Thursday, July 31, 2025

Mortimer Levitan (1890-1968)

Abraham Mortimer Levitan
Author, Lecturer, Attorney, Banker, Gourmet, Book Collector, Traveler, Amateur Photographer
Born February 21, 1890, Leavenworth, Kansas
Died February 16, 1968, Madison, Wisconsin

Mortimer Levitan had a long and distinguished career completely outside the realm of magazine fiction. His writing career was brief, but it included a story, "The Third Thumb-Print," in Weird Tales, his only one for "The Unique Magazine" and his last listed in The FictionMags Index. It's worth noting that Levitan was born in the same year as H.P. Lovecraft and Jacob Clark Henneberger. I have found only one Mortimer Levitan in public records. I assume him to be our man.

Abraham Mortimer Levitan, also called Abe Mortimer Levitan, was born on February 21, 1890, in Leavenworth, Kansas. (Some sources say Glarus or New Glarus, Wisconsin, a place that has its own interesting history.) He was the son of Solomon Levitan and Dora T. (Andelson) Levitan of Leavenworth. Born in the Russian Empire, Sol Levitan (1862-1940) came to America as a child, his journey coming as a reward for having saved his uncle from a pogrom carried out in Crimea. The older Levitan started out as a laborer and a "pack peddler." He worked his way up into prominence, twice serving as Wisconsin state treasurer and working as a bank president. He was also a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1924, which chose Calvin Coolidge as its candidate. Coolidge was of course president during some very good months and years at Weird Tales, from August 1923 to March 1929. We don't often consider the historical context in which Weird Tales was published.

Mortimer Levitan attended grade school in Glarus and graduated from Madison High School. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1913, and Harvard University, from which school he received his law degree in 1915. Levitan had his own private practice in law in Chicago and Madison until 1932, when he became Wisconsin state assistant attorney general, a post he held for twenty-five years. In his career he handled over 600 cases before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and several before the U.S. Supreme Court. His career as an attorney was interrupted only by his service in the U.S. Navy during World War I.

The FictionMags Index lists six short stories by Mortimer Levitan, all published from 1918 to 1925:

  • "The Stop-Over," in Young's Magazine (Mar. 1918)
  • "The Manliness of Mr. Barney," in Young's Magazine (May 1919)
  • "Daniel Decides," in Snappy Stories (1st, Jan. 1920)
  • "Crawford Gets Paid," in Short Stories (Nov. 10, 1921)
  • "Legerdemain," in McClure's Magazine (May 1925)
  • "The Third Thumb-Print," in Weird Tales (June 1925)

His story for Weird Tales touches on eugenics and phrenology. It involves a means of determining whether a man is a criminal before he commits his crime, as in the movie Minority Report (2002), based on the novella by Philip K. Dick.

Levitan was a world traveler and amateur photographer, but his main avocation was as a gourmet and collector of cookbooks. These eventually numbered 2,615. In 1965, he donated his collection to the University of Wisconsin in honor of his mother.

Mortimer Levitan never married. He died on February 16, 1968, just five days before his seventy-eighth birthday, in Madison. He was buried at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison.

Mortimer Levitan's Story in Weird Tales
"The Third Thumb-Print" (June 1925) 

Further Reading
  • "U.W. Savors Gift of 2,615 Cook Books from City's No. 1 Gourmet" by Vivien Hone, in The Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin, January 14, 1965, page 1. This article includes a photograph of Levitan in his kitchen.
  • "Mortimer Levitan, 77, Former Attorney General's Aide, Dies," in the Wisconsin State Journal, February 17, 1968, page 15. This article also includes a photograph of Levitan.
  •  Many other newspaper articles.

(Abraham "Abe") Mortimer Levitan (1890-1968), his yearbook photograph from his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, 1913. 

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Monday, July 28, 2025

Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970)

Author, Magician & Performer, Newspaper Reporter, Editor, & Publisher, Radio News Director, Congressional Aid 
Born December 23, 1901, Madison, Nebraska
Died June 21, 1970, North Platte, Nebraska

Charles Hilan "Charley" Craig, also called "Hi" Craig, was born on December 23, 1901, in Madison, Nebraska, and grew up in Morrill on the opposite end of the state. His parents were Charles C. Craig and Chrissie M. Craig, and he had two brothers and two sisters. Although he was known later in life as a newspaperman, Craig began as an author of fiction. It's pretty early in this biography to write of obituaries, but here's an account of Craig's start as a writer from his obituary:

     He once calculated that his writing career began in 1915, at the age of 13 when he purchased for a penny his first copy of "Lone Scout" in the community of Morrill where he was raised.

     "Discarded were my ambitions to become a lawyer, astronomer, policeman, locomotive engineer, millionaire, postmaster or train robber," he would say later in telling of his first by-line.

     "Instead I was going to write."

     And write he did.

From: "Charley Craig, former Telegraph editor, dies," in the North Platte Telegraph, June 22, 1970, page 1, the same source as the photograph below.

The Lone Scout was the national publication of the Lone Scouts of America, an early scouting organization designed for boys who lived in rural areas of the country. For The Lone Scout, Craig wrote a football story, "Fighting for Bradley," and a second serial called "The Spell of Sahara." The former won him a Quill award from the magazine. The latter was called by a historian of the Lone Scouts "probably the finest individual narrative to appear in Lone Scout." (Source: "'The Golden Years' of Lone Scouts," part two of a four-part series by Lucien W. Emerson, published in Southern Utah News, August 13, 1959, page 1+.) Craig prized his membership in the Elbeetian Legion, an association for former Lone Scouts of America. I have written before about the Lone Scouts in my mini-biographies of Ralph Allen Lang (1906-1987) and Merlin Moore Taylor (1886-1939). Click on their names to find your way to them.

Charles H. Craig attended Hastings College in Hastings, Nebraska. He was editor of the Hastings Collegian in 1922-23. On August 16, 1928, he married Rose Nellie Cecil in Castle Rock, Colorado. Craig had previously performed as a magician named Aladdin on on the Chautauqua and Lyceum Circuits. After their marriage, they performed together. They had a son, David Alan Craig, a railroad worker, angler, woodworker, and hobbyist, and a daughter, Diane R. Craig.

