Crossover Cover: Willow He Walk

 

Are you a Manly Wade Wellman fan?

Then you'll love his story in this program, "Willow He Walk," featuring his character Lee Cobbett, which has references to two of his other occult investigators, Judge Pursuivant and Silver John!

For more information, be sure to pick up a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2! Incidentally, Win also masterfully completed the unfinished fourth novel in Philip Jose Farmer's Secrets of the Nine saga, The Monster on Hold, an excerpt from which also appeared in this program!

Crossover Cover: Dark Hollow

Mid-list writer Adam Senft finds himself battling a malignant satyr, Hylinus, after it is summoned in the area of LeHorn’s Hollow and begins hypnotizing and raping the women of rural Pennsylvania. Senft once dated Becky Schrum. There is a reference to a group of deer hunters that died in a mysterious fire near the Hollow. Detective Hector Ramirez appears, and mentions his involvement in a strange bank robbery case two years earlier. Nelson LeHorn’s copy of the Daemonolateria plays a major role in the story, and LeHorn’s diary, written in 1985, states: “I’ve heard tell of a fellow down south, a Korean War vet. Folks call him Silver John. Walks the Appalachians with a silver-stringed guitar and works some really strong powwow. Hear tell he’s got a real nice singing voice, too. But I don’t think he’s ever made it this far north. Sticks below the Mason-Dixon. And there was an old Amish fella, but he passed on five years ago.” The diary also tells the fate of another occultist, Saul O’Connor, who was found dead covered in a strange fungus. Nodens and the rest of the Thirteen are mentioned. Becky Schrum is a minor character from Keene’s novel Ghoul. The fate of the deer hunters is revealed in Keene’s story “Red Wood,” which also marks the first appearance of LeHorn’s Hollow, a major setting in Keene’s work, including Ghost Walk, “Bunnies in August,” and “The Ghosts of Monsters.” Hector Ramirez and the strange bank robbery are from Keene’s novel Terminal. The Daemonolateria is a fictional book of magic that appears throughout Keene’s works. Nelson LeHorn, the original summoner of Hylinus, also appears in Keene’s short story “Stone Tears.” Although Keene’s Lovecraft references often seem at odds with other sources, and are thus only a tenuous link to the CU, the reference to Manly Wade Wellman’s wandering occult hero Silver John ties the main Keene-verse more solidly into the CU. The “old Amish fella” is Amos Stoltzfus, the father of Keene’s ex-Amish magus Levi Stoltzfus, who appears in Ghost Walk, A Gathering of Crows, “The Witching Tree,” and “Last of the Albatwitches.” The weird fungus is a creation of Behemoth of the Thirteen, and can be seen at work in an alternate universe in Keene’s Earthworm Gods trilogy. Nodens is neither the original Celtic deity nor the Elder God of the Cthulhu Mythos, but rather the greatest among the Thirteen, the main villains of Keene’s Labyrinth mythos.

Crossover Cover: The Voice of the Mountain

A sorcerer’s assistant named Alka used to be a librarian at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. This reference connects Wellman's Silver John stories to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Crossover of the Week

1933

THE SIGN OF THE SALAMANDER

            The introduction to this reprint of Curtiss Stryker’s first story featuring occult detective John Chance is written by Kent Allard, the well-known author of Drive-Thru Fiction and The Futility of Awareness. Among the occult matters studied by Chance are the secrets of Carsultyal and Carcosa. Chance, seeking help against his archenemy Dr. Gerhard Modred (aka Dread), sends a message to another well-known occult investigator, de Grandin, but he cannot be reached. Dread plans to raid the lost mines of the Ancients in the Appalachian Mountains.

