Miskatonic University Campus

Great find!

Here's an interesting story from the 1930's about someone coming across an abandoned Eskimo (Inuit) camp in northern Canada:

Vanished Eskimo Tribe Gives North Mystery Stranger Than Fiction

http://newspaperarchive.com/us/virginia ... -27/page-7

Even in this original form all kinds of weirdness, as the quote below shows:

It was an Eskimo grave, with a cairn built of stones. But for some reason the grave had been opened. The stones had been pulled off on one side and there was nothing inside the cairn at all.

The Skeptoid podcast covered what happened once the UFO Believers got their hands on it:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4371

Oh ya, that is a good one.

I've been toying with an idea for a lecture based off a stange burial practice that used to be prevalent before christian missionary's banned it here on the coast.

http://www.canadianindianart.com/Bentwood-Box

Now a days these are wonderful works of art, that I would love to have in my house. But beyond storage, these boxes had a second purpose.

http://qmackie.com/tag/tree-burials/

They served as coffins when the individual died. Then they would be taken and the coffin tied up in a tree, to eventually rot and break apart, dropping the bones to the earth. There is little imagry of the subject, but descriptions of this practice are common in old texts. I was just reading a semi-autobiographical account of a woman who spent every summer cruising the coast with her kids in the late 1920s. Part of her time was spent looking for old native villages, and she had tales of coming across these boxes high up in trees that were now covered in moss and lichen, as the ravens crowed and made for very creepy scenes.
(The book is 'The curve of Time' if anyone is interested in an interesting read of life on a small boat with 5 young kids in the time frame).

After natives were made to start using cemeteries, these graves tended to be congregated on islands whose names pop up on charts today. Titles like Deadmans island, or burial island still dot these maps as markers of the past.
http://www.firstnations.de/img/06-1-0-laurel-pt.jpg
http://www.firstnations.de/img/06-1-0-grave-2.jpg


(There is another story in there about them coming across a house on a small island that was apparently set up by a spirtualist to capture and hold a ghost. BC has some strange people, then and now.)



And how could I forget mortuary poles! This was a Haida inovation most likely to the usual tree burial. Those people who had greater wealth and could afford a person to carve a pole often had a pole dedicated to them. Their remains, cremated or otherwise would be placed in a cavity behind the carved boards.
http://www.sfu.ca/brc/art_architecture/totem_poles.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidschw ... 267142777/
http://www.tripadvisor.ca/LocationPhoto ... ds_Br.html

More BC awesomeness! What is going on in those illustrations! Were there wood painted cutouts of people on the burial islands? The cat in the top hat is super eerie.

There was a huge explosion of art and carved figures with the advent of the fur trade here on the coast. Metal tools and extra wealth meant a lot of new art. You could get a lot of protective or ancestor art then. http://www.firstnations.de/img/02-4-grave.jpg


Sometimes people find skulls or other bones in their backyards, or when a tree tips over. Old tree burials showing up. There was something in the news recently about a new homeowner finding a skull in their garden shed. No doubt it was an old burial accidentally found by a previous home owner and forgotten about.

Huh. Never knew Alberta natives did tree burials as well.
http://journals.hil.unb.ca/journalimage ... 1_fig8.jpg

Oh now this is interesting. Found this while idly searching for more imagery. Tibetan infant tree burials. http://strangesounds.org/2014/04/there- ... trees.html

About nine years ago the following links regarding an expedition to find the source of the Orinoco river in 1924 were posted to Yog-Sothoth.com, they might be worth a history article.

1. EXPLORER TO SEEK ORINOCO'S SOURCE (12th August, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ex ... ource.html

2. RICES BELIEVED SAFE (17th August, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ri ... -safe.html

3. AMAZON TRAFFIC HINDERED (22nd August, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/am ... dered.html

4. EXPEDITION TO USE PLANES FOR SURVEY (23rd August, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ex ... urvey.html

5. 3 OF RICE'S PARTY BACK FROM AMAZON (4th October, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/3- ... mazon.html

6. Dr. Rice, in Wilds of Brazil, in Touch by Radio With His Friends in New York Every Night (16th December, 1924)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/dr ... -york.html

7. Mrs. Alex. H. Rice to Sail March 21 (6th March, 1925)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/mr ... ch-21.html

8. Explorer Rice Back; Saw White Indians (11th July, 1925)
http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ex ... dians.html

A couple of 'prize' quotes.

The hydroplane and a supply of bombs were taken to be used in scaring the cannibal Indians of that district in case they proved troublesome.

NYT: 4th October, 1924

Dr. Rice told of the discovery of a tribe of white Indians at the headwaters of the Parima River who spoke a language entirely their own and ate cocaine as a relish for their diet of wild plantains.

NYT: 11th July, 1925

Something else from the Tom Mahood website that might be the basis for a history lecture:

The Great Nevada Meteor of 1894

The Great Meteor of 1894 occurred on February 1st. It was first sighted crossing the California coast near Napa, then over Sacramento and reported at multiple locations until it “exploded” over the town of Candelaria in Nevada. Not much exists today of Candelaria, and is an interesting ghost town to visit. Given so many detailed reports, it wasn’t too hard to work out a trajectory. And the reports of it “exploding” were more likely a combination of the meteor going dark, and the arrival of its shock wave on the ground (although it could be a fragmentation event). Based upon the data, perhaps it was possible to figure out where it actually came down and recover it. Or so I thought...

http://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area ... r-of-1894/

Excellent leads, Graham. Thanks!

Mmm. Cocaine relish. Man, that stuff is like crack.

Dr. Gerard wrote:Mmm. Cocaine relish. Man, that stuff is like crack.

Well, it's not something I'd relish serving to gentlemen....