Charles Craig worked as a newspaperman for most of his life. A summary of his career: publisher, Morrill Mail (three years); editor, Bridgeport News Blade (three years); reporter, North Platte Daily Bulletin (three years); editor of the same paper (1943-1946); news director, KODY radio, North Platte (1946-1956); with the North Platte Telegraph Bulletin before leaving to become an administrative assistant to U.S. Representative A.L. Miller in Washington, D.C. (1956-1958); news staff, North Platte Telegraph Bulletin (1958-1961); editor of the same paper from 1961 until his retirement in 1967. Craig was also involved in his community, and he considered North Platte to be home, even though he had lived in far-flung and perhaps more exciting places.

Charles Hilan Craig wrote under his own name during his career as a pulp-fiction author. He had eight stories in Weird Tales and one in its companion title, Detective Tales, as well as one in its successor, Real Detective Tales. From The FictionMags Index

  • "Old Man Davis Goes Home," in Detective Tales (Nov. 16/Dec. 15, 1922)
  • "The Wanderer," in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
  • Letter in The Black Mask (Dec. 15, 1923)
  • "The River," in Real Detective Tales (May 1924)
  • "Damned," in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "Darkness," in Weird Tales (Sept. 1925)
  • "Stealer of Souls," in Weird Tales (Jan. 1926)
  • "The Curse," in Weird Tales (Mar. 1926)
  • "The Ruler of Destiny," in Weird Tales (Apr. 1927)
  • "The Gray Rider," in Weird Tales (Nov. 1927)
  • "The Man Who Walked Upon the Air," in Weird Tales (July 1930)
  • "The Red Sail," in Weird Tales (Oct. 1931)

Those are enough to make a collection if anyone had the mind to put one out. Notice that one of his stories is in the category of "The Man Who . . .".

I think any of us would be happy to have the writing career he had, especially beginning as it did when he was a child and full of dreams.

Charley Craig died on June 21, 1970, in North Platte, Nebraska, after a long illness. He was sixty-eight years old. 

As you can see, Craig's first story in Weird Tales was published in May 1925, one hundred years ago now. He is the last of the authors in that May issue about whom I will write for now. Next I'll write about June.

Charles Hilan Craig's Stories in Weird Tales
See the list above.

Further Reading
See the sources cited in this biography and other newspaper articles, too.

Here's a very early item on the contribution of a local author to Weird Tales magazine, from the Hastings [Nebraska] Daily Tribune, December 2, 1925, page 7.

Weird Tales January 1926 by Farnsworth Wright | Goodreads
That newspaper item refers to Charles Hilan Craig's long short story "Stealer of Souls," which was the cover story and lead story of the January 1926 issue of Weird Tales. The cover artist was Andrew Brosnatch.

Charles Hilan Craig (1901-1970).

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Friday, July 25, 2025

Susan Andrews Rice (1865-1938)

Author, Poet, Teacher of Music & Voice
Born September 1865, New York State, possibly in Croghan
Died October 5, 1938, at home, Washington, D.C.

Susan Andrews Rice was born in September 1865, possibly in Croghan, New York. Some sources give her birth year as 1866, but the U.S. census of 1870 indicates 1865 as the actual year. Her parents were Yale Rice, a farmer, and Helen Marie (Curtis) Rice. She had three sisters and a brother. The family moved from New York State to Falls Church, Virginia, in the 1870s or '80s.

Susan A. Rice studied at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was a pupil of Lyman Wheeler (1837-1900). She taught vocal culture in Washington, D.C., and wrote articles on music. She was also the author of poems and short stories. Her credits include:

  • "Music in America," article in The National Tribune (Washington, D.C.) (June 9, 1892)
  • "To Write or Not to Write," article in The Writer (1892)
  • "How to Entertain," article (syndicated) (1893)
  • "All Saints Day," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Jan. 2, 1896)
  • "Patty Jasper's Idea," short story (syndicated, including in The Independent [New York, New York]) (Aug. 20, 1896) 
  • "A Missionary Story," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (ca. Nov. 1897)
  • "The One Who Knows Me Not," poem in the Boston Evening Transcript (Feb. 13, 1901)
  • "His Particular Detestation," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Nov. 3, 1901)
  • "Delia Duty's Defection," short story in the New Orleans Times-Democrat (Oct. 22, 1911)
  • "The Girl in the Wheeling-Chair," short story in Harper’s Bazaar (June 1913)
  • Letter in All-Story Weekly (July 27, 1918)
  • "The Ghost Farm," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "A Day in the Life of Aurelia Durant," short story (syndicated) (Oct. 1925)

Thanks to The FictionMags Index for some of these credits.

Her story for Weird Tales, entitled "The Ghost Farm," is short but good, I think, and memorable. I like the tone and the sentiment. It's an example of why weird fiction should come also from women and from writers outside the realms of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. It was reprinted in 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories (1993), even if it isn't ghastly at all. "The Ghost Farm" has as its background the many losses of the Great War. That an unavoidable theme and subject of many stories and poems in Weird Tales during the 1920s.