            Short story by Karl Edward Wagner in the collection Why Not You and I, 1987. Curtiss Stryker also appears as a major character in Wagner’s “Blue Lady Come Back,” also included in Why Not You and I. Stryker is based on author Manly Wade Wellman. Kent Allard is neither the Shadow nor H. Kenneth “Kent” Allard from Wagner’s Cthulhu Mythos story “Sticks”; however, he does make a brief appearance in “At First Just Ghostly,” a Kane story found in the collection Exorcisms and Ecstasies. Allard’s Drive-Thru Fiction is also quoted in Wagner’s story “Plan 10 from Inner Space,” also found in Exorcisms and Ecstasies. Carsultyal is from the Kane story “Undertow,” while Carcosa is from Ambrose Bierce’s “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” and Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow. Chambers’ version of Carcosa was heavily utilized in Wagner’s “The River of Night’s Dreaming,” found in In a Lonely Place. De Grandin is Seabury Quinn’s occult detective Dr. Jules de Grandin; the reference to him in Wagner’s tale is a nod to Manly Wade Wellman’s references to de Grandin in his own stories. The lost mines of the Ancients are from Wellman’s John the Balladeer story “Shiver in the Pines.” We can infer that Curtiss Stryker was actually the biographer of John Chance, who was a real person in the Crossover Universe. Regarding the dating of this story, Chance’s adventure was supposedly originally published in the January 1934 issue of the non-existent pulp Black Circle Mystery, while references to the National Recovery Administration place the story’s events in 1933.

Crossover of the Week

May 2006

BLACK MAGIC WOMAN

            Supernatural investigator Quincey Morris and white witch Libby Chastain battle a practitioner of black magic who is continuing her family’s vendetta against the descendants of the woman who exposed her ancestress as a witch during the trials in Salem. Quincey owes a debt to a man named Jack, whose crew travels in semis and four-wheel-drive jeeps. Quincey thinks that none of the experts who have written about the vampire’s nature, such as Van Helsing, Blake, and Tregarde, have been able to explain why the undead are vulnerable to certain natural substances. A flashback details Quincey’s namesake and great-grandfather’s death while helping to kill Dracula, as well as the aftermath of those events. Morris once spent an hour in a townhouse in Washington’s Georgetown section where two Jesuit priests died performing an exorcism to save a young girl. Quincey and Libby visit occult investigator Barry Love, whose bookshelves hold two different editions of the Bible, Stone’s Practical Demon-Hunting, the Bhagavad-Gita, Newman’s The Vampire in Victorian England, Wellman’s biography of John the Balladeer, books by Hegel and Sartre, Black’s Approaching the Millennium, and the third edition of Investigating the Occult: Principles and Techniques by Scully and Reyes. Later, the black witch uses her magic to force the driver of an SUV to attempt to run over Quincey and Libby. The SUV smashes through the front of Del Floria’s Tailor Shop. After Libby is hospitalized, a pair of N.Y.P.D. detectives question Quincey about the “accident.” One is named Clark, while the other’s last name is something that ends with “witz.”

            Novel by Justin Gustainis, 2008. The modern-day Quincey Morris is a descendant of the courageous Texan of the same name in Stoker’s Dracula. The original Quincey’s wife died in childbirth, thus explaining his bachelorhood in the original novel. Jay Lindsey notes, “There is some conflict with Quincey Morris, Vampire, by P.N. Elrod. In Gustainis’ book, Morris is survived by his parents and one son. In Elrod’s account, Morris claims his parents died long before. I think we can get around that, though. Given that the Morris family picked up a generational monster hunting legacy, it’s obvious that at some point the original Quincey, in his new state of undeath, attempted to make contact with his parents and son, and it did not go well. A century later, while relating his account to Elrod, vampire Quincey chose to gloss over those painful memories.” Jack is vampire hunter Jack Crow from John Steakley’s novel Vampire$. Van Helsing needs no explanation at this point. Blake is a reference to the protagonist of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter novels. However, Blake’s exploits take place in a world where the existence of the supernatural is widely known. The Blake referenced here must be her CU counterpart, whose exploits are vastly different from the “Blake-verse’s” Anita. Diana Tregarde appears in a series of novels by Mercedes Lackey. The two Jesuit priests are from William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist. Stone is Ezekiel Stone from the television series Brimstone. Newman is doubtless the CU counterpart of Kim Newman. The exploits of Manly Wade Wellman’s John the Balladeer, aka Silver John, are well-established as part of the CU. Black is Frank Black from the television series Millennium. Scully and Reyes are FBI Agents Dana Scully and Monica Reyes from The X-Files. Earlier in the book, Special Agent Dale Fenton refers to The X-Files as a television series; presumably, this was a spin-off of the movie starring Garry Shandling and Téa Leoni. Del Floria’s Tailor Shop houses the secret entrance to the headquarters of U.N.C.L.E. The N.Y.P.D. detectives are John Clark, Jr. and Andy Sipowicz from the television series NYPD Blue.