1997
January 7:
Detroit and Ypsilanti, Michigan, laid out by August Brevoort Woodward. Magician, esoteric, Freemason. Both plans executed after fires: Detroit, 1805, Ypsilanti, 1825?
More lore picked up around the Wolverine State:
SNAKE GODDESS OF BELLE ISLE. Legend of Detroit-area Indians, from the Ottawwa Princess hidden in a covered canoe by the chief, her father. Her suitor discovers her and takes her to his wigwam, angering the winds, who beat him to death. Spirits help the chief hide her on Belle Isle, protecting her with snakes. She is sometimes seen as a white deer. The spirit of her unlucky lover is stuck on Peche Island. First European settlers in the area called Belle Isle Rattlesnake Island. Frequent sightings of a woman in a white gown (Woman in White) as well as white deer.
MAIN ROUGE. Legend come from Normandy, where the dwarf was a fisherman’s helper —though sometimes a trickster too. In Detroit, the dwarf is dangerous. It is sometimes naked, sometimes wearing a ratty fur coat or fur boots. Has black hair, reddish skin, burning eyes, appears and disappears at will. Every appearance portends disaster for whoever sees it, and for the city. Appearances:
1701: Cadillac attacks it with a sword. Shortly after, he is financially ruined and his reputation wrecked. Forced to leave Detroit, goes first to New Orleans and then back to France.
1763: British soldiers see dwarf before the Battle of Bloody Run, where they are slaughtered by Pontiac.
1805: Dwarf seen immediately before the fire that destroys the city. Woodward then plans the rebuilding. Sightings in the smithy where the fire began.
1812: General Hull reports a dwarf attacking out of the fog after his failed attempt to cross the river and invade Canada. Surrenders the city to the British not knowing that he outnumbers them. Later court-martialed and sentenced to the firing squad. Sentence commuted.
1967: Multiple sightings of the dwarf before riots that start on 12th street. Much of the city burns, riot accelerates decline of the area.
1976: Power-line workers see dwarf before ice storm.
Less reliable sightings in 1884, 1964.
January 24:
I gave Dean the Impala today for his eighteenth birthday. The car is 30 years old now, amazing it runs as well as it does. I’ve taught Dean a lot of what I know about working on cars, which was everything until 1983. Haven’t kept up since then, all the computers and emissions spaghetti drives me nuts. Give me a fat 327, no electronics, just pistons, crankshaft, and a gas pedal. That’s a car. And now it’s my son’s. He knows I’ll still be driving it, but he’s a man now, and since he’s already made his share of kills, this was the only rite of passage I could think of. He goddam well better take care of it.
February 23:
POLTERGEIST
Lithobolia: Or, the Stone-Throwing Devil. Being an Exact and True Account (by way of Journal) of the various Actios of Infernal Spirits, or (Devils Incarnate) Witches, or both; and the great Disturbance and Amazemente they gave to George Waltons Family, at a place call’d Great Island in the Province of New-Hantshire in New-England, chiefly in Throwing about (by an invisible hand) Stone, Bricks, and Brick-bats of all sizes, with several other things, as Hammers, Mauls, Iron-Crows, Spits, and other Domestic Utensils, as came into their Hellish Minds, and this for the space of a Quarter of a Year.
Hell of a title. 1698 account by Richard Chamberlain of 1682 haunting attributed to the neighbor being a witch. No record of whether neighbor was tried. Other notable American poltergeist —the Wizard of Livingston, Virginia, 1797; Bell witch, 1817, Fox sisters, 1848, were a hoax but initial events might be real.
Overlap with incubus/demonic possession in Entity and Smurl cases, both in the 1970s.
Missouri says poltergeist are unquiet spirits, not psychokinetic projections. They want attention, and if they don’t get it they progress from nuisance to danger. Only way to get rid of them is the same way you get rid of any spirit. Find the remains, or the haunted object, salt and burn, repeat as necessary.
April 28:
Heard from Bobby today. He and a group went up to some fly-speck town in South Dakota because there were rumors about demonic possession there. Looks like nothing happened. The place was clean. I talked to Bobby for a long time about demons. I’m starting to think that I don’t have any choice but to believe in them.