Susan Andrews Rice died at home in Washington, D.C., on October 5, 1938, at age seventy-three. She was buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Falls Church, Virginia, where her family had lived for many years.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part Two

Following are some of the writing credits of James C. Bardin, first from from The FictionMags Index:

  • "Blue Shade," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Mar. 1911)
  • "The Watcher," poem in Harper's Monthly Magazine (Aug. 1911)
  • "In the Magnolia Gardens," poem in The Smart Set (Sept. 1912)
  • "The Strange Philanthropy of Juan Del Coronado," short story in Snappy Stories (1st, Jan. 1916)
  • "Tiger-Lily," poem in Snappy Stories (2nd, Aug. 1916)
  • "The Construction Gang," poem in Railroad Man's Magazine (Nov. 1916)
  • "The Philanthropist," short story in People's (Nov. 1916)
  • "Barren Sands," short story in Sea Stories Magazine (Feb. 1925)
  • "Death," article in Weird Tales (Feb. 1925)
  • "The Sobbing Bell," short story in Weird Tales (May 1925)
  • "The Golden Fleece," short story in The Golden West Magazine (Jan. 1928)

Bardin's contributions to Virginia Quarterly Review, from the website of that journal:

  • "The Last Available 'Place in the Sun'" (Autumn 1926)
  • "The Hate of Those Ye Guard" (Spring 1927)
  • "Lawrence" (Summer 1927)
  • "Before Columbus" (Spring 1928)
  • "Black Valley and the Tree of Life" (Autumn 1928) 
  • "Gongorism? -- What of It?" (Summer 1929)
  • "Mexico--And Indianismo" (Spring 1932)
  • "The Mexican Revolution" (Winter 1934)
  • "Thunder Over Latin America" (Winter 1939)

In Scientific American:

  • "The Amazingly Accurate Calendar System of the Maya Indians" (Nov. 1925)

In The Bulletin of the Pan American Union:

  • "A Song from Sor Juana" (1942) 

I have also found that Bardin wrote at least two stage plays:

  • Penningtons, Too: A Play in One Act
  • Second Samuel

I'm sure he had other writing credits, too.

James C. Bardin's Article & Short Story in Weird Tales
"Death" (Feb. 1925)
"The Sobbing Bell" (May 1925)

Further Reading
Numerous newspaper articles and, if you can find them, Bardin's own works.

Scientific American, November 1925, in which James C. Bardin's article on the Mayan calendar appeared. I don't know the name of the artist, but change the dress of the men in this illustration to something futuristic and it could easily have been on the cover of a science fiction magazine of the 1920s and '30s. This was when science was done in buildings that looked like barns by men and women who were true scientists. Now supposed "science" is carried out in multi-million-dollar facilities by people who believe in pseudoscience, anti-science, non-science, or simple nonsense. I can't tell what the two objects on the table are supposed to be, but they remind me of the Trylon and Perisphere at the New York World's Fair of 1939.

Acknowledgments to The FictionMags Index and the websites of Virginia Quarterly Review and Scientific American.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Saturday, July 19, 2025

James C. Bardin (1887-1959)-Part One

Author, Poet, Playwright, Book Reviewer, Translator, Military Officer, Explorer, Medical Doctor, University Professor, Public Speaker
Born September 25, 1887, Augusta, Georgia
Died October 13, 1959, Veterans Administration Hospital, Salisbury, North Carolina

James Cook Bardin had one essay and one short story in Weird Tales, both in 1925. He was born on September 25, 1887, in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Henry Clay Bardin and Mary Ella (Cook) Bardin. He appears to have attended Harvard University, graduating in 1908, and he attended the University of Virginia, there receiving his medical degree in 1909. Young Dr. Bardin was on the staff of Central State Hospital in Petersburg, Virginia, for one year before beginning as a teacher at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Central State Hospital was a hospital for mentally ill black people, the first of its kind in the United States.

James C. Bardin taught Romance languages and history at the University of Virginia for forty-four years, from 1910 until his retirement. He had an admirable career not only as a university professor but also as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, as well as verse, stage plays, and book reviews. Bardin had short stories in the lowly pulps as well as non-fiction articles in Scientific AmericanVirginia Quarterly Review, and other journals. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and the Raven Club, as well as societies in Latin America, where he often traveled. 

The Raven Club, which I think was also called the Raven Society, was a scholastic society at the University of Virginia. A newspaper article from 1909 lets us know at this late date that it was a "society made up of students who [had] distinguished themselves in literary work." That article, "Paying Tribute to Poe's Genius" (The Portsmouth [Virginia] Star, Jan. 18, 1909, page 1) makes it pretty clear that the "Raven" in Raven Club refers to the poem of the same name by Edgar Allan Poe. The article also gives details on the celebration of the centenary of Poe's birth at the university. Poe of course attended the University of Virginia, as did Captain Luke Leary Stevens (1878-1944), teacher of J.C. Henneberger, later co-founder of Weird Tales magazine.

On June 19, 1915, Bardin married Sally Norvell Nelson (1891-1969) in Charlottesville. She was a watercolorist and a volunteer librarian, among other things. They had a son, Captain James Nelson Bardin (1926-2008) of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was also a writer, of non-fiction on aviation and handguns.

James C. Bardin entered the U.S. Army in 1918 as a first lieutenant and eventually attained the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in the medical corps at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, and Camp Cody, New Mexico, in late 1918. Later he was a reserve officer in the geographic division of the Military Intelligence Service. And he served again during World War II. Bardin had been in Paris at the outbreak of the Great War, but he made it back stateside in one way or another. He traveled often and to many different countries. He was a student of the Mayan civilization and its languages. In 1929, he criticized Charles A. Lindbergh's flights over Mayan ruins, a photographic expedition, as being "worthless to science," according to a contemporaneous newspaper article. The current website of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum has a different opinion.

Bardin retired to the coastal counties of North Carolina (as Captain Stevens had before him). James C. Bardin, M.D., Ph.D., died on October 13, 1959, at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Salisbury, North Carolina, after a very long stay. He was seventy-two years old. His death came in the same month of the year as Poe's and just six days after that anniversary, the 110th. Bardin was buried at Manteo Cemetery, Dare County, North Carolina.

To be concluded . . .

Dr. James Cook Bardin (1887-1959), from the Waynesboro [Virginia] News-Virginian, December 6, 1938, page 5, on the occasion of a talk Bardin gave on the Spanish Civil War.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley 

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

The Curse of Tut-Ankh-Amen

The first story by Donald Edward Keyhoe in Weird Tales was "The Grim Passenger," published in April 1925, one hundred years before I began writing this series. My move and other events have intervened. That one-hundred year anniversary isn't so timely now. But I'll complete this series today.

