BRUTAL SLAYING OF DANIEL HARMS
Franklin Hummel
I found this in alt,necronomicon and was shocked to see no mention of this
in alt.horror.cthulhu! "How awful!" indeed!!
"Daniel Harms" <vonj...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bcff6b1f.01082...@posting.google.com...
| Necronomicon Expert Brutally Slain, Scholar Wounded
| Saturday, August 18, 2001
|
| Providence, Rhode Island - An innocuous fan convention
| erupted in horror when a gunman killed one author and
| left a Brown University professor wounded.
|
| Daniel Harms, co-author of the NECRONOMICON FILES,
| had joined Professor John Dean of Brown University,
| New Testament theologian Robert M. Price, editor E. P.
| Berglund, and the staff of Seattle Publishing house Pagan
| Publishing for a panel on the mythical book called the
| Necronomicon.
|
| Professor Dean claimed he had found a genuine copy of the
| mythical Necronomicon, with others, including Harms,
| challenging his claims. The panel had gone on for about
| an hour when an unidentified assailant began firing.
| Dean was wounded first, and then Harms was shot. The
| gunman was wrestled to the ground, but vanished in the
| confusion.
|
| "It was brave of Mr. Harms to shield me with his body,"
| said Pagan staff member Adam Scott Glancy. Some onlookers
| remarked that Glancy grabbed Harms' shoulders and
| used him to block a bullet intended for the publisher,
| but he was questioned and released.
|
| Tales of strange lights and smoke in the room have been
| heard, but no source for either has been located.
|
| After the shooting, Harms lay in his chair at an uncomfortable
| angle. Two doctors present went to look at Dean first, then
| checked Harms' pulse and decided he was dead. After another
| ten minutes, during which the author was mocked and
| ignored, he was moved on top of the table, so that the investigative
| teams could have more space to work.
|
| Inter-agency rivalries threaten the investigation at this time,
| and it is unknown whether Harms' killer will ever be caught.
|
| [End]
|
| How awful!
|
| Yrs.,
|
| Daniel Harms
Daniel, there you were, not even an -official- participant, and you ended up
dead! And I am sorry your corpse was mistreated, but, well, given those
Pagan Publishing folks, I am just glad nothing -worse- was done to it!
Anyway, I hope you are feeling better now.
-- Franklin Hummel, NecronomiCon
Gary Libby
"Daniel Harms has been shot!" and then the room erupted in laughter...
Gary
KAYVEN
>"Daniel Harms has been shot!" and then the room erupted in laughter...
As I recall it, most of the audience had come to appreciate Professor John
Dean's stunning smile and award winning personality. So that by the time Daniel
Harms was shot, almost everybody let out a sigh of relief that Professor Dean
was still alive and cracking jokes. (Indeed, I suspect Gary didn't notice that
it was Professor Dean who yelled out that Mr. Harms had been shot. It was a
brilliant piece of comedic timing and contributed to the five resulting minutes
of laughter as proper medical attention was given to those in need.)
Daniel Harms, without a doubt, would have been horrified at how his death had
been accepted so easily and without alarm. But I blame Daniel himself for this
state of affairs. There was a good 40 minutes of time before the shooting
occured that Daniel could have used to speak eloquently and forcefully for his
beliefs. But he remained quiet and almost bemused by the audience's interest in
the claimed Necronomicon of H.P. Lovecraft. He didn't even interrupt when the
Professor started claiming that the book's pages had been carbon-dated back to
the 1600s, an area of scientific research I know Daniel to have had training
in.
In any case, by the time Daniel was shot, many people in the audience unaware
of Lovecraftian or even Mythosian scholarship didn't have a clue who Daniel
Harms was.
Perhaps it was because Adam Scott Glancy kept stealing the spotlight with his
mercenary spirt of free enterprise assuring the public that Pagan Publishing
was going to publish the Necronomicon. Even if it meant having to delay their
fiction anthology DARK THEATERS ( something, Tynes later admitted, which seemed
to get easier and easier to do.)