April 30:
Exorcism for an area or community. Takes the form of a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, which is kind of ironic because there’s no such a thing as angels. Ask any hunter. Demons, now those are real. So when you call out to an angel that doesn’t exist, what are you really calling out to? I don’t know if I would trust this one.
St. Michael the Archangel, illustrious leader of the heavenly army, defend us in the battle against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of darkness and the spirit of wickedness in high places. Come to the rescue of mankind, whom God has made in His own image and likeness, and purchased from Satan’s tyranny at so great a price. Holy Church venerates you as her patron and guardian. The Lord has entrusted to you the task of leading the souls of the redeemed to heavenly blessedness. Entreat the Lord of peace to cast Satan down under our feet, so as to keep him from further holding man captive and doing harm to the Church. Carry our prayers up to God’s throne, that the mercy of the Lord may quickly come and lay hold of the beast, the serpent of old, Satan and his demons, casting him in chains into the abyss, so that he can no longer seduce the nations.
We cast you out, every unclean spirit, every satanic power, every onslaught of the infernal adversary, every legion, every diabolical group and sect, in the name and by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. We commando you, begone and fly far from the Church of God, from the souls made by God in His image and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine Lamb. No longer dare, cunning serpent, to deceive the human race, to persecute God’s Church, to strike God’s elect and to sift them as wheat. For the Most High God commands you, He to whom you once proudly presumed yourself equal; He who wills all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. God the Father commands you. God the Son commands you. God the Holy Spirit commands you. Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh, commands you, who humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death, to save our race from the perdition wrought by your envy; who founded His Church upon a firm rock, declaring that the gates of hell should never prevail against her, and that He would remain with her all days, even to the end of the world. The sacred mystery of the cross commands you, along with the power of all mysteries of Christian faith. The exalted Virgin Mary, Mother of God, commands you, who in her lowliness crushed your proud head from the first moment of her Immaculate Conception. The faith of the holy apostles Peter and Paul and the other apostles commands you. The blood of martyrs and the devout prayers of all holy men and women commands you.
Therefore, accursed dragon and every diabolical legion, we adjure you by the living God, by the true God, by the holy God, by God, who so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life; to cease deluding human creatures and filling them with the poison of everlasting damnation; to desist from harming the Church and hampering her freedom. Begone, Satan, father and master of lies, enemy of man’s welfare. Give place to Christ, in whom you found none of your works. Give way to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which Christ Himself purchased with His blood. Bow down before God’s mighty hand, tremble and flee as we call on the holy and awesome name of Jesus, before whom the denizens of hell cower, to whom the heavenly Virtues and Powers and Dominations are subject, whom the Cherubim and Seraphim praise with unending cries as they sing: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.
Four classes of demons in Judeo-Christian demonology, corresponding to cardinal directions and four elements. Also four seasons.
Waite, The Occult Sciences: “Much that passed current in the west as White (i.e. permissible) Magic was only a disguised goeticism, and many of the resplendent angels invoked with divine rites reveal their cloven hoofs. It is not too much to say that a large majority of past psychological experiments were conducted to establish communication with demons, and that for unlawful purposes. The popular conceptions concerning the diabolical spheres, which have been all accredited by magic, may have been gross exagerations of fact concerning rudimentary and perverse intelligences, but the wilful viciousness of the communicants is substantially untouched thereby.”
May 2:
Sammy is fourteen years old today. He’s been having strange dreams again. I’ve tried to keep an eye out for any signs that he’s more than a regular kid, but I don’t see them. He’s sensitive, has a lot of imagination, but that’s about it. Plus now that he’s hitting adolescence, he’s a giant pain in the ass. Dean just chased girls and snuck around with beers in his coat pockets. That was teenage trouble I could understand. But Sammy just shuts down sometimes. Won’t talk to anyone, and when he does, it’s only because he wants to argue about something. He’s got all the willpower us Winchesters are known for, but in him it sits quietly. You don’t notice it’s there until he decides he feels strongly enough about something that he won’t compromise. Then you might as well wrestle angels.
Quincunx. In hoodoo used to create a magical crossroads to
increase potential of a spell. Known as a “five-spot.” Fixes the
components of a spell, and intensifies their power. Can also be
used as a symbol around the outside of a property or location to
ground the user’s power and prevent malign influence. Basic pattern
like the 5 on a die, variations more or less infinite. Sir Thomas
Browne: quincux 
“a symbol of the quinta essentia. Which is
identical with the Philosopher’s Stone.”
Quincux sometimes incorporated into protective conjuration circle.
May 17:
This would have been our nineteenth anniversary. Nobody thinks nineteen is worth a traditional gift.
Number is sacred in Islam and Baha’i. 19 Arabic letters in the Basmala, 19 months of 19 days each in the Baha’i calendar. Solar eclipses tend to be 19 years apart. Babylonians considered the 19th day of every month to be unlucky.
May 23:
SAMUEL COLT
1814-1862. Born and died in Hartford, CT. One of seven children. Various revolver designs, first submitted for patent 1832? Same year Colt went on missionary trip to Calcutta.
The Colt: Made in 1835 for a hunter, during the appearance of Halley’s Comet that year-perihelion November 16, Struve observations from August 20-November 16. Would have been visible from other parts of Earth for several weeks after. Colt created during this period (?). Descriptions of it make it sound like a Paterson, but it must be different somehow —Paterson fired cap-and-ball, and if Colt made 13 bullets —supposed to be numbered— they must be cartridges. Metal cartridges not introduced into Colts until 1873? Some retrofitted before that. A bullet fired from it will kill anything, even beings that normally don’t die from bullets or any kind of physical damage. Everyone you talk to has a different story about how the Colt has been used. Nobody living has ever seen it, as far as I know. Standard manufacture of Paterson ran from 1836-1842 —discontinued after that when company failed, although Colt’s creditors sold Paterson models until 1847.
1835 Colt the first of its kind? Prototype, the Ur-Colt. Progenitor of all revolvers that followed. Not the first time a blacksmith or metalworker has tinkered with the occult. African orisha Ogun, god of iron, fire, war. Throughout western Africa, blacksmiths regarded as priests and magicians. Abyssinian/Ethiopian and Congo traditions hold that blacksmiths are magicians. Dactyls, Corybantes, Cabiri, Curetes, other ancient peoples considered magicians because of their prowess in ironworking, blacksmithing. Norse myth the same —Wieland, tale of Thord Vettir. German tradition that the blacksmith ends his work on Saturday by striking his anvil, chaining the Devil for another week. Blacksmiths also said to recognize gods and devils. In parts of the Slavic countries, oaths can be sworn on an anvil. From India and Scotland, stories that disease and demonic possession can be cures by the touch of an anvil or water from a smithy.
December 1, 1835. The date works, and it’s the feast of St. Eloy, or Eligius, who is patron saint of blacksmiths and farriers. Eligius known for sending his servants and monks throughout Southern France to take down the bodies of executed criminals and bury them full rites —precaution against revenants?
Micah Jenkins born-Confederate general, killed by own men at wilderness 5/6/64
Hans Christina Andersen publishes first book of fairy tales
Jacob Rome is born-Ohio congressman, mayor of Toledo
Could hunter have been David Crockett or Jim Bowie? Both explorers, both died at Alamo. Every story I hear about the Colt has something to do with the Alamo, but the siege didn’t happen until 1836… Crockett left for Texas on Halloween 1835. Halley’s Comet would have been visible. Bowie already there, on December 1 he was searching for legendary Los Almagres mine.
June 3:
GOLDEN RATIO
Integral to pentagram. Shorter and longer sections of each line exist in golden ratio. Also expressed in nautilus spiral. Occurrences in nature: human ear approximates spiral. Ratio of feet to navel / navel to crown is golden ratio. Also elbow-wrist / wrist-fingertip.
Position of God’s fingers in Michelangelo’s fresco. Lindenmayer grammar.
1618, approx. —Fibonacci numbers normalize around this ratio along a diminishing sine curve. Fibonacci popularized Hindu-Arabic numerals in Europe at the turn of the 13th century. Before, European mathematicians had used Roman numerals. Learned from Arab mathematicians in Algeria and elsewhere.
Final digits in Fibonacci series repeat themselves, cycle length 60. Final two digits also, cycle length 300.
Five Platonic solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron. Also the five basic Dungeons and Drugons dice, according to Sammy.
June 16:
Got one of my boys through school. Dean is graduated. Seems like a miracle, after I don’t know how many schools, but it happened. He’s got his diploma.
