again of how Lovecraft belongs in any canon of American literature or how he might be the equal of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Mi-Go or Abominable Snowman was also mentioned in a letter printed in the September 1945 issue of Weird Tales. The writer of that letter gave a pretty good account of evidence and supposed sightings of the creature. He referred to "The Whisperer in Darkness" in his letter and asked that others who knew about the things about which Lovecraft wrote, including the Mi-Go, write to him, and he provided his address in Sharon, Pennsylvania. His name was Paul Doerr (1927-2007). Last year (in 2022), one or more investigators publicly made a case that Doerr was the infamous Zodiac Killer. There appears to be some good circumstantial evidence that he was in fact the killer. Among Doerr's habits were clipping items from newspapers and making collages. I have written about both of those things recently as well.

I have heard about the flooding in New York and New England. I have also heard that a woman drowned while trying to flee her flooded home. Let's pray for everyone to be protected from harm, for comfort for those who have suffered losses, and for strength and courage for everyone who goes to the rescue. There has been more than enough tragic death recently. We don't need any more.

C.C. Senf's illustration for "The Whisperer in Darkness," in Weird Tales, August 1931, page 33. The story starts on page 32, and already Senf is giving away the game. Lovecraft's story got short shrift, too, because this is the only illustration in his very long work of fiction. By the way, that's a reaching hand on the right. Senf specialized in that device.

Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley