Yesterday I got to get off the best “been there, done that” moments in my entire LIFE.
While in Boston, Massachusetts, I took a stroll across the cold stones of Copp’s Hill Burying Ground – the site that inspired Howard Philips Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model”.
I could almost sense the ghouls scurrying in those ancient tunnels, buried deep underneath my feet.
I could almost see their blasphemous silhouettes emerging from the myst.
This experience (part of “Ghosts and gravestones tour”- highly recommended!) was supposed to make you feel a bit anxious, maybe even scared. I don’t know about that. I was too busy not trying to piss myself, out of the sheer joy and excitement – quoting one of my colleagues `I was like a kid in a candy shop”.
After all, how often do you get to walk the same forbidden paths your favorite writer did?It all left me speechless, so I leave the final remark to the Master:
“There’s no use in my trying to tell you what they were like, because the awful, the blasphemous horror, and the unbelievable loathsomeness and moral foetor came from simple touches quite beyond the power of words to classify. There was none of the exotic technique you see in Sidney Sime, none of the trans-Saturnian landscapes and lunar fungi that Clark Ashton Smith uses to freeze the blood. The backgrounds were mostly old churchyards, deep woods, cliffs by the sea, brick tunnels, ancient panelled rooms, or simple vaults of masonry. Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, which could not be many blocks away from this very house, was a favourite scene.”
H.P Lovecraft “Pickman’s Model”
Flame in the Schell 