Will Murray's "I Found Innsmouth!" on the net
Joey Butler
No. 57) on the internet and now I can't find it anywhere. Does anyone
have a link to it? I know Murray's conclusions are debated but I'd
like to find it. Thanks.
Joey Butler
--
There are other worlds. This one is done with me. - Excalibur,
Merlin
People's Commissar
is like a directional map to finding the places. It was our research and it
was handed to the EOD apa so they definitely passed this around, complete,
at the time, with photos of street signs and everything mentioned in it.
Crispin Burnham had this in 1975 or shortly thereafter, immediately after
the trip. He was unable to publish color photographs of the sites
mentioned.
Trip to Innsmouth
(1975)
By Tani Jantsang
(This entire endeavor could not have been accomplished without the
assistance of Gerard Gibbons, Philip Marsh, Robert Sudol. Newburyport City
Hall, and my trusty 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit. In my typewritten account of
this, I have every single site photographed but not jpeg yet.)
We will start out with the Joe Sargent bus ride, a 60 cent ride, which tells
us that the ride was quite long. Entering Newburyport on State Street, I
learned that there is a bus stop by the drug store on that street and there
was, long ago, a bus that went into Salem (which is Arkham), which is now
defunct. The drug store, as far as I could learn was never called
Hammond's, but it always was a drug store. We go up State Street following
the Sargent bus ride until we reach High Street which is Route 1 A. Go
left. Keep going straight along High Street "past stately old mansions of
the early republic and still older colonial farmhouses." Passing the Lower
Green and Parker River and finally emerging into a long monotonous stretch
of open shore country." We go further on and "out of the window we could
see the blue water and the sandy line of Plum Island." Now actually we had
to cheat a little. The stunted shrubbery and sedge grass mentioned in the
story are not there any longer, as we learned by asking. The water line is
further back and houses have been built up along the area so that it is
impossible to really get a good view of Plum Island, though it can be seen
in some spots if you stand on the roof of the car. In a bus you'd be high
up enough to see it.
HPL lists these sites rapidly in his sentences, however, they are quite far
apart from each other. HPL states that the bus veered off the main highway
that goes to Rowley and Ipswich. Route 1A goes to Rowley and Ipswich.
Innsmouth, however, is between Arkham and Newburyport, Ipswich being further
inland. The Sargent bus does not veer off prior to entering Rowley ; it
veers off the road that goes there, i.e.. it veers off Route 1A going to
the Cape Ann area and the only road doing this is 133 East. Keep on Route
IA until you hit Route 133 and then veer off. Go to your left onto 133
East. Keep following these signs. The roads were at one time pretty
straight, but new roads were built and now they slightly deviate from a
straight line. When you read the sign for 127 North, that will be
"straight on" - go this way, go 127 North. This takes you into Gloucester
Center.
Cross over the Bridge (Water Street Bridge?) and continue to follow 127
North signs until you hit the intersection showing that to turn right will
take you on the 127 "scenic route." This sign does not say 127 North or
South. just plain 127. DO NOT GO THE SCENIC ROUTE. Around 1979 there was
a different group of signs there showing the way I will state now.
At this intersection there are two gas stations, one an Exxon. At this
intersection make a direct right 90 degree angle left turn for a few blocks
and you'll hit a Rotary or Circle. Then you follow the 127 North sign and
you will be on the correct route to Innsmouth. Follow until you see another
127 North sign and continue on. The ocean will then be on your left, just
as in the story. If you make the wrong turn, the ocean will be on your
right; no good.
Follow this out for a while: "our narrow course began to climb steeply...
looking at the lonely crest ahead where the rutted roadway met the sky [now
quite built up, no longer rutted] the vast expanse of the open Atlantic is
on our left. Then we reached the crest... just north of the long line of
cliffs that culminate in Kingsport Head and veer off toward Cape Ann."
These cliffs are in Rockport, at the crest, the highest point, and they do
veer off toward Cape Ann. "Soon the far misty horizon I could make out the
dizzy profile of the Head, topped by the queer ancient house on which so
many legends are told. The panorama below was Innsmouth."
From where HPL stood, at that point, he could see the three tall steeples
looming starkly against the seaward horizon. "One was crumbling down at the
top and two had black holes where clocks should have been." "The road
descended from here on." Actually one church has a clock; all three
churches are now repaired and kept nice.
