The Matlock Fire

Dateline Matlock Derbyshire. The Charred body of a man, Mr John Wilson, is discovered at their home by his wife. By the location, state of the body and surrounding furniture, it appears that Mr John Wilson was a victim of spontaneous human combustion. Eg.: His entire upper torso, left arm and right leg have been reduced to ash. His left leg and right arm are still intact. As is the chair he was sitting in. A smoking pipe lies smouldering on the floor. Police conclude that the man died from dropping his pipe onto himself. The British Society for the Investigation of Anomalous Activities is looking for a party of investigators to ascertain whether this was SHC or not.

Possibilities

1 John Wilson was the planning clerk for Matlock Municipal Council and was violently opposed to the destruction of a local landmark, The Five Towers. These towers were built in 1798 by Sir Walter Townsend, to stop the biannual earthquakes that rocked Matlock. The towers have recently been sold to Dr Phillip Greening, who is the leader of a small band of Shudde M’ell worshippers. He has taken over the mind of Mr Wilson’s deputy and is hoping to get the authority to demolish one of the towers and thereby release the great Cthonian who lies pinned beneath the pentacle.

2 John Wilson was attacked and killed by a fire vampire, as a sacrifice to Cthugha by a local cult, of which his wife is the high priestess. She required this rather extreme sacrifice as the first step towards bringing Cthugha into this world. She will not be best pleased at the investigators’ attempts to look into the circumstances of her husband’s death.

3 This is a real case of spontaneous human combustion. And the investigators can get themselves mired deep into the lore and mystery that surrounds cases of spontaneous human combustion.

© Rik Kershaw

The Hellfire Club

The Hellfire Club dominates the summit of Montpelier Hill ten miles south of Dublin city. This substantial ruin was originally built in 1720 as a hunting lodge by William Conolly, the speaker of the Irish parliament. After his death, it passed into the hands of the eponymous “Hellfire Club”. The club, based on a suppressed English antecedent, was founded in Athy, Co. Kildare, in the 1730s by Richard Parsons (a.k.a. Jack St Leger), the first Earl of Rosse, and a humorous painter called Worsdale. The members of the Hellfire Club were rakes and rowdy fops. They met in the Eagle Tavern on Dames Street in the city centre. As their name suggests they were rumoured to practice black magic. Reputable historians acknowledge that these stories have a basis in fact.

Possibilities

1 The Hellfire Club did indeed carry out black masses and orgies on Montpelier Hill. However they had no mythos knowledge and merely used satanic regalia to spice up their bawdy drinking sessions.

2 The Hellfire Club worshipped ancient Cthugha. When Conolly built the lodge a ‘fairy cairn’ was broken. It was actually a huge Elder Sign placed there thousands of years before to trap a swarm of Fire Vampires. When the Hellfire Club (which was at that time a bunch of drunken fakers) encountered these horrific beings they were seduced to the worship of Cthugha.

On one famous visit to Montpelier Hill the clubsmen set fire to the lodge whilst carousing within! Tradition claims that this was a wager to see who could survive the flames of Hell longest. This is incorrect. The fire occured when the cult summoned their master inside the stone-vaulted lodge.

Though the club disappeared in the 1740s the Fire Vampires are still alive, and hungry.

3 The club was a branch of a suppressed English Nyarlathotep cult. Several times, locals gained small hints of the club’s dark deeds. On one occasion, a wandering priest stumbled upon the Club during a macabre Bacchanalia and was forced to look on. The centre of attention was a huge black cat. Breaking free from his captors the cleric grabbed the cat and uttered an exorcism which tore the beast apart. A demon shot up from its corpse. Hurtling through the roof it brought down the ceiling and scattered the assembly. On another occasion, Tom Conolly of Castletown is said to have met the devil in the form of a ‘black man’ in the lodge’s dinning room.

After the death of its founder in 1741 the club became inactive but the cult continued, with the 2nd Earl of Rosse as its leader. It was with Nyarlathotep’s help that William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse built ‘the Parsonstown Leviathan’ in 1845. This huge telescope (which was dismantled in 1908) was the largest of its kind until 1917. Though the Irish climate is completely unsuitable for serious astronomy Rosse discovered the spiral nature of other galaxies, the Crab Nebula and the greater nebula in Orion with this miraculous instrument. It’s unknown whether his sons: Laurence, the 4th Earl (an astronomer) and Charles (a British inventor who died in 1931) were involved in the cult, which has today spread throughout the English speaking world.

© Andrew Behan

The Children's Room

It is a dark and stormy night. The investigators are lost - they have been travelling and the storm has blown away the road signs. Eventually, they arrive in a backwater town where the church and other buildings are in ruins. “Destroyed by a storm last year which killed Reverend Maynard, and Pauline’s daughter Sarah,” they are told, and are warned repeatedly about going back on the road since “the weather can be very ugly in these parts.”

Instead, the investigators are directed to a retired widower named James Barbarow for lodging; he has three beds in a building he built separately from the main house. Mr Barbarow shows them the place, which consists of a single large bedroom and a bathroom, readily explaining that this was for his children, now gone. Mr Barbarow implies that they are deceased; if pressed, he says only that they died in their sleep.

The place is run down, although attentive investigators will notice a fire extinguisher. There’s no electricity, and the lock is broken; James offers to lend them a lamp and put a padlock on the outside door to keep out animals or prowlers. The last casual remark he makes as he closes the door and leaves them for bed is, “Sleep well—I just hope nothing happens to you in the middle of the night.”

Possibilities

1 The most worrisome investigator can’t sleep—he or she hears scratching outside. It’s just a racoon or other animal; nothing dangerous happens that night, and the next morning Mr Barbarow won’t recall having made any ominous remarks.

2 The house is built on the edge of an ancient Indian worship site to Cthuga (the church was built at the centre of the site). Just before midnight, the investigator awakens having just dreamt of a door opening in the corner, spilling lights and voices into the room. At midnight, this door opens for real, releasing fire vampires into the room! The next morning, Mr Barbarow admits that whenever the moon is as it is now, he has a disturbing dream, but is always too frightened to investigate--his children died in that place from horrible burns, though the walls were untouched.

3 The village is being destroyed by ghouls. They have ransacked the church graveyard and torn down the church, killing Reverend Maynard when he interceded. The girl, Sarah, was carried off in the middle of the night some days later. Now, these creatures have struck a bargain with the villagers: in exchange for peace, the humans offer any travelers or new corpses to the ghouls. Mr Barbarow will contact the ghouls about the investigators, show them back to his land, and give them the key to the padlock.

© Mark W Henshaw