FT269


In 1887, Guy de Maupass­ant’s short horror story ‘The Horla’ was published, describing an encounter with an invisible being able to exert some kind of control over the human mind. Although short, it’s a tale full of unusual ideas, such as the suggestion that the Horla might come from a distant world other than our own: “There was no moon, but the stars darted out their rays in the dark heavens. Who inhabits those worlds?” the doomed protagonist mutters.

Eleven years later, in 1898, the short story ‘The Damned Thing’ by Ambrose Bierce saw the light of day. Bierce, himself the source for the myth of the mystery vanishings that at some point entered forteana (see FT194:43–44), describes the fate of two hunters, one of whom is killed by an invisible something, leaving the other to tell the tale. Both de Maupassant’s and Bierce’s works were preceded by Fitz-James O’Brien’s ‘What was It?’, published in 1859 and poss­ibly the model for those later tales, as well as for HG Wells’s The Invisible Man. [1]

These literary examples have their counterparts in 19th (and even 20th)-century newspapers. While de Maupassant’s tale was written in a journalistic style and Bierce was a journalist, the examples listed below have no pretension to being anything other than strange stories embedded in yellowing news­papers, surrounded by reports of more mundane affairs.

In 1890, a brief item alluded to some odd goings-on in Japan: “An extraordinary phenomenon popularly called kamaitachi is reported from Kitakemagori, Yamanashi Ken, in Japan, says the Nichi Nichi Shimbun. Scientists assign its cause to a vacuum due to atmo­spheric changes, while the villagers think it to be the work of devils. The circumstances giving rise to the above theories are as foll­ows: A man suddenly falls down while walking in the open air or in a house when a slit in the flesh from one inch to one inch and a half in length and about an inch in depth is found, the place principally attacked being the legs. At the time not much pain is felt, but half an hour afterward the pain increases as the blood begins to flow. The wounds are said to be very difficult to cure.” [2]

The Kama-itachi, or the Kamaitachi, also known as ‘the sickle weasel’, we read in Richard Freeman’s The Great Yokai Encyclopedia, “…is a weasel-like yokai that rides on a whirlwind and is armed with sharp, sickle-like claws. In Gifu Prefecture, if a traveller is caught up in a strange wind then finds themselves [sic] covered in deep but painless slash wounds, then it is the work of the Kama-itachi. Sickle weasels work in threes. The first weasel stuns the victim, the second claws the victim, the third applies medicine that stops the bleeding and dulls the pain. Why the Kama-itachi do this is not stated.” [3]

Eight years later, in 1898, the theme of invisible assailants and gusts of wind was revisited in some American news­papers, and we note in passing that this was the year that Ambrose Bierce’s tale also saw the light of day:

The strange adventure of Dennis Sullivan, of Brookville, Kan., is puzzling the weather prophets and official experts, who have diagnosed every kind of wind, from the gentlest zephyr to the fiercest tornado.

But all confess that the breeze that nearly fanned Mr Sulli­van into insensibility, fatally wounded his prize calf and tore a zig-zag path through the finest rye crop in the state, is a new one. Nothing like it is in the books, it has no thorough explanation.

The press reports say that Mr Sullivan went into the field to look after a young calf; when he entered the field he noticed a movement in the grass, as of some animal. But no animal appeared. Only some strange spirit of the wind or unknown thing passed over the field in a narrow zig-zag path, whirling and beating the grain in a horrible lashing manner and coming in Mr Sullivan’s direct­ion. He hurr­iedly stepped aside and only felt the edge of this strange elem­ent as it swept by. He was almost strangled and fearfully wrenched, and was powerless to move. He saw the grass beaten and torn, with dead leaves and grain following the wake high in the air after the demon­iacal sirocco. The calf which stood partially in the path was struck on the hind leg and gave a long bellow of fear and pain. As soon as Mr Sullivan recovered, he went to the calf’s assistance and found the flesh bruised and torn and the bones broken as if some mighty club had smote it.

Mr Sullivan says the grain trav­ersed over the grass also has died clear to the roots.

“There has been no official report of such an unheard of wind,” said Dr Harry Frankenfield, local weather observer, “and I am at a loss for an explanation other than it was a kind of hot wind, for which that country is famous.

“The origin of these winds is of the greatest interest. They appear to result from the same causes which produce the foehn winds of Switzerland. The general movement of the atmo­sphere previous to the occurrence of these winds is from the Pacific Ocean across the Rocky Mountains. During its ascent from the coast to the divide, the condensation of moist­ure, either in the form of cloud or rain, is steadily in progress. The latent heat thus liberated by the process of condensation reduces the loss of temperature sustained by the atmosphere in ascending the mountains to nearly one-half what it would be in the case of dry air. This leaves the air dry to descend on the eastern side of the mountains, and after it descends far enough to disperse the cloud carried over, the gain in heat during the remainder of the descent would be nearly twice the loss sustained in its ascent. The dry air moves out from the mountain in a direction governed by the circulation of the winds around the low pressure area.

“The general hot winds can be attributed to the general dynamic heating of the atmo­sphere during its moderately rapid descent down the eastern slope; while the occurrence of the hot currents can only be accounted for as caused by dry masses of air in the upper strata, with a slightly greater density, being drawn over the moister and less dense air near the earth’s surface, thus causing rapidly ascending and descending curr­ents, as indicated by the rapid formation and disappearance of clouds. Currents of air thus descending rapidly would become abnormally heated dynamically to a much greater extent than where the descent had taken place slowly, as in the case of the dry atmo­sphere down the mountain side. The descending currents must be large, or their heat would be lost in the intermixture with the ascending currents. And they must be rapid or their heat would be lost by radiation.

“It is explained that currents thus formed sweep over the country in paths varying from a few feet to a hundred feet [1–30m], sometimes to the distance of 200 miles from the point of contact with the Earth’s surface.

“Many of the attending conditions are similar to those described by Mr Sullivan, such as the burning of his flesh and the withering of the grain. What is strange is that the current should zig-zag over so small an area, and what is inexplicable is the injury to the calf.

“A strong current striking the hot air ‘abeam’ would tend to divert its course, and when this force was withdrawn the original course would have been regained. But this would not account for the continued zig-zag course and the only explanation that can be hazarded is the prevalence of a storm which Mr Sullivan perhaps forgot to mention.”

Dr Frankenfield says a hot wind storm does not maim animals, and he believes that the Kansas farmer’s calf met accident in another way before it encountered the blast from the Rockies. [4]

How should we approach such a tale? Invisibility was a theme that had attained some popularity in fiction towards the end of the 19th century, prompting all kinds of spin-offs. After all, Wells’s Invisible Man was published in 1897, a year before Bierce’s haunting tale, and these were not the only stories concerned with invisibility. [5] Perhaps Bierce himself had a hand in planting the Sullivan tale. For quite a while, I have entertained the notion that a number of these incredible-sounding anecdotes were simply planted and published as promotional pieces for something else, to gauge public reaction and get a topic on everyone’s lips. I have found some curious correlations with regard to this idea. On another level, it is interesting to witness the emergence, during the great airship wave of 1896–7, of the theme of cattle endangered not by earthly predators but by something from a world beyond. Such is the case in Alexander Hamilton’s spurious 1897 tale of calf-napping by airship aliens; and Dennis Sullivan’s calf was assailed by something unknown and unknowable just a year later. Then there is also the somewhat older and decidedly Bierc­ian theme of farmers walking into their fields, of young men stepping into their yards, only to find themselves not safe even there. They meet their doom in their trusted habitats and surroundings – not only a fortean, but also a Lovecraftian theme, in essence, in which the horrible unknown invades our snug and comfortable everyday existence. Either these men disappear into the invisible unknown, or they are attacked by invisible unknowns. As Arthur Machen – whom Lovecraft admired – once wrote: “There are strange things lost and forgotten in obscure corn­ers of the newspaper.” [6]

Stories of baleful invisible creatures did not stop with the passing of the 19th century. There is this strange account of a monster said to have haunted South Bexar county in Texas in July 1960. It was said to be dressed in white robes, and on one occasion a member of a posse of youngsters hunting the monster fired at it “nine times with a .22 rifle, but that didn’t stop the thing”. During the chase, another felt something behind him so he swung around with his arm, which simply disappeared into the ‘thing’ before he pulled it out and started running:

“It’s invisible sometimes,” one of the youths declared, “some­times you can see the grass going down where it steps…” The youth said the thing, which he described as a “big, white glow”, chased a car down the road at 80 or 90 mph, then disappeared. [7]



Notes
1 Michael Hayes, ed: The Fantastic Tales Of Fitz-James O’Brien, Discovery editions, John Calder, 1977, p11.
2 “(An) Extraordinary Phenomenon”, Daily Inter Ocean, Chicago, Illinois, 1 May; Elyria Democrat, Elyria, Ohio, 4 June; Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, Ohio; Advance Argus, Greenville, Pennsylvania, 5 June; Iola Register, Iola, Kansas, 6 June 1890.
3 Richard Freeman: The Great Yokai Encyclo­pedia, CFZ Press, 2010, pp146–147. Not listed in Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt: Yokai Attack!, The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, Kodansha International, 2008.
4 “Windy Kansas’s Strange Wind”, San Antonio Light, San Antonio, Texas, 21 Aug; “This Happened In Kansas. Saline County Farmer Is Almost Strangled by a Sirocco”, Narka News, Narka, Kansas, 2 Sept; Roland Record, Roland, Iowa, 7 Oct; “Strange Breeze In Kansas. A Remarkable Freak of Nature Recently Manifested in the Sunflower State”, Naugatuck Daily News, Naugatuck, Connecticut, 8 Oct 1898.
5 The motif and theme indexes of Everett F Bleiler’s The Guide To Supernatural Fiction, Kent State University Press, 1983, and Science Fiction: The Early Years, Kent State University Press, 1990, list more examples.
6 Arthur Machen: The Great Return, Faith Press, 1915, p10.
7 “Young Ghost Hunters Told To ‘Desist’”, Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas; “Fifteen Youths Shook Up By ‘Ghost’”, Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, 16 July 1960.