Now continue on 127 the same way until the next left turn you can make,
Wharf Road. The "Harbor long clogged with sand was enclosed by an ancient
stone break-water... at whose end were what looked like the foundations of a
by-gone lighthouse." The Harbor is now clogged with sand because the
breakwater was mostly unfinished and destroyed by wind and water. They
planned to build it and extend it to where the defunct lighthouse is. More
than one local told us that the city ran out of funds or it was politically
unpopular, etc. There is a Reef out there, never fully submerged, very
irregular and jagged with warning buoys surrounding it. Through a 500mm
lens one could see the ocean very violently smashing against it. The
breakwater was supposed to protect the Harbor. It looks like nothing, tiny,
without a telephoto. It was originally 8-10 times this size and still
unfinished. "Afar out at sea, despite a high tide, I glimpsed a long black
line scarcely rising above the water, yet carrying a suggestion of odd
latent malignancy. This I knew must be Devil Reef."
Three of the locals we spoke to referred to the "queer house" as "that weird
place," "that strange place" and simply "uhhh uh.. "... another subject.
Two locals said they did not know the name of the Reef, but it was not
called "Devil Reef" and that it never fully was submerged; even at high
tide, it was jagged and irregular. They both agreed on this and said there
was nothing out there but pigeon droppings which made it look white (... I
never asked if anything was out there, yet they both offered that "Nothing
is out there...")
The story "The Festival " mentions that the narrator is travelling toward a
town where his ancestors came, and this race of his practices a ceremony
older than man. "The road soars up to where Aldebaren twinkles among the
trees." He is travelling with the ocean on his left. He is traveling at
the Winter Solstice at dusk. As soon as he reaches the crest he sees
"Kings- port" outspread below (Rockport, at this point is outspread below).
When he reaches the road's crest and looks at Kingsport in the dusk,
Aldebaren seems to "balance itself a moment on the ghostly spire." He is
talking about the "ghostly spire of a great white church at the center of
town, on a hill, at the focus of crazy alleyways." The church with the
clock in it is on a hill surrounded by streets that are little more than
alleys. There is an open space around the church. The fact is: Aldebaren
is there at that time of year. that time of day if you are looking at it
from the crest where I trespassed to take a photo (I climbed on a stranger's
roof)! Furthermore, the description of the town, the houses, streets,
everything IS Rockport which he calls Kingsport. So the directions he gives
in such detail to "Innsmouth'' really took us to Kingsport!
Go off Wharf Road back to 127 and keep going until 127 South. Take this
road (or you can go left on Beech Street and end up in the same place) to
Rockport Center. None of the street names, nor the way the streets are
situated, fit for "The Shadow over Innsmouth." They fit perfectly for "The
Festival," however.
I will here explain my theory on HPL's layout of streets given in "Shadow
Over Innsmouth," and mapped out by us based on the story. All along the
Northeastern portion of New England in every seaport town, the towns
correspond to Newburyport or Gloucester or Marblehead - nice houses here or
there, decayed ones here or there. Old or new all mixed up. In not one New
England town can you find a layout as in "The Shadow over Innsmouth." HPL
stayed in New York however and knew people in New Jersey. In all, every
single, port city in the Jersey and New York area you will indeed find the
exact layout of Innsmouth. The waterfront at one end with horribly squalid
slums, "racially mixed" people of whatever new ethnic group, people
perpetually drunk, dangerous people guarding their turf, etc..
Going further inland you find your main part of town; all the stores are
there. All streets radiate outward from these "town squares." There is
always a railroad that lets out there, and all busses from anywhere
including other states also let out there. Hotels are there, everything is
there. Then going further away from the waterfront you get into your nicer
neighborhoods until finally, at the opposite end of town, your rich
suburbanites live. If Innsmouth were Newark when I was a kid, the area
where you find all mixed blooded Deep Ones/humans would be black/Puerto
Rican/various ethnics sometimes mixed with "whites" (at the time, Wasps).
The boarded up buildings, wrecked, ruined destroyed, would be the black area
especially after the riots (Newark had a riot). The railroad is Penn
Central. Near the wealthy Marsh, Waite and Gilman mansions would be your
North Newark section, rich, totally white-Wasp. Further inland is your
Polish immigrant area, beautifully kept, clean and suburban, not nearly as
rich as your Wasp area, but comfortably middle class. Ditto, ditto, ditto
for all the other port cities from HPL's time all the way up until the early
1960's! He must have based this whole idea on his stay in New York City or
perhaps even New Jersey, as not one port city in New England fits this
pattern, not even Providence, Rhode Island.
I took quite a few photos aside from ones of the break-water, the reef, the
streets, all that is mentioned above; pictures showing the churches that
were visible from the crest. I took pictures of the Sargent Murray GILMAN
Hough House, a church with a fish instead of a cross on its roof, and a few
other notable things I stumbled on in tourist areas there, including a "Pez"
dispenser with a Cthulhu head on it.
=========
This will get up on a website as soon as I manage to get jpegs of every
single photo, including the Reef.
"Joey Butler" <stanleyj...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:71f0e549.02120...@posting.google.com...