Looks like Sammy’s going to take an extra year. He’s just going to be starting ninth grade next fall, because we were moving so much when he was in second, third, fourth grades that we lost a year and I don’t think we’ll be able to get it back. I haven’t talked to him about it, but he must know it’s going to happen. Couple of times I’ve tried to talk to school administrators about double-promoting him, but then they want to see test scores, gifted enrollments, that kind of thing. I don’t have any of that. What I do have is a borderline-genius kid who’s going to be nineteen when he graduates high school.
July 24:
Tacitus on worship of Nerthus:
On an island in the sea stands an inviolate grove, in which, veiled with a cloth, is a chariot that none but the priest may touch. The priest can feel the presence of the goddess in this holy of holies, and attends her with deepest reverence as her chariot is drawn along by cows. Then follow days of rejoicing and merry-making in every place that she condescends to visit and sojourn in. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms; every iron object is locked away… After that, the chariot, the vestments, and (believe it if you will) the goddess herself, are cleansed in a secluded lake. This service is performed by slaves who are immediately afterward drowned in the lake. (Germania)
Lindow Man, Tollund Man, Grauballe Man, Ramten, Bjeldskovdal, Bocksten, Gadevang, Yde, Soro, Bourtanger. UK, Germany, Denmark.
Early Romans buried slaves in building foundantions. Akin to English, practice of burying dogs, except slaves are people. Spirits? An entombed slave can’t be a happy resident of the afterlife. Pre-Roman British evidence shows people buried in structures there. No wonder they needed witch bottles.
Foundation sacrifice. German and Celtic records, floktales include various mentions of people —often children— entombed in walls of castles or buildings. Sometimes in bridge pilings. From Hessische Sageri.
High water and ice on the Haun River so damaged a miller’s spillway every witer that he was no longer able to rise the funds to repair it.
Dismayed, one day he was standing at the standing at the spillway when he was approached by a drunkard who offered him advice. He promised to make the spillway so secure that it would never again be damaged, but the miller would have to pay him well.
The miller agreed, and the drunkard said, “Find a boy for us. We will bury him alive beneath the foundation stone, and I guarantee the durability of the spillway.”
The miller shuddered, but when the drunkard offered to provide a boy for fifteen pecks of groats, he entered into the agreement, and forthwith they dug the grave.
The next day the child cried in vain. The two men pushed him into the pit, threw stones in on top of him, and soon the spillway was ready.
Soon thereafter the drunkard’s corpse was pulled from the Haun River. The miller’s conscience so gnawed at him he wasted away and then died.
From that time forth the miller wanders about, attempting to pull passersby into the river. Every year he must lure at least one person into the river. Usually they are drunkards. He is on the lookout for them, because it was one of their kind who brought misfortune upon him.
Adds water spirit/curse to the foundation sacrifice story. Unquiet ghosts. Human sacrifice in London Bridge? Last verse of the rhyme: “What has this poor prisoner done?” Bones of saints were often interred in the cornerstones of cathedrals, so their spirits would guard the holy location. Unwilling sacrifices would be more likely to become angry spirits, haunting instead of guarding. Dante’s Commedia refers to foundation sacrifice of Buondelmonte on Easter 1215.
Ma conveniesi, a quella pietra scema
che guarda ’l ponte, che Fiorenza fesse
vittima ne la sua pace postrema.
Florence needed to offer a victim to the stone which guards the bridge —meaning the statue of Mars at the Ponte Vecchio. Sacrifice to the stone, and to Mars, sets the stage for Florence’s troubles in the next century. Canaanites sacrificed infants and put them in foundations of houses and temples. Gezer, Megiddo, Ta’ Annek. Joshua 6:26: “At the cost of his first-born shall he lay its foundation, and at the cost of his youngest son shall he set up its gates.” Again in I Kings 16:34. In Europe, Copenhagen, Liebenstein, Slavensk, Granderkesse, Oldenberg, Rugby. Tlingit in Alaska sacrificed slaves or prisoners on the hearth of a new house.
Bones discovered in the basement of the farmhouse where Fox sisters started their séances. Also Hainesburg Viaduct, New Jersey.
Jimmy Hoffa?
