UNDERSTANDING A HAUNTED HOUSE. HOW COSMIC NOIR BEGAN

PROLOGUE TO A NOIR HAUNTED HOUSE
My vaunted journalism professor insisted that we read H.L. Mencken for our education in media and culture before inflicting ourselves on society. And for our journalistic ethics.  There was still such a thing in those days.  In fact Prof. Nathaniel Blumberg had just won some awards for his coverage of the Chicago protests in 1968.  I wasn't paying much attention so I didn't know that H.L. Mencken had started a magazine in 1920 called "Black Mask" to feature works that were "the best stories available of adventure, the best mystery and detective stories, the best romances, the best love stories, and the best stories of the occult." 

The dime paperbacks of those authors populated libraries and kitchen tables for quite some time.  

 

CEDAR CHEST IN THE BASEMENT.  FIRST SIGHTING OF GRIMNIR

Mom's Maytag ringer washer circa 1952 was by the basement floor drain.  My errant ways meant she had to take me down the stairs with her on laundry days.  I wandered often to the nearby cedar chest and opened it to the strong smell of toxic mothballs.  I liked it.  Could explain a few things today.  

I couldn't read yet but mysterious supernatural images jumped out on the covers of pulp dime paperbacks in the cedar chest.  Particularly the dark trench coat man in the shadows with wide-brimmed fedora hat slanted over one eye.  Sound familiar?  Let's call him Grimnir if he knows all, sees you, but remains masked and hidden.  The other-world vision of a shadowed nightscape spoke spooky mystery.  I couldn't yet read the stories but this was good stuff.  

Of course the dime paperback covers told other stories.  Women in distress or women being pretty tough and dangerous themselves.  Alien UFOs and Egyptian tombs with a mummy on the loose.  All that wondrous fun.   

EARLY ANATOMY OF A HAUNTED HOUSE

When Mom didn't know it, I wandered to the basement alone.  I gathered in the scenario and followed my own stories of imagination.  That's when it all started.  There came a sense that I should leave.  I always loped back up the stairs at a run.  The sense of what was behind me made me shiver.  Once safely through the stairway door and around the corner my shivering increased with the relief about what I'd escaped.  That sense of hurry to get up the stairs continued until we moved to another home.

My parent's kept the home because they wanted to move back someday. Rich soil, quality artful construction and a lot of youthful love in the air.  A good house.  A good life.  

After my freshman year at university I became a bonafide hippie and aspiring star.  So I moved back into the house to create a music studio and crash pad for the truly hip.  The Dark Shadows TV series had just started and even Rolling Stone Magazine featured articles about rockers who lived in haunted houses or had supernatural references in their tunes.  I ordered a couple of astrology and magic books from the pages of Fate magazine.  A local rock star had what we called 'hype' or a persona to advertise his band.  He was dark and mysterious and would read your Tarot cards if you asked enough.   We called him a 'Warlock' and that suited him just fine.

I wasn't a stoner yet but all fellow hippies who gathered at my crash pad were.  When they would get well zorched I would guide them around the house as the only non psychedelic consciousness.  But what they would notice and say was interesting.  An elder hippie said, "This house is haunted!" and just that moment there was a bang from the basement.  Of course we huddled together grinning as we went down the stairs to the basement.  The elder hippie, who we looked toward for expertise, went to corner of the basement and said this is where the ghost is." It was the same corner where I had got the shivers.  We all loped up the stairs and ran around the corner for safety.  

Since Dark Shadows was still seen by some of us in our more bourgeois visits to homes with TVs, we thought that nothing else would do but we must get The Warlock to investigate for us.  He was pretty busy with the band and his chicks so he finally relented to give us a magic spell to take with us if we would please just leave.  We tried the 'spell' and tried to convince ourselves that it had done something.  

The house where I lived was now known far and wide as 'that haunted house' and acolytes visited in awe and gathered around me for tales.  This included a number of chicks and, since I had been bereft of decent dames, I welcomed my new fame.  I should have been practicing my keyboards and rehearsing with my own band.  

NEXT - - THE NATURE OF A HAUNTING.  HOW IT'S DONE AND HOW WE CAN DO IT BETTER.