"The Grim Passenger" is a story of Egypt and mummies. It begins with a reference to "the opening of the tomb of King Tut-Ankh-Amen," which took place in February 1923 but was still pretty fresh in the minds of the reading public two years later. Weird Tales had had plenty of content related to Egypt, pyramids, pharaohs, mummies, and King Tut-Ankh-Amen, most notably in its first-anniversary issue of May-June-July 1924. There would be more.

Keyhoe's story is one of a curse. Its author was clever enough to connect the idea of an ancient Egyptian curse to a more recent historical event. I won't give away his twist ending. There are those who believe in what they call the Curse of King Tut. Still there are those who believe these things. Even as late as the one-hundred-year anniversary issue of Weird Tales, published in 2023, there seems to have been belief, this expressed in Tim Lebbon's story "Laid to Rest." I will quote a newspaper article from one hundred years before: "It is really remarkable that otherwise intelligent persons should give credence to stories of this character [. . .] ." And yet they do. (Source: "Spirits and Lord Carnarvon," in The (San Francisco) Recorder, April 7, 1923, page 6.)

The concept of an ancient Egyptian curse visited upon those who disturb ancient tombs and graves is an old one. Like so much in our popular culture, it appears to date from the nineteenth century. The originators of the living mummy and a mummy's curse appear to have been three women, plus an anonymous author. They were Jane C. Loudon, Jane G. Austin, Louisa May Alcott, and, of course, Anonymous. You can read more about that on Wikipedia, the website that knows everything, including many things the rest of us know as lies.

There is a pharaonic curse in the work of another author. He was H. Rider Haggard. In Cleopatra: Being an Account of the Fall and Vengeance of Harmarchis (1889), Haggard wrote of how Harmarchis robs the tomb of the pharaoh Men-kau-ra and how "the 'Ka,' or the spirit of the dead Pharaoh, brought about the degradation and death of both Harmarchis and Cleopatra for their impious deed." (Same source as the above quote.) In February 1923, Haggard in fact protested against "desecrating the tombs at Luxor," asking, "'What would England think if the great dead in Westminster Abbey were exhumed and treated this way?'" (Source: "H. Rider Haggard Flays Desecration," in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 20, 1923, page 2.) Haggard is about to come up again.

The idea that there is a Curse of King Tut seems to have originated with the sickness and death of Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the explorations at the tomb of Tutankhamen. The first use of that phrase--"the Curse of King Tut"--that I have found in an American newspaper is from March 20, 1923. Lord Carnarvon had fallen ill the previous day from an infected mosquito bite. He died on April 5, 1923, in Cairo, and his body was returned to his native land for burial. I feel certain it has remained undisturbed since then. In any case, "the Curse of King Tut" and Weird Tales magazine are, as you can see, of the same vintage, for both got their start in March 1923. I don't know who came up with the idea of the curse. The newspaper article, shown below, is unsigned. But its anonymous author wrote it as if Haggard were in his place, and I find that noteworthy. It's also fascinating to realize that the writing lives of the early Weird Tales authors overlapped with that of H. Rider Haggard.

"The Curse of King Tut! Egyptians Insist Avenger Has Struck Invader of Tomb." From The Cleveland Press, March 20, 1923, page 1. The author is anonymous, but the art is signed. Unfortunately, I can't read the artist's last name, only his first--Paul. The account reads like a weird tale, and the illustration of a man in a pith helmet and jodhpurs, fleeing from a giant insect, could easily have appeared in "The Unique Magazine" of the 1920s.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Sunday, July 13, 2025

From Irvington to the Stars

We lived and grew up in Irvington. Once its own town, Irvington was annexed by the city of Indianapolis in 1902. Irvington is and was a cultured place. Its streets were named for prominent authors and artists of the nineteenth century, including Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell, John Greenleaf Whittier, Hoosier poetess Sarah Bolton, and John James Audubon. Butler University got its start in Irvington before moving to the north side of Indianapolis. The Disciples of Christ had a prominent place in our neighborhood for decades. We walked past the Christian Church on our way to school. As much as anything, Irvington is now known for its annual Halloween Festival.

The painter William Forsyth lived in Irvington, as did caricaturist Kin Hubbard, creator of Abe Martin. Bill Shirley, the original Prince Charming, was from Irvington. Marjorie Main--Ma Kettle--lived there for a time. So did C.L. Moore (1911-1987). One of the homes in which she and her family lived was around the corner from that of the Cornelius family, who saved Weird Tales from extinction in the 1920s. On the opposite end of the social order, H.H. Holmes murdered and hid the remains of young Howard Pitezel in a house in Irvington in October 1894. Holmes poisoned Pitezel with drugs he had purchased at a local pharmacy. That small fact will come into play shortly. We never heard of Holmes and knew nothing about those events from the distant past. Holmes and everything he did seems to have been forgotten after his execution in 1896.

When we were kids, we walked to a lot of local businesses, many of which were in a Tudor-style block of buildings on the north side of the National Road, U.S. Highway 40, which, in Indianapolis, is called Washington Street. One of those businesses was Peacher Drugs, located at the northwest corner of Washington Street and North Audubon Road.* The pharmacist was Rex Peacher (1913-1983). Only today did I learn his name or anything about him. Peacher started his business in 1956 after having worked for Haag Drugs and probably in other places. He seems to have been destined to become a pharmacist, for if you take away the 'e' from his Christian name, you're left with Rx. Peacher sold everything at auction in September 1975 and retired in 1976. Like Howard Pitezel, he died in October.

Rex Peacher attended Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis. One of his classmates was Robert Padgett Moore (1913-1973), who also became a businessman. If you look back two paragraphs, you will see again the surname Moore. In this world of strange coincidences, Rex Peacher's high school classmate was first C.L. Moore's younger brother. Peacher's drugstore was just one block east of the Moores' childhood home, though those two places were separated by decades. Remember that she used the surname Padgett, her grandmother's maiden name, as a shared pseudonym with her husband Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) in their writing lives. Robert Moore was buried out of Shirley Brothers mortuary, run by the family of Bill Shirley.

I don't know whether there was a pharmacy on the site of Rex Peacher's drugstore before he set up shop in 1956. I don't know where in 1894 H.H. Holmes might have bought his killing drugs. But the house in which he committed his crimes was on Julian Avenue, only about four blocks east of the site of Peacher's drugstore. That house is supposed to exist still. Sometime in the twentieth century, though, it was turned to Good.

The entrance to Peacher Drugs, or Peacher's as we called it, sat at a slant facing the street corner. Upon entering the store, if you turned to the right and went all the way to the rear, you would find a shelf upon which plastic model kits were set up for sale. We didn't have much money when we were kids. Revell models were the high-end brand and were mostly out of reach for us. Monogram models were more affordable. Very often, though, we could afford only models from the Lindberg Line, which sold for $1.25 apiece.

I have always liked airplanes, and when I was a kid I usually bought only airplane models. (I made an exception for Aurora monster models, later for the AMT Gigantics series.) I remember building a Grumman Hellcat, one of my favorites, and a Messerschmitt Bf 109. I remember my older brother had an Me 262. Like kids did in those days, we hung our airplane models from the bedroom ceiling. Airplane models hung from the ceiling of the day room in our barracks at Lackland Air Force Base, too. On our last night there, late into the night, I built a C-119 Flying Boxcar to add to the collection. The next day, I slept almost the whole way on the bus to Sheppard Air Force Base. That's where I learned to work on the real thing, in my case the F-16 Fighting Falcon, sometimes in places far from the Irvington of my childhood, including in two war zones.

When I was a kid, I thought the Lindberg Line models were named after Charles Lindbergh. That seemed logical enough: he was a famous airplane pilot, the Lindberg Line were airplane models, and so the models were named in his honor. Only later did I find out that the Lindberg Line was named for the founder of the company, Paul Lindberg (1904-1988). Again, Lindberg models were cheaper than most other brands. The box art wasn't as good and there were fewer parts and fewer decals. But there were enough parts to put wings on a dream. 

I have been writing about Charles Lindbergh and Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988). Like Lindbergh, Keyhoe was an aviator. Born in Iowa, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1919 and became a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps. Keyhoe was injured in a plane crash in Guam in 1922 and later discharged. In his convalescence, he began writing. He wrote about aviation for magazines and newspapers, but he also wrote pulp fiction, including early stories for Weird TalesRobert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) also graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. He, too, was discharged for medical reasons and became a writer of pulp fiction. Both men died in the same year, 1988, nigh on forty years ago. Heinlein of course won a far wider fame.

One of the ideas that came out of the Flying Saucer Era is that Earth was visited in ancient times by people from other planets. Although he wrote mostly on the flying saucers of the present, Keyhoe also touched upon this ancient astronaut hypothesis. Modern-day researchers have traced the origins of the ancient astronaut hypothesis to the works of another pulp-fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), especially to "The Call of Cthulhu" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1928) and At the Mountains of Madness (Astounding Stories, Feb.-Mar.-Apr. 1936). I have a feeling the idea goes back farther than that, though perhaps not very much farther. I wonder what, if anything, Charles Fort had to say about the whole matter.

Flying saucers were one of two major religious belief systems to come out of science fiction. The other, Dianetics/Scientology, also draws on the ancient astronaut hypothesis. The story is that a long time ago, in a galactic empire far, far away, an alien named Xenu packed his people into spacecraft that looked like the Douglas DC-8 and proceeded to bring them to Earth. I have seen online images of a Lindberg Line model of the DC-8. One of these bears the Pan Am logo. Remember that in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), there are spacecraft with the same logo. These are shown after a long, wordless opening sequence in which ancient astronauts influence pre-men into becoming men. They do this using a monolith that hums because they don't yet know the words. Anyway, there weren't any parts to make Xenu attached to the sprue of those old Lindberg Line models. If you had wanted him, you would have had to build him from scratch, just as his creator did in the dark depths of his twisted mind. By the way, L. Ron Hubbard served in the U.S. Navy, too, and styled himself a hero. Instead I think he was more or less a nincompoop and a far, far cry from Lindbergh, Keyhoe, and Heinlein.

 Next: More on Keyhoe and then an end.

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For my younger brother, whom we have lost and whose birthday was last week.

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*One street was named for a Federalist, the other for a Romantic, both frontiersman. George Washington never set foot in what is now Indiana, but John James Audubon almost certainly did. By the way, the grandmother of my classmate Mary, named Jean Brown Wagoner (1896-1996), was also an Irvingtonian and also an author. She wrote a biography, Martha Washington: Girl of Old Virginia (1947), among others in the Childhood of Famous Americans series published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis. She came to talk to us and answer questions when we were in grade school. Her father was Hilton U. Brown (1859-1958) of the Indianapolis News, Indianapolis Newspapers, Inc., Butler University, and the Disciples of Christ Church. If I have this right, he lived across the street from the painter William Forsyth.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Saturday, July 12, 2025

Update After a Long Absence

I haven't written since May 19. That's the longest pause in my writing, I think, since I began this blog. The reason is that I have moved. Most of my things are now in storage. I think I can keep going with my research and writing, but things will be different for me, at least for a while. I will pick up again where I left off, with Donald Keyhoe and his connections to Weird Tales and flying saucers.

Thanks for hanging in there with me and continuing to read my blog during my absence. Last month there were nearly 67,000 visits here. I hope that most of those were real people and not robots or AI.

Copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Monday, May 19, 2025

Donald Keyhoe in National Geographic-Part Two

As I was paging through Donald E. Keyhoe's article "Seeing America with Lindbergh," published in The National Geographic Magazine in January 1928, I was struck by an oblique aerial photograph, and its caption, of the new airport at Oakland, California:

The caption reads:

A GLIMPSE OF THE CROWD AT OAKLAND (SEE, ALSO, PAGE 39)

     This modern airport when completed will cover 825 acres and will be one of the largest in the world. At present it has one runway 7,000 feet long and 250 feet wide. There is also a square area, part of which is here shown, now ready for use. This is 1,700 by 2,500 feet. The white circle and the name "Oakland" are made permanent by the use of crushed stone. These markings are a very great help to the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory. Hangars, night lighting equipment, and other apparatus are being installed.