Perhaps it was because of Professor John Dean's charm and obvious success with
the ladies. I heard one woman scream out that the future father of her babies
had been killed before it was revealed on Daniel Harms life had been
extinguished. Donovan Loucks, the keeper of this newsgroup's FAQ, was taping
the event and remarked that he was thinking of editing everything out of the
tape except those portions when Professor John Dean was speaking. Simply due
to the effect of Professor John Dean's voice upon his wife!
Or maybe it was because of Robert Price's blasphemous remark that Jesus might
have been trying to found a religion based on homosexuality. It certainly
polarized a few people in the 5th row from the front.
In any case, it was evident that the people in attendence had not come to see
Daniel Harms as a person, but merely as a "member of the panel". Daniel had
failed to center any attention on himself (and as a result, failed to reap
sorrow at his untimely death).
Out in the hallway, I overheard one person ask someone who had been killed, to
which was replied, "The quiet guy to the left of Professor Dean and to the
right of Adam Scott Glancy." Quickly followed up by, "But Dean is ok, right?"
Its a conceit of our society to publicly state that the death of any member of
the human race brought about through violence is a tragedy. But the fact is
that some people garnish more mourning for their passing than others. The
reasons are varied. I'd like to think that the complete lack of concern or
compassion for Daniel Harms' passing is somehow justified by the enormous
outpouring of grief for Princess Diana. And that some large scale in the sky is
a little closer to being even because of it.
---- Steven Marc Harris
P.S. Anyone have Professor John Dean's university address to send a get-well
card to?
Richard Magrath
Rich
David S. Hammann
were half a day late so I invited him to have the spare bed in my room
for that night, since my roommate would not arrive until the next day.
I did not yet suspect how treacherous he could be. On Saturday there
was a panel titled 'The Future of the NecronomiCon' and to my surprise
Daniel suggested that the convention give up the game rooms to save
money, even though he must have known I have spent a very large amount
of time planning and organizing so the NecronomiCon has an absolutely
top quality line up of 'Call of Cthulhu' gaming.
So Daniel may walk away from a bunch of silly fake gunshots, but what
I have planned for him is closer to the fate that befell the 'man in
spectacles' from THE THREE IMPOSTORS.
David S. Hammann
Georg Datterl
BRUTAL SLAYING OF DANIEL HARMS:
> Daniel Harms, without a doubt, would have been horrified at how his
> death had been accepted so easily and without alarm. But I blame Daniel
> himself for this state of affairs.
Maybe it was the best thing to happen for him. At least now people
remember him as "the guy who sacrificed his life for Adam" instead of
"the guy who spent his life writing about a fictional book which was not
quite fictional in the end".
--
MfG, Georg
Daniel Harms
> I did not yet suspect how treacherous he could be. On Saturday there
> was a panel titled 'The Future of the NecronomiCon' and to my surprise
> Daniel suggested that the convention give up the game rooms to save
> money, even though he must have known I have spent a very large amount
> of time planning and organizing so the NecronomiCon has an absolutely
> top quality line up of 'Call of Cthulhu' gaming.
> So Daniel may walk away from a bunch of silly fake gunshots, but what
> I have planned for him is closer to the fate that befell the 'man in
> spectacles' from THE THREE IMPOSTORS.
Just so you know, David, I was working on insulting everyone on the
committee, and decided to start on the left. ;-)
My comments were not that the Con should have less gaming. My point was
that if the rooms are being paid for, RPGs are time-intensive activities
for a small group of people. In that case, it might be wise to look into
nearby businesses to see if they could give us more room - and more gaming! -
for less money, thereby cutting overall costs for gamers and everyone else.
Then again, if we got those rooms for free, I think we should use the hell
out of them.
Or maybe I'm bitter because I couldn't attend Bruce Ballon's game.
Yrs.,
Daniel Harms
http://necronomiconfiles.tripod.com/
David S. Hammann
>
> Yrs.,
>
>
> Daniel Harms
> http://necronomiconfiles.tripod.com/
I was upset, because I couldn't play in Bruce's game also. But don't
worry, Daniel, I can't stay mad at you.
David S. Hammann