Friday, February 03, 2006

Lovecraft Should Have Written A Story on This!

A little lunch time HPLblog research uncovered this neat story at http://www.meteoritearticles.com/znp04191906.html:

The New York Times
Date of publication: Thursday, April 19, 1906

FOUND METEOR FRAGMENT: Cemetery Workman Digs Up One Buried for Twelve Years

RAHWAY, N.J., April 18. - John Godfray, in excavating for a monument today in Hazlewood Cemetery, dug up a meteor fragment weighing 25 pounds. It seemed to be composed of fused minerals, glass, stone and steel. There is a mixture of vari-colored stones intermingled through the otherwise gray mass.

Twelve years ago Keron Kiernan, keeper of the cemetery, while at work one afternoon, heard a whistle, like escaping steam, coming through the clouds overhead. Then came a bright light, an odor of sulphur filled the air, and about fifty feet from where he stood a missile buried itself in the ground scorching the grass about and melting the gravel where it fell. The opening showed the object to have buried twelve feet deep. Since then it has gradually worked to the surface.

Note: If anyone has HPL's science writings look and see if he mentions it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris:

I know your read Lovecraft's story called The Colour Out of Space, which details a meteorite strike, typically a banal and unthreatening act, as we are taught that Earth is impacted all the time with little or no consequence. Yet, in Colour the area and people in it are greatly affected. The land begins to change, to reflect some sort of past in the meteorite's travels. The world that supports us is no longer ours; moreover, it is not hospitable to us unless we change . . . or die.

H. G. Wells, War of the Worlds, gives us a glimpse of what the invaders have planned for the planet. We come to see that they are planting a strange weed that engulfs everything around it. This plant, which has the movements of some animals, has the ability to radically change the face of the world, taking away the nurturing cradle that we call home and turning it into something completely different. Something definitively alien.

What are your thoughts?

Cheers,

TL

Michelle Souliere said...

Indeed... plants are more terrible and strong than we think. Consider how slowly and stealthily they move... we underestimate them, though I think in our primordial brain we still fear them appropriately, as our fear of the wilderness and its reclamation of land demonstrates.

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