- - -

Pay special attention to the word "Oakland," the white circle with its stem, and the white square with its longer stem to the left. These features, along with the words of the caption--"These markings are a very great help to the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory"--reminded me of other images and other ideas . . .

The idea pointed out by Keyhoe in his picture and caption is that large symbols made on the ground can be used to communicate with viewers in the air. If you read works of Forteana, you have probably encountered this idea before. I know I have, and I might have a date for my first such encounter: January 5, 1973, when the documentary In Search of Ancient Astronauts was first broadcast on NBC-TV. Or maybe it was on September 6, 1973, when "one of the most talked-about television specials of the past season" was repeated. The source of the quote is a syndicated feature article from various American newspapers published in September 1973. I suspect the documentary was repeated at later dates, too.

In Search of Ancient Astronauts is based on the book Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken, published in 1968 and adapted to film in 1970. One segment of In Search of Ancient Astronauts is about the lines graven into the plains of Nazca in southern Peru. The "conclusion reached by von Däniken," says the narrator Rod Serling, using his best Twilight Zone/Night Gallery voice, is that these lines "represent a landing field: the Plain of Nazca is a gigantic abandoned airport."

Here are two images, with captions, from a double-page spread in Mr. von Däniken's book (Bantam Books, 1971):


The captions read:

(Above:)
Another of the strange markings on the Plain of Nazca. This is very reminiscent of the aircraft parking areas in a modern airport.

(It's also reminiscent of the circle and stem at the Oakland airport in 1927.)

(Below:)
This huge 820-foot figure above the Bay of Pisco points to the Plain of Nazca. Could this be an aerial direction indicator rather than a symbol of religious significance?

(In other words, could this figure have been put into place to help "the airman who is flying cross-country over strange territory"?)
- - -

The idea of communicating with people in the air from signals on the ground predated In Search of Ancient Astronauts, Chariots of the Gods?, and Donald Keyhoe's article from 1928, for in its issue of April 1920, Popular Mechanics published an article by Paul H. Woodruff called "Perhaps Mars Is Signaling Earth." The article begins with a recounting of events from January 1920, when "Marconi commercial-wireless stations at New York and London reported the receipt of certain strange and undecipherable signals." (p. 495) The author of the article quoted several prominent astronomers and physicists, including Albert Einstein, regarding these signals. An idea bandied about was that they were from people on another planet. A further idea was how we of Earth might signal them back.

There were different ways of doing that according to the men quoted in the article. Here is an illustration of one to go along with today's theme:


The caption reads:

Sir Oliver Lodge's Simple Suggestion Is to Form a Gigantic Geometrical Figure on the Surface of the Sahara Desert, Which Would Be Visible to a Martian Observer through a Telescope as Powerful as Those Used on Earth. It would be Understood as a Sign Because Geometry Is a Science of the Universe.
- - - 

We have encountered Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940) before. Although he was a physicist, he was also the opposite of a physicist, that is, a spiritualist. I first wrote about him in an article called "Dr. Dorp by Otis Adelbert Kline," posted on September 4, 2023. You can read what I wrote by clicking here. Although Lodge, as a physicist, would have been interested in other planets and possible signals from outer space, I sense that his interest here had more to do with his beliefs in the paranormal and other things outside the realm of science. His geometric shape here might be a triangle, but it's also the shape of a pyramid in profile. (So now we have three basic shapes, circle, square, and triangle.) And look at that, there are four pyramids in the foreground. These are no doubt for scale, but they also introduce a connection to these ancient, mysterious, and some would say occult structures. Remember that proponents of the ancient astronauts hypothesis believe that the pyramids of Egypt were constructed with the help of extraterrestrial knowledge and technology. In the 1920s, there were paranormal and weird-fictional connections, for example in "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" by Houdini, ghostwritten by H.P. Lovecraft and published in the May/June/July issue of Weird Tales magazine. I'll have more on Egypt before too much longer.

The idea that people on other planets are watching those of Earth was older still. Here is the opening of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells (1897; 1898):

     No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
- - -

If Sir Oliver Lodge felt like Martians were watching us, maybe he had that idea from H.G. Wells in his work of less than a quarter-century before that April 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics.

But if Martians were watching us, we were watching them, too, and we believed we could see shapes and lines on the surface of their planet as well. In the 1880s and 1890s, American astronomers reported seeing canals and other strange and mysterious features on the surface of Mars. Among them was William H. Pickering (1858-1938), part of whose work was carried out at Arequipa, Peru, which is not very close at all to Nazca. By the way, there are pyramids near Nazca, too. These are called the Cahuachi pyramids.

The so-called Canals of Mars are most closely associated with Percival Lowell (1855-1916), though, who watched Mars for years and wrote three books about his observations. I can only assume that his first, Mars (1895), excited the imaginations of people all over the world and was an influence upon Wells in the composition of his novel of interplanetary invasion. Lowell no doubt inspired other authors of science fiction, too. From Wikipedia:

     Lowell's influence on science fiction remains strong. The canals figure prominently in Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein (1949) and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury (1950). The canals, and even Lowell's mausoleum, heavily influence[d] The Gods of Mars (1918) by Edgar Rice Burroughs as well as all other books in the Barsoom series.
- - -

Like the circle at the Oakland airport, we come back to beginnings, namely Donald E. Keyhoe. In his last book, Aliens from Space . . . The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, published in 1973, Major Keyhoe devoted a whole chapter to what he called Operation Lure. Originally developed by--but not really, as we have seen--Robert Spencer Carr (1909-1994), Operation Lure would have been designed to lure space aliens to land as if they were ducks landing on a pond stocked with decoys. Here is Keyhoe's one-sentence summary of Operation Lure:

     The Lure will be an isolated base with unusual structures and novel displays, designed to attract the UFO aliens' attention. (p. 291)
- - -

The main observation post for Earthmen would have been called Control, like in Get Smart. A communications station twenty-five miles distance from Control would have been called "Relay," like in Pete Townshend's never-completed project, Lifehouse. If you have never heard The Who song "Relay," you might want to give it a listen. In it, Mr. Townshend invented the Internet. Listen for the lyric, "The word is getting out about control."