August 22:
Michigan Dogman, lycanthrope? Sighting dating back to 1938, across northern Michigan. Some reports say the creature was threatening. Others are typical Bigfoot-style cryptozoologist invention. Might be worth taking a look. Especially since that part of the country seems to breed sightings of dog/wolf creatures —Beast of Bray Road. Is the Dogman a shape-shifter? Or is ti some kind of hellhound creature? There’s a song about it on local radio now, so every drunk idiot out in the woods is going to be seeing it for months… but that doesn’t account for sixty years of sightings. Trying to correlate missing persons and unsolved crimes with those sightings. Nothing yet.
1974-77
Janna Saari
Perry Corlew, Phil LaCroix, Gunter Foster
Evie Sadowski
Phyllis St. Pierre
Edouard Laurent
April Norman
Giordano Bruno, Zosimas of Palestine, Pseudo-Dionysus
November 2:
Mary has been dead for fourteen years.
Death is the separation of the soul from the body. The creation of a zombie is the rebinding of body and soul via necromancy. The animated body can move, speak, even think, but it still can’t outrun physical decay. Zombies don’t last very long, and the more able they are to think, the more they suffer from the same derangement that eventually gets any spirit that’s been prevented from moving on. It’s a rule: if spirits can’t move on, the tug of the afterlife sooner or later drives them mad.
I guess this is all supposed to make me feel better about her being dead.
Agrippa: “In like manner they say, that a cloth that was about a dead Corpse hath received from thence the property of sadness, and melancholy; and that the halter wherewith a man was hanged hath certain powerful properties”
TRUTH ABOUT AMITYVILLE. INDIAN CURSE? John Underhill, Massachusetts Indian fighter, massacred Massapequans near Amityville. Sachem, Takapausha, said to haunt the area, possessing individuals for revenge. Another local legend also holds that a spirit in Lake Ronkonkoma kills a couple every year because she died while running away with a lover forbidden to her. Drowning victimsin Lake Ronkonkoma often disappear for months. Bodies and materials lost in other places said to appear in the lake, or the other way around —people have drowned in the lake and been found in other nearby bodies of water.
CURSE OF KASKASKIA. 1735, French girl falls for Indian. They run away together, get captured, girl’s father, Bernard, has Indian tied to a log and set adrift in the Mississippi. Before he dies, the Indian curses Bernard and the town. Bernard is killed in a duel the next year, the girl also dies. Over the next 200 years, the river cuts new channels, flooding Kaskaskia until everything is washed away, including churches and cemeteries. Devastating floods 1844, 1881, 1973. Many bodies lost to the river. Kaskaskia the first state capital of Illinois, now population of maybe a dozen.
SQUANDO’S CURSE, Saco River, Maine. Three whites a year will die in the river because of the drowning of his son.
WISCONSIN LAKES CURSE. The last Indian who left Lake Wingra (sometimes known as Dead Lake) said that the lake would die. Over the next fifty years, the lake shrunk dramatically, and as the Wisconsin State Journal noted in 1923, “has also become noted for its hidden whirlpools, and for its treachery.” A Winnebago Indian was murdered on Maple Bluff overlooking Lake Mendota. He called upon the lake spirits to curse the white settlers, and kill two of them every year. From the same Journal article: “Although this story is a fable, it is nevertheless true that scarcely a year has passed in the history of Madison, but that two whites have drowned in Mendota.” Some fable.
CORNSTALK’S CURSE, Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Since Cornstalk’s death in 1774, following disasters within 100 miles:
11/10/1777: Cornstalk killed, curses the land.
1794: Point Pleasant incorporated.
12/1907: Coal mine collapse kills 361, Monogah, WV
1913: Flood
4/1930: Prison fire in Columbus, OH, kills 320
1937: Flood
6/1944: Tornado kills 150
12/1967: Bridge collapse kills 46
8/1968: Plane crash kills 35
11/1970: Plane crash in Huntington, WV, kills 75
12/1972: 118 people killed in flood
1/1978: Toxic spill contaminates city water supply
4/1978: 51 construction workers killed in power plant construction
Other coal-mine disasters: Eccles, Everettville, Osage, Bartley, Benwood, Layland Stuart
Mothman first seen in Point Pleasant. 100+ sightings in the year before collapse of the Silver Bridge, centered in the area about defunct West Virginia. Ordnance Works. Rarely seen after. Possible that later sightings were due to power of suggestions, and Mothman was an omen figure? Whether any of the 46 bridge collapse casualties saw the Mothman is unknown.