The circle is getting tighter still: in Aliens from Space, Keyhoe wrote about ancient aliens, mentioning the Piri Reis map, the Theosophical Book of Dzyan, the plains at Nazca, the pyramids of Egypt, and even Carl Sagan!

Next: Miscellany about Keyhoe, Lindbergh, Heinlein, and other things.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Donald Keyhoe in National Geographic-Part One

Donald E. Keyhoe (1897-1988) had four stories in Weird Tales from April 1925 to May 1927. Two months after his last story for "The Unique Magazine" was published--at 12 o'clock noon on July 20, 1927, to be exact--Keyhoe took off on an aerial tour of the United States. That tour would take about three months and cover more than 22,000 miles in all. Keyhoe, referred to as Lieutenant Keyhoe for his previous rank in the U.S. Marine Corps, flew in an advance airplane piloted by Philip R. Love (1903-1943). Also on board was mechanic Theodore R. Sorenson. Following along behind them was the most renowned aviator of his day, Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974), piloting the most renowned of aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis. Keyhoe, who had previously been connected with the Byrd Polar Plane Tour of 1926, served as manager of Lindbergh's tour, and he wrote about it in The National Geographic Magazine of January 1928. Over the years, there were tellers of weird tales in the pages of The New Yorker, but could Lieutenant Donald E. Keyhoe, U.S.M.C. (Retired), have been the only one to have written for or had his picture in National Geographic?

* * *

Many years ago, the man who lived upstairs from me walked away from his apartment and left it like the cabin of the Mary Celeste. It remained that way, pretty well undisturbed, for years. Then, last year, he died, and earlier this year his heir came and cleaned out what we wanted--and left the rest. That was over a weekend. On Monday morning, I saw that there were workmen cleaning out the apartment and throwing things into the bed of a pickup truck for delivery to the landfill. I saw a box of books go in the bed, and that was enough for me. I went out to talk to them. They said I could have anything I wanted of what remained in the apartment. I said I would take the books at least. They replied, "There are a lot more of them upstairs." I had to go to work. I asked, if I were to leave boxes and containers for them, would they save the books for me? They said yes. I think they were happy not to take books to the dump.

When I came home that afternoon, the whole front of my house was piled with books and magazines--hundreds of them. Could there have been a thousand or more? Anyway, included in those piles were hundreds of National Geographic magazines going back to 1915. And in those piles within piles was The National Geographic Magazine for January 1928 with a lead story, "Seeing America with Lindbergh," by Donald E. Keyhoe, forty-six pages in all and with dozens of photographs, most of them aerial views of the American landscape. Others are of members of the tour, as well as of spectators and dignitaries they met along the way. One of these photos includes a young Lieutenant Keyhoe, seated in front of Colonel Lindbergh:

Donald E. Keyhoe, shown at the bottom right, in The National Geographic Magazine, January 1928, page 11. He had just turned thirty years old when this picture was taken. Charles A. Lindbergh, who sat just behind him, was five years his junior. On Lindbergh's right is Philip Love, pilot of the advance plane. Love was later killed in an airplane crash in Nevada. The others in this picture are not identified, but I believe the woman on the lower left is Lindbergh's mother, Evangeline Lodge Land Lindbergh (1876-1954). The man on the far right may be mechanic Theodore R. Sorenson, who flew with Love and Keyhoe in the advance airplane during their tour.

Pulp magazines have had a reputation for being a lowly form, made by undistinguished writers or just plain hacks for a simple, working-class, or barely literate readership. One of the reasons I have written about those who wrote letters in "The Eyrie" is to show that the readership of Weird Tales at least came from all walks of life and all levels of society, even from prominent and well-respected men and women. As for the writers, they, too, came from all walks of life. They, too, could be prominent, well-respected, able and active in other fields besides just writing. I have to tell you, it was a thrill for me to discover a writer for Weird Tales in a mainstream magazine of the 1920s. In fact, I would call this extraordinary. And I wonder if there is any equal in the pages of other magazines of that time.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Saturday, May 3, 2025

Nictzin Dyalhis & Donald Edward Keyhoe

Nictzin Dyalhis (1873?-1942) had his first story in Weird Tales in April 1925. So did Donald Edward Keyhoe (1897-1988). Dyalhis' story was of course "When the Green Star Waned," a science-fantasy set in the solar system of the future. Keyhoe's story was "The Grim Passenger," a tale of Egyptian archaeology and a pharaoh's curse. "The Grim Passenger" is, then, about the past. As it turns out, it is also set in the past, the past, that is, of 1925. You'll have to read the story to find out the year. I don't want to give away Keyhoe's twist ending.

"When the Green Star Waned" is in the prose style of the pulps. Dyalhis seems to have been influenced by H.G. Wells, but it looks like the greater influence came from Edgar Rice Burroughs and his Martian tales. In contrast, "The Grim Passenger" is almost journalistic or documentary in its tone and style. It could almost be an article rather than a story. In fact, it's barely a story as we understand and enjoy works of fiction. It seems to exist mainly for its twist ending and the occult connection made between one event and another. It's a somewhat Fortean construction, or like an expanded vignette from Ripley's Believe It or Not! If it had been true or mostly true, it would have found a place in later books by Frank Edwards or Vincent Gaddis.

Nictzin Dyalhis had eight stories in Weird Tales from 1925 to 1940 and five more in other magazines during those same decades. These proved very popular with readers. It's a shame there weren't more, even if, as I suspect, they were revised or even rewritten by authors within Farnsworth Wright's stable. (Maybe Dyalhis was the Richard Shaver of Weird Tales.) Despite the popularity and success of his stories and the powers of imagination behind them, Dyalhis worked as a common laborer and a hardscrabble farmer. He lived in poverty and died in almost complete obscurity. He was survived by his wife and daughter. The daughter died not long ago. She had children of her own, and so the enigmatic Nictzin Dyalhis still has living descendants. I doubt that anyone knows his real name. The facts of his life are extremely scanty. At least one of the supposed facts in his obituary is wrong. 

Donald E. Keyhoe moved in different circles. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1919 and served as a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, eventually attaining the rank of major (with his service during World War II). Although he wrote scads of stories for the lowly pulps, he was also an employee of the U.S. Department of Commerce and an associate of the most famous aviator of his time, Charles Lindbergh, for whom he managed a 22,000-mile aerial tour of the United States in 1927. I'll have more on that next time.

Keyhoe was born on June 20, 1897. Four days after his fiftieth birthday, on June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, another airplane pilot, saw a flight of unidentified flying objects over Mount Rainier in Washington State. These and other such objects of course became known as flying saucers, named for Arnold's description of the way they flew. (The original description was of crescent-shaped or flying wing-type aircraft. They were decidedly not discs.) Keyhoe became deeply interested in--eventually obsessed with--the flying saucer phenomena. In January 1950, True magazine published his article "The Flying Saucers Are Real." It proved a sensation, and Keyhoe expanded it into a book of the same name, published shortly thereafter.

Several more flying saucer books flew from his typewriter. The last came in 1973, which can be considered the last year of the flying saucer era. In 1957, he took over as director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), founded the previous year. Also in 1956, the film Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, based on Keyhoe's Flying Saucers from Outer Space (1953), was released. In this one, Hugh Marlowe played the hero instead of a louse, as he did in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is still a very watchable and enjoyable movie. Look for an alien abduction scene as a precursor to later, supposedly real-life abductions, such as in the case of Betty and Barney Hill.

Donald Keyhoe was a conspiracy theorist, though probably not the original conspiracy theorist when it came to flying saucers. On March 8, 1958, he appeared on ABC-TV on The Mike Wallace Interview, starring Mike Wallace and a Parliament cigarette. Keyhoe did pretty well in the interview, I think. Mike Wallace was not the savage interviewer of later years. Listen for the word "misinformation." The point of this is that Keyhoe and his subject, flying saucers, were taken seriously enough to have appeared on national television, where he was interviewed at length by a prominent and well-respected journalist. There has been recent media coverage of flying saucers, but this doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Recent witnesses might long for the 1950s.

In his last book, Aliens from Space . . . The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects (1973), Keyhoe covered the whole phenomenon and its various (human) actors. He speculated on the physical appearance of aliens from space. He also suggested that aliens might be up to no good. It's interesting that his first story in Weird Tales appeared in an issue in which a tale of an alien invasion of Earth was so prominent. In his own story of April 1925, Keyhoe looked to the past. In Nictzin Dyalhis' story, maybe Keyhoe saw the future.

I think Donald Keyhoe went to his grave believing in what he saw as the truth behind flying saucers. He died at age ninety-one on November 29, 1988. His obituary appeared in the Washington Post. Major Keyhoe was survived by his wife and three children. I don't know whether he has any living descendants.

In looking through Aliens from Space, I came upon the name of another teller of weird tales. He was Robert Spencer Carr (1909-1994). By a strange coincidence, Carr also had his first story in Weird Tales in 1925. Entitled "The Composite Brain," it was published in the March issue. As it turned out, Carr became special advisor to NICAP, and so his path crossed that of Major Keyhoe three decades or more after they had had their stories in Weird Tales. Carr had lots of ideas, one of which was called Operation Lure. But this idea wasn't new at all. It had first been proposed in that decade of origins, the 1920s, in the pages of Popular Mechanics. It, too, seems to have been influenced by H.G. Wells in that Martians have been watching us and we have in turn observed phenomena on the surface of their Red Planet. It seems there is always watching and listening going on . . .

Next: Donald E. Keyhoe in National Geographic.

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley

Tuesday, April 29, 2025

The Falling Man

The illustration on the cover of Weird Tales for April 1925 is for "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. The artist was Andrew Brosnatch. It shows a man who appears to be falling into a mass of aliens that have invaded Earth. In actuality, the aliens have levitated him the way a Roman might hold a grape over his open mouth. The intent is the same: the aliens mean to eat him. In a moment, they will let go with their powers of levitation and he will plunge into their mass, where they await with their "triangular, gaping, hideous orifices." The man is spared his fate by the merciful actions of the Venus-Men.

Andrew Brosnatch's cover illustration makes me think of Christian art, especially depictions of Hell and the casting into Hell of sinners. His garb is also redolent of ancient or biblical dress. First is Brosnatch's cover, then an example of the falling man from Christian art:


"Casting the Damned into Hell," the right wing of a triptych entitled The Last Judgment, by German-Flemish artist Hans Memling (ca. 1430-1494). See in particular the figure on the middle right.

There are many more examples of the falling man, cast into Hell, in Christian art. If you go looking for such imagery, be ready for some nightmarish, yet fascinating, depictions of Hell, some of which remind me of William Hope Hodgson's description of our nightmarish future in The Night Land (1912).

Depictions of Icarus by European artists show a similar falling man from pre-Christian and pagan times. The image of the falling spaceman is common in science fiction art, the art of the future. (I guess apocalyptic art is art of the future, too.) Here's an example of that:

The Fallen Spaceman by Lee Harding (1973), with art by John and Ian Schoenherr. Be aware that I have adjusted this image from an online photograph of the cover. This is not a true representation of the original.

I don't know whether Andrew Brosnatch intended to evoke thoughts of the fall of man from the Book of Genesis, of the sinner and the damned cast into Hell, or of the general image of man falling from grace or from great heights into opposing depths. Those of us with religious upbringing and education can't avoid seeing such things, though.

I have just one more thing. My nephew and I noticed a long time ago that all of the major characters in Star Wars sooner or later fall into a pit. The same thing happens to Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood, also to characters in The Lord of the Rings saga. That fear, dread, and terror at falling or plunging, or being cast into pits and depths, must be deep in us, no pun intended, and always ready to come forth. 

Text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley