Main|Brain|Neurology

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* Action potential

* Acetylcholine

* Acetylcholinesterase

* Aging and memory

* Albert Einstein’s brain

* Brain

* Central nervous system

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* Dendrite

* Dopamine

* Glial cells

* Human brain

* Long-term potentiation

* Nervous system

* Neurite

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* Neuron

* Neuroplasticity

* Neuroscience

* Neurotransmitter

* Sensory neuroscience

* Synapse

* Synaptic plasticity

Intelligence

Main|Intelligence

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* Cognition

* Sapience

* Experience

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* Knowledge

* Wisdom

* Strategy

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* Structure

* System

Nootropics (Cognitive enhancers and smart drugs)

Main|Nootropic

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* 5-HTP

* Adrafinil (Olmifon)

* Aniracetam

* Ashwagandha

* Bacopa monnieri (Brahmi)

* Caffeine

* Acetyl-L-carnitine

* Centrophenoxine

* Choline

* Cholinergics

* Chromium

* Coenzyme q-10

* Coffee

* Creatine

* DMAE

* Ergoloid mesylates (Hydergine)

* Huperzine A

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* Idebenone

* Inositol

* L-dopa

* Lecithin

* Lemon Balm

* Lipoic acid

* Methylphenidate (Ritalin)

* Modafinil (Provigil)

* Oxiracetam

* Phenibut

* Phenylalanine

* Piracetam (Nootropil)

* Pramiracetam

* Pyritinol (Enerbol)

* Rhodiola Rosea

* Selegiline

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* Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus)

* St John’s Wort

* Sutherlandia Frutescens

* Tea

* Theanine

* Theophylline

* Tryptophan

* Tyrosine

* Vasopressin

* Vinpocetine

* Nicotinic acid

* Vitamin B5

* Vitamin B6

* Vitamin B12

* Vitamin C

* Yohimbe

Psychometrics (measuring intelligence and cognitive traits)

Main|Psychometrics

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* Intelligence quotient

* Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

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* Personality tests

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* Scholastic Aptitude Test

Thinking, artificial

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* Artificial creativity

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* Artificial intelligence

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* Computer program

Thinking, organizational (thinking by organizations)

Main|Organizational studies|Organizational psychology

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* Attribution theory

* Communication

* Concept testing

* Evaporating Cloud

* Fifth discipline

* Groupthink

* Group synergy

* Ideas bank

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* Interpretation

* Learning organization

* Metaplan

* Operations research

* Organization development

* Organizational communication

* Organizational culture

* Organizational ethics

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* Organizational learning

* Rhetoric

* Smart mob

* Strategic planning

* Systems thinking

* Theory of Constraints

* Think tank

* Wisdom of crowds

Thinking, personal=

Awareness

Main|Awareness

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* Attention

* Cognition

* Cognitive dissonance

* Cognitive map

* Concept

* Concept map

* Conceptual model

* Consciousness

* Domain knowledge

* Heuristic

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* Information

* Intelligence

* Intuition

* Knowledge

* Memory suppression

* Mental model

* Metaknowledge (knowledge about knowledge)

* Mind map

* Model

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* Option awareness

* Self-concept

* Self-consciousness

* Self-knowledge

* Self-realization

* Sentience

* Situational awareness

* Understanding

Creative processes and idea generation

Main|Creativity

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* Brainstorming

* Cognitive module

* Creativity

* Creative problem solving

* Creative writing

* Creative thinking

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* Creativity techniques

* Design thinking

* Hypothesis

* Idea

* Image streaming

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* Imagination

* Lateral thinking

* Six Thinking Hats

* Speech act

* Stream of consciousness

Decision making

Main|Decision making

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* Choice

* Cybernetics

* Decision making

* Decision theory

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* Executive system

* Goals and goal setting

* Judgement

* Planning

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* Rational choice theory

* Speech act

* Value

* Value judgment

Emotional intelligence (Emotionally-based thinking)

Main|Emotional intelligence

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* Acting

* Allophilia

* Attitude

* Curiosity

* Elaboration likelihood model

* Emotions and feelings

* Emotion and memory

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* Emotional contagion

* Empathy

* Mood

* Motivation

* Propositional attitude

* Rhetoric

* Self actualization

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* Self control

* Self-esteem

* Self-Determination Theory

* Self motivation

* Social cognition

* Will

* Volition

Erroneous thinking

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* Black and white thinking

* Catastrophization

* Cognitive bias

* Cognitive distortion

* Error

* Exaggeration

* Fallacy

* Fallacies of definition

* List of fallacies

* Logical fallacy

* Minimisation

* Mistake

* Rationalization

* Rhetoric

* Straight and Crooked Thinking (book)

* Target fixation

Learning and Memory

Main|Education|Learning|Memory

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* Autodidacticism

* Biofeedback

* Cognitive dissonance

* Dual-coding theory

* Eidetic memory (total recall)

* Emotion and memory

* Empiricism

* Feedback

* Feedback loop

* Free association

* Heuristics

* Hyperthymesia

* Hypnosis

* Hypothesis

* Imitation

* Inquiry

* Knowledge management

* Language acquisition

* Memory and aging

* Memory inhibition

* Memory-prediction framework

* Method of loci

* Mnemonics

* Neurofeedback

* Neuro-linguistic programming

* Observation

* Pattern recognition

* Question

* Reading

* Recall

* Recognition

* Recollection

* Scientific method

* Self-perception theory

* Speed reading

* Study Skills

* Subvocalization

* Transfer of learning

* Transfer of training

* Visual learning

Reason and reasoning

Main|Reason|Reasoning

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* Abductive reasoning

* Abstract thinking

* Analogy

* Analysis

* Attitude

* Calculation

* Categorization

* Cognition

* Cognitive restructuring

* Cognitive space

* Cognitive style

* Common sense

* Concept

* Conjecture

* Concrete concepts

* Critical thinking

* Deductive reasoning

* Definition

* Estimation

* Evaluation

* Explanation

* Gestalt psychology

* Heuristics

* Historical thinking

* Hypothesis

* Idea

* Identification

* Inductive reasoning

* Inference

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* Instinct

* Intelligence

* Intelligence amplification

* Intentionality

* Introspection

* Knowledge management

* Language

* Lateral thinking

* Linguistics

* Logic

* Logical argument

* Logical assertion

* Meaning

* Meaning

* Meaning

* Mental calculation

* Mental function

* Metacognition (thinking about thinking)

* Mind’s eye

* Mindset

* Multiple intelligences

* Multitasking

* Pattern matching

* Personality

* Picture thinking

* Prediction

* Premise

* Problem finding

* Problem shaping

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* Problem solving

** Process of elimination

** Systems thinking

*** Critical systems thinking

** Troubleshooting

* Proposition

* Rationality

* Reason

* Reasoning

* Self-reflection

* Sapience

* Semantic network

* Semantics

* Semiosis

* Semiotics

* Six Thinking Hats

* Speech act

* Stream of consciousness

* Syllogism

* Synectics

* Systems intelligence

* Thinkabout

* Thinking

* Thought act

* Thinking Maps

* Thinking Processes

* Thought experiment

* TRIZ

* Visual thinking

* Working memory

* Writing

Teaching methods and skills

Main|Education|Teaching

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* Active learning

* Classical conditioning

* Discipline

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* Learning theory

* Mentoring

* Operant conditioning

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* Problem-based learning

* Punishment

* Reinforcement

Other

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* Genius

* High IQ society

** Mega Society

** Mensa

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* Mind Sports Organisation

* Nobel Prize

* Philomath

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* Polymath

* Pulitzer Prize

* World Mind Sports Games

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Outline of thought, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Originally a spy organization employed by the Nazis during World War II, Tiboldt’s Circus was a traveling circus led by Maynard Tiboldt, the Ringmaster, and he and his performers would use their special skills and talents to rob their audiences.

The Circus first came to the authorities’ attention when they carried out a series of robberies of small towns using the Ringmaster’s skill in hypnotism to mesmerize entire towns. Regrettably for the Circus, Rick Jones was one of the victims of their capers, and his involvement led to the involvement of the Hulk. He resisted the Ringmaster’s hypnotism, leading to the Circus’ arrest. After a brief stretch in prison, the Circus visited New York City, where they battled both Spider-Man and Daredevil. The Circus’ core members later briefly operated as the Masters of Menace after throwing the Ringmaster off the team.

The Circus of Crime established themselves as recurrent antagonists in several Marvel Comics series, where they briefly attempted to recruit Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch into their ranks when the team had been disbanded (Avengers #22), hypnotized Thor into assisting with one of their schemes while he was stripped of most of his powers, attempted to sabotage the Wasp and Yellowjacket’s wedding, and battled against Daredevil and Power Man. They later fought Power Pack, the Thunderbolts and Generation X.

Initially depicted as credible villains, the Circus of Crime’s members were gradually used by writers as comic foils, and were once defeated by Howard the Duck. They were featured as antagonists in the first issue of the ”Sensational She-Hulk” second series.

Old West

Oddly, there were two organizations in the Old West who dubbed themselves the Circus of Crime. Both teams fought against Kid Colt.

Maynard Tiboldt’s father, Fritz, ran a travelling circus and was also a Nazi agent. Sent to America to murder US Government officials, under cover of his circus activities, Tiboldt and his gang fell afoul of Captain America and were deported back to Germany, where Fritz Tiboldt and his wife were subsequently murdered by their former employers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Circus of Crime, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Fancy Crane was born under the sign of Capricorn (December 22–January 19) in 1980 to Julian Linus Crane, an executive at Crane Industries and the eldest son of ruthless multi-billionaire Alistair Ephraim Crane and his first wife, Katherine Crane (née Barrett), and Ivy Crane (née Winthrop), a socialite and the daughter of the late former Governor Harrison Winthrop and his wife, the late Helen Winthrop (née Revere-Mott-Beaton). Fancy is the scion of numerous wealthy, prominent families that immigrated to North America before the American Revolutionary War — her paternal grandfather is a descendant of William Ephraim Crane, a magistrate who ordered Tabitha Lenox’s execution in 1693, sparking Tabitha’s vendetta against the Crane family, and her maternal grandmother was a descendant of Paul Revere. Fancy is largely of English descent, with some French ancestry, and was brought up, to some degree, as a Roman Catholic.

Fancy was raised as the second of four children — Ethan Crane (later Winthrop), who was revealed to be her maternal half-brother in 2001, is about five years her senior, while Fox Crane and Pretty Crane are a few years her junior. While they were raised in the lap of luxury, the Crane siblings, excluding Ethan, had a dysfunctional childhood, with Ivy admitting that her youngest three children had a father who was “either absent or intoxicated” and a mother “who just didn’t care”. Ivy favored Ethan over her other children because he was the son of her “true love”, Sam Bennett, and not her husband, whom she loathed, and Fancy, as well as her younger siblings, came to resent their mother for this. Though younger brother Fox is equally angry with Julian, Fancy never expresses the same sort of bitterness against her father, whom she remembers taking her and best friend Esme Vanderheusen out for ice cream when they were in the third grade.

Despite being virtually ignored by her parents during her formative years, Fancy did fare better than her younger siblings; since her birth, Fancy has been her grandfather Alistair’s favorite relative — Alistair believes her to be the only “true Crane” of all of his descendants. For some twenty-five years, Alistair was consistently the only person upon whom Fancy could depend for love and support, and he, in many ways, was more of a father to her than Julian — when she was seven, it was Alistair, and not Julian and Ivy, whom she begged for the wild, untamed Arabian stallion she wanted so badly. Alistair was very protective of his firstborn granddaughter — not even Albert II, Prince of Monaco would have made a suitable husband for his little girl — and he shielded her from his malevolent, vindictive side, which the rest of their family knew to be his true nature. Fancy actually unwittingly brought Alistair’s wrath down on others several times, including one time as a child when a boy at the playground hurt her feelings; Fancy later cried to her grandfather about the boy’s taunts, and Alistair, in turn, saw that the boy’s parents lost their jobs, forcing the couple to leave Harmony with their son.

Alistair’s doting was never able to fully satiate Fancy’s need to feel wanted and loved by her parents, however. When Fancy was about ten, Julian and Ivy forgot to send for their daughter at Christmastime, leaving her all alone at boarding school. Already secure in her status as a Crane, Fancy called a limo to take her to the mansion in Harmony, but was deeply crushed to find that her parents and siblings had left town for the holidays without her. Fancy’s eventual savior was this time Ethan, who arrived with a large bag of presents for his younger sister; even as an adult, Fancy remains close to her elder brother.

As a teenager, Fancy was wild and rebellious; her thirteenth birthday party was canceled five minutes before its designated start time after she and her sister stole the caterer’s van and drove it halfway to neighboring Castleton. She was also pulled over by future police chief Sam Bennett at least once for driving over the speed limit and without a license after she took her parents’ Ferrari for a joyride at age fourteen. The majority of Fancy’s most serious infractions occurred while with Esme Vanderheusen, who became her best friend when they met in boarding school. Despite the fact that they were both wild and wealthy, Esme insists that Fancy never engaged in recreational drug use. Partying and rebellion did not fulfill Fancy, however, and she frequently wished for a more “normal” life; Fancy’s favorite book as an adolescent was ”Dreams of a Varsity Cheerleader”, and she longed to trade her life at her all-girls boarding school for the heroine’s coeducational public high school.

Both Fancy’s childhood and teenage years were marked by a sometimes competitive relationship with her younger sister, Pretty. The girls’ aunt Sheridan offers an anecdote in January 2007 in which she accuses Fancy of stealing Pretty’s date one Labor Day by pretending to sprain her ankle on the family’s yacht. According to her account, Fancy, not Pretty, ended up dating the country-club boy, then breaking up with him after a week once she was satisfied that she had beaten her sister; Fancy, however, vehemently denies that the situation occurred as her aunt outlines. Sometime after this incident, Fancy and Pretty were involved in a physical altercation with one another — Pretty claims that Fancy was jealous of her relationship with a boy named Harrison, while Fancy maintains that Pretty had been choking her — in which Fancy poured cyanuric acid on the right side of her sister’s face. Though Fancy claims that she acted in self-defense and was unaware of the bottle’s contents, the chemicals nonetheless apparently left the side of Pretty’s face heavily scarred, and Pretty has never forgiven her sister, maintaining her belief that Fancy acted to prevent another man from ever preferring Pretty over herself.

Sometime before July 1999, Fancy departed Harmony for a prestigious school, either boarding or a university, and did not return until June 2005. Fancy did eventually make it to college, but, according to Ivy, she has yet to complete her degree. It was originally said in 2005 that Fancy later made her way to Italy with her sister sometime in 2004 or 2005 — the two parting ways after Pretty fell in love with an Italian nobleman — though the revelation of Fancy and Pretty’s feud in 2007 seems to have created a retcon.

Relationship with Noah=

Beginnings in Las Vegas and progression in Harmony, 2005

Fancy is first introduced in May 2005 as a character à la Paris Hilton — a spoiled, selfish “princess” who, in furtherance of this comparison, owns a small dog and has supposedly dated two of Hilton’s ex-boyfriends. She is partying in Las Vegas with her friend, Veronica, when she sets her sights on Noah Bennett, who is making his living by gambling and operating under the alias of Ned. Noah rejects Fancy’s advances, however, mistaking her for a prostitute and infuriating the heiress. Noah and Fancy meet again later that night when she seeks solace in what she believes to be an unfinished room from an attempted rapist. Shortly thereafter, the hotel staff discover that Noah has been squatting and attempt to apprehend the pair. In one room, the two find a suitcase full of money — and the corpse of Fancy’s attempted rapist. Spooked, the two give the money to two nuns and leave Vegas for home — unaware that both call the New England town of Harmony home.

Back in Harmony, Fancy discovers Noah’s true identity, and vice versa, and she complains to Alistair about her Vegas companion; Alistair, furious at his granddaughter’s treatment at Noah’s hands, declares war on the Bennett family by having Sam Bennett fired from his position as chief of police. Noah is furious with Fancy, but protects her from the Las Vegas mobsters and saves her during the summer 2005 Harmony tsunami. During the disaster storyline, the two are thrown together in a fight for survival once more, and actress Emily Harper notes that it is during this experience that “Fancy finally admits to herself her true feelings about Noah”. This progress is dashed, however, when Fancy finds a letter from Noah’s ex-girlfriend, Maya Chinn, in Noah’s wallet. In the letter, Maya reminds Noah that he’d claimed that he’d never love another girl like he’d loved her, leaving Fancy devastated. When Noah leaves town to protect his family from his Las Vegas enemies, unaware that Alistair has taken care of the men, Fancy reluctantly obeys her mother’s wishes and chases after him, and the two reconnect.

Noah and Fancy are about to consummate their relationship at Sheridan’s cottage when Alistair arrives. Unaware that Noah is hiding in the other room, he lectures his granddaughter, warning her to stay away from “commoners” like Noah Bennett. Fancy placates her grandfather, but Noah believes that her hurtful words are truthful and angrily leaves. Later that night, he informs Fancy that they are over. After a date with Edmund Sinclair, both one of Noah’s friends from elementary and middle school and the grandson of one of Alistair’s business associates, Noah and Fancy overcome their misunderstandings and have sex on the beach. Unbeknownst to the couple, Alistair is watching them from the bushes; in retaliation, he plants drugs and a gun in Noah’s car, resulting in Noah’s arrest. Fancy briefly breaks up with Noah, hoping to save him from her grandfather’s wrath, but both eventually decide to find strength in their love.

Upon learning that Alistair has removed her from his will following his marriage to Theresa and adoption of Little Ethan, Fancy is devastated. Though she is sure that a future with Noah is more important than the Crane billions, Fancy has difficulty adjusting to the idea of being “poor” and having to work for a living. Fancy exploits her position as Alistair’s favorite to have him offer Noah a position at Crane Industries, but Noah is furious that Fancy would suggest such a thing, and they break up again.

Fancy begins to work at Crane Industries as head of the style division, but not even work can distract her from missing Noah. When her best friend, Esme Vanderheusen, visits Harmony and sets her sights on Noah, Fancy becomes so jealous that she tricks Esme into leaving town and reunites with Noah. Still, the couple is unable to find happiness when Fancy begins to suspect Noah of infidelity. Fancy follows her lover one December evening and finds him and Theresa at one of the Crane cabins with her and Noah’s mutual comatose half-brother, Ethan, who is to be removed from life support. Furious with Noah’s actions, which defy Ethan’s own wishes, Fancy breaks up with Noah once more. Remembering a Christmas past, however, when only Ethan had remembered her forgotten at boarding school, Fancy decides to refrain from calling the police until after Christmas. The police find Ethan, though, and Fancy, Theresa, and Noah are all arrested. Alistair bails his wife and granddaughter out of jail, and Fancy, having forgiven Noah, arranges for them to spend Christmas Eve together at the jail.

Disintegration, 2006

Noah is eventually released from jail, but the couple’s relationship is later dealt a severe blow when Noah calls out the name of his ex-girlfriend, Maya, while in bed with Fancy. Fancy, furious, breaks up with Noah when he refuses to come clean about his past. Noah, eager to fix his relationship, is prepared to come clean with Fancy, but when Maya, who has returned to Harmony, is attacked on the wharf due to a murder that she and Noah had witnessed in college, Noah decides to clam up; Fancy reiterates the dissolution of their relationship. Fancy is miserable without Noah, though, and agrees to take him back on one condition — that he tell her about his past with Maya. Noah is prepared to do so when a car crashes into the diner in which they are eating, causing glass to severely damage the optic nerve of Fancy’s right eye, as well as lacerate the cornea. With the amount of glass embedded into the back of her eye, doctors are unsure if it can be saved. Fancy is terrified, but feels even more strongly that she needs to know about Noah and Maya’s past, as the organization threatening Noah and Maya is undoubtedly behind the diner incident. Noah refuses to tell Fancy, fearing for her safety, and Fancy maintains that their relationship is over.

After talking with Katherine and Rachel, however, Fancy decides to accept Noah’s lies and take him back. Their reunion is short-lived, though, for Fancy soon finds Noah in bed with Maya. Noah, who, along with Maya, has been arrested by the FBI on charges of terrorism, makes a deal to pretend to be dating Maya and garner information from the terrorist organization for the FBI. As a result, Noah tells Fancy that she was only a conquest to him, and Fancy, broken-hearted, ends their relationship.

With a clean bill of health in regards to her eye, Fancy leaves Harmony for Rome, a city that she hopes will inspire her to design more clothes. In Rome, Fancy finds that Esme and the notorious gigolo Gianni Valentino are staying at her hotel — as are Noah and Maya, who are there to double-cross Lena and her terrorist organization. Fancy briefly dates Gianni to make Noah jealous, but when, at a club, Noah sincerely swears his undying love for her, Fancy takes Noah back. The two sleep together again, but when she wakes up, Noah has gone back to the club, where he is making out with Maya. Fancy swears Noah off once and for all; though Noah eventually tells Fancy that he was only pretending to be involved with Maya as part of an FBI sting to bring down Lena, Maya and Lena have both been killed and his sister, Jessica, is uncooperative, leaving Noah without any proof of his story. Having been lied to once too many times, Fancy refuses to believe her ex, though Noah accuses her of not wanting to reunite because she is falling in love with Luis.

Relationship with Luis

New crush in Rome, 2006

Fancy first meets her aunt’s ex-fiancé, Luis Lopez-Fitzgerald, in Rome when she and Noah hear a woman in the catacombs screaming. Beneath the city, Noah and Fancy find Luis and Chad Harris, who have been buried beneath the rubble of a cave-in. Luis, mistakenly believing that Fancy is her aunt Sheridan, kisses her, and later carries his almost-niece out of the catacombs after a falling rock strikes her in the head. It is during this event that Fancy first develops a crush on Luis, though both remain oblivious to her true feelings and become good friends. As Harper notes, “[Luis] and Fancy are the walking wounded. They have two totally different stories, but they find common ground and connect”.

Luis, fearing that Fancy might be the “[person] from Harmony who will die in Rome”, decides to become Fancy’s bodyguard, a difficult task. Fancy unknowingly ends up becoming friends with none other than her deranged half-aunt, Beth Wallace, who erroneously believes that Luis and Fancy are lovers. Beth tries to kill Fancy both in Roman ruins and in her hotel room by locking Luis in the bathroom and smothering Fancy with a pillow, but ultimately fails at both attempts. Fancy, fearful that Beth might return, has Luis platonically share her bed for protection; Noah walks in on the two and believes that they have had sex. Noah tells Fancy that she disgusts him, and Luis comforts Fancy as she cries. After her attack, Fancy becomes determined to help Luis find his son, Marty, whom Beth has kidnapped. Fancy uses Beth’s determination to commit murder to lure her to an art gallery, but Beth escapes into a cab with Marty. Luis and Fancy chase the cab via motorcycle, but the cab crashes and bursts into flames, apparently killing Beth and Marty.

When Sheridan calls with the news that Alistair is no longer in a coma and is more than likely in Rome, Luis sets out to murder Alistair, blaming him for Marty’s death; Fancy follows. They, along with Noah and Chad, find Alistair in the basement of a church possessing the omega symbol, where he is attempting to heat the chalice in the fire and thus become omnipotent. The four stop him, but he triggers a cave-in and escapes. Luis and Fancy find him in an exact replica of his Harmony study in the catacombs, where he is accompanied by a very-much-alive Beth. Luis and Fancy attempt to take the two to the police and force them to reveal Marty’s whereabouts, but Alistair and Beth again escape, retrieving Marty and fleeing to some Roman ruins. There, Alistair unleashes lions on the two, forcing Fancy to realize just how evil her grandfather truly is, and when Luis has to stop to save Fancy, the trio escape. Demented Beth, however, is determined to still be with Luis and calls him, allowing Interpol to track the signal to a train preparing to leave the city. Luis, Fancy, and Noah take an Interpol helicopter to chase after Marty, but a mysterious drone plane destroys a bridge, causing the train to plummet into a ravine and killing Alistair, Beth, and Marty. Devastated, Luis, Fancy, and the rest of those involved in the vendetta storyline return to Harmony. Sheridan is devastated to learn of Marty’s death and suffers a miscarriage; Luis realizes that she will now never leave her husband for him.

Progression in Harmony, 2006

Upon returning to Harmony, Fancy comes to realize that she has feelings for Luis and, with Sheridan’s blessing, begins to actively pursue a relationship with him. She quits her job at Crane and joins the police cadet training program in order to be close to the object of her desires, but she eventually comes to love police work, as well, and refuses to quit when she discovers that officers and cadets are forbidden from fraternizing. Instead, she and Luis decide to officially begin dating after she has been graduated from the police academy.

While playing with her young cousin, James, Fancy realizes that the boy saw the man who had murdered one of the Cranes’ maids, Phyllis. Fancy chases after the man without calling for back-up, and he renders her unconscious in an abandoned mineshaft, blindfolds her, and attempts to rape her. Chris discovers what Spike is attempting and stops him, but Fancy escapes and flees, eventually falling through some rotten floorboards and landing, unconscious, on a platform many feet down. Chris and Spike both believe Fancy to be dead and leave her body in the shaft. Luis, meanwhile, searches frantically for his would-be girlfriend, causing Sheridan to become stricken with jealousy. She fixes Luis some tea and puts a sleeping pill in it, despite the fact that such an act risks her own niece’s life. However, in their unconscious states, Luis and Fancy’s souls are able to connect; when Luis wakes, he finds dirt and blood on his jacket that were not there before he fell asleep. With the dirt and blood, Luis, Sheridan, and Paloma are able to find the mineshaft. While attempting to rescue Fancy, she and Luis plummet to the bottom of the mineshaft; as Fancy lies dying, Luis builds a fire and strips in order to keep her warm with his body heat. Fearful of losing her, Luis admits that he is in love with Fancy for the first time. Fancy survives, and the two grow closer, though they are still unable to officially become a couple due to the police department’s regulations.

Rapes and Luis’s incarceration, 2006–07

Back at work, Fancy is determined to prove herself to Luis, her superior; she switches with another officer in order to go undercover and catch a peeping tom. The sting backfires, however, and by the time Luis arrives, it is too late — the peeping tom has brutally raped Fancy, leaving the young woman emotionally scarred. At the hospital, she falls into a coma; Luis remains by his love’s side, encouraging her to wake up, while a jealous Sheridan tells her comatose niece that she is no good for Luis and will only bring him pain. Fancy eventually regains consciousness, the Christmas miracle of 2006. Though emotionally and physically devastated by her rape, Luis swears to stand by her side as she heals.

While Fancy sleeps, trying to recover from her rapes, her rapist begins using a secret passageway leading to her closet to terrorize her while she is alone. During one attack, Fancy is able to rip a button from her attacker’s shirt, but Sheridan finds and hides it, convincing Luis that a combination of trauma and alcohol have caused Fancy to imagine her attacks while also suggesting that Fancy may be purposely fabricating the attacks for attention. Fancy lashes out at her aunt, revealing that she had heard Sheridan’s monologue as she lay in a coma, but Luis is unprepared to believe that his ex-flame has changed so drastically. Luis’s disbelief soon leads to tragedy when Fancy’s attacker returns one night as she sleeps in her “princess room”. The attacker injects Luis with a drug, causing him to hallucinate that he is making love to Fancy while the attacker rapes him and collects his semen. After dragging Luis away, the attacker then rapes Fancy for a second time, at which time he inserts Luis’s semen into her vagina. When Chad and Whitney hear Fancy screaming they burst into her room, finding her alone but bruised. The decision to have Fancy raped for a second time stunned and even upset some fans. Harper admitted that the rape scenes were “definitely, as an actor, one of the most challenging scenes I’ve ever done. There was a couple of months where it was numerous times, numerous occasions where Fancy was raped and… we wanted to present it in a realistic fashion and show that emotional aspect of going through something like that. I think we conveyed that very well.”

Everyone searches the mansion for Fancy’s attacker, finally finding the masked man unconscious in the pantry. When his mask is removed, the man is revealed to be none other than Luis. Fancy is devastated by the turn of events, unsure if she can trust Luis after he promised — and failed — to protect her. Fancy eventually agrees to undergo a rape kit, and the DNA found inside of her is a perfect match to that of Luis. As Fancy had earlier admitted that she and Luis have never had sex, Luis is arrested for rape and then later released on bail. Hoping to prove his innocence, both Luis and Fancy undergo hypnosis; Luis eventually remembers being attacked by the Blackmailer, and both he and Fancy refer to their attacker as being female. Luis and Fancy hope to be able to finally prove his innocence when Simone’s girlfriend, Rae, claims to have information about Fancy’s attacker, but the attacker murders Rae and frames Luis; after acid is poured on Fancy’s leg while she and Luis are away from Harmony, he is arrested and held in jail.

Fancy is later called to the scene of an arson, where she sees the assumed arsonist inside; when a box of ammunition explodes due to the heat, she believes that she is being shot at and returns fire, striking the arsonist. She soon discovers that the arsonist is none other than Luis, who had realized that he was about to be framed for another crime and rushed to stop the real criminal, and he is rushed to the hospital, where he survives but is charged with arson and a second murder, that of a bartender at the Blue Note who claimed to have information on the attacker from Rae. Luis and his brother, Miguel, are both tried at the same time, despite having committed unrelated crimes. Fancy provides helpful testimony on the witness stand, but a jealous Sheridan takes the stand and destroys her niece’s credibility while admitting that she still wants Luis for herself. Luis is convicted of all five crimes and is furious with Sheridan for her antics.

Luis is sent to prison, but, hoping to spare Fancy the pain of seeing him in prison, removes her from the visitors list. Determined to see Luis, she disguises herself as a quasi-lesbian prison guard so that she can see and watch over Luis. Unbeknownst to her, Sheridan has disguised herself as a man and snuck in as Luis’s cellmate; Fancy sees Sheridan kiss Luis and believes that Luis has “turned gay”. After confronting Luis in solitary confinement, she eventually comes to find that this is not the case. The two are about to have sex in the prison infirmary when Sheridan sees a live feed on Fancy’s laptop of the two; she calls the warden, and Fancy is ejected from the prison, leaving her unable to protect Luis from the violent prison guards. After learning that Judge Reilly has ordered that Luis be executed as soon as possible, Fancy begins frantically searching for a way to clear Luis’s name.

By late July, Luis’s time has nearly run out; all of his appeals have been denied, and his execution is imminent. Desperate to savor their remaining time together, Fancy proposes to Luis, and he accepts. They are set to be married early in August, but Fancy’s younger sister, Pretty, returns to Harmony just as Fancy is prepared to walk down the aisle. Pretty threatens to tell Luis how the sisters had been involved in a fight as teens that had left Pretty permanently scarred, and Fancy, who wants to allow Luis to die with faith in her, cancels the nuptials. Luis is executed on August 6, much to Fancy’s dismay, but Endora Lenox quickly turns back time in the execution chamber so that Eve Russell is able to admit that her long-lost son with Julian (and Fancy’s half-brother), Vincent Clarkson, was the mysterious blackmailer who killed Rae Thomas and Dylan Flood, set fire to Dylan’s apartment, and twice raped Fancy. Vincent is arrested, and Luis is freed.

Rivalry with Sheridan and Pretty, 2007–08

Angry that Fancy is so happy, Pretty decides to take her revenge on her sister and tells Luis that Fancy had thrown pool chemicals in her face in a purposeful attempt to scar her. Luis doesn’t believe Pretty until Fancy confirms the story, though she denies that the attack was intentional. Fancy tries to break up with Luis, afraid that the so-called “Crane curse” will cause her to harm Luis, as it has caused all of her Crane relatives to harm their loved ones, but Luis convinces her to continue their relationship.

Early in September, Alistair, with Pretty’s help, drugs Fancy and has a mind-control device implanted into her brain via her nose. When Alistair tries to issue Fancy a command to slap Luis during foreplay, the device malfunctions, and Fancy is hit with a disabilitating headache. The headache eventually stops, but Fancy’s nose soon begins to bleed heavily; the NBC finale on September 7 has Fancy passed out as a result. In the DirecTV debut on September 17, Fancy quickly regains consciousness. However, Alistair finally discovers how to properly work the mind-control device and successfully causes Fancy to lash out at Luis and slap him across the face. Fancy’s random and violent outbursts, coupled with Luis’s secretive quest to find Marty and magically-influenced trysts, both with Sheridan, strain the couple’s relationship and eventually lead Fancy to call quits.

After breaking up with Luis, Fancy goes to the wharf to clear her head; there, she comes across her ex-boyfriend, Noah Bennett. Due to Tabitha’s spell, the two wind up kissing. Later, on Thanksgiving, another of Tabitha’s spells transports Fancy to the Lenox living room and causes her to make out with Noah; Noah’s girlfriend, Paloma, catches them, but his sister Kay zaps Fancy away and makes all three forget what has happened. Tabitha is persistent, however, and, while Kay is out, she uses her powers to transport Fancy to Noah’s bedroom and cause the two to have sex; when Paloma and Sheridan walk in on them, the two have no idea how they’d wound up together, or why they are in bed together. Paloma is furious and devastated and breaks up with Noah, while Sheridan gloats to her niece, calling her a slut and accusing her of never truly loving Luis.

When Fancy learns that Luis is missing, she becomes panicked and realizes that she still loves Luis, despite his infidelity with her aunt. Fancy and Sheridan team up to find Luis, but instead discover him beneath the Crane mansion in an embrace with Pretty. Fancy is furious, especially since she’d seen feed of them on her PDA having sex. Luis tries to explain that Alistair would only let them free if he impregnated Pretty, but Fancy refuses to hear his excuses. However, on Christmas Eve, in a last-ditch attempt to recover her daughter, Tabitha Lenox performs good magic on Luis and Fancy, on whom she previously cast spells to make them have sex with Sheridan and Noah, respectively, and causes Fancy to overcome her reservations about Luis and reunite with him. Though gloriously happy to be back with Luis, she becomes upset when she learns that Luis failed to inform her that his son, Marty, did not die in Rome, though she is thrilled that he is alive. Watching Luis with Sheridan and Marty on Christmas Day (actually aired on December 26), Fancy begins to realize that Sheridan will be able to use Marty to bind Luis to her.

Fancy determines to keep Luis, however, and buys an extra ticket for Marty to the Boston Bruins game so that the boy can accompany them on a date. Marty instantly bonds with Fancy, and both Luis and Fancy are thrilled at how natural the three are together. However, Pretty, in her quest to win Luis for herself, decides to use Alistair’s mind-control device to make Fancy act out. Under Pretty’s control, Fancy lashes out at Luis and Sheridan in front of Marty, even taunting the child, telling him that Alistair is hiding under his bed, waiting to kidnap him again. After further episodes, Pretty tries to convince Luis that Fancy has reverted to her partying ways while Sheridan insists that Fancy has reunited with Noah, and Luis, though still deeply in love with Fancy, begins to doubt her love for him. Luis is still trying to sort through his feelings when he and Paloma come across Noah and Fancy, who have been trying to figure out what has been going on between them, on the wharf. At first convinced that Fancy is cheating on him, Luis quickly becomes concerned when Sheridan and Pretty’s battle for control of the remote causes Fancy to run into walls, bark like a dog, and, eventually, collapse and stop breathing. Once Fancy regains consciousness, the four quickly realize that there is, indeed, something physically wrong with Fancy and fear a brain tumor. Still, Fancy’s near-death experience draws her and Luis closer together than ever before, much to Sheridan and Pretty’s chagrin. Pretty tries to use Luis and Fancy’s closeness to convince Sheridan to team up with her, but Sheridan cannot abide by having such power over her niece and throws the remote control into the ocean; the water causes the device to short-circuit, and the chip dislodges itself from Fancy’s nose. When Noah finds the device, he throws it, too, into the ocean, to Pretty’s dismay.

After reuniting, Fancy begins thinking about having a baby with Luis. Though she is eager to become pregnant immediately, Luis is hesitant, preferring to fully recover from the past few months’ drama before fathering a second child; Fancy understands but privately fears that Luis believes that her violent mood swings will return. When Pretty overhears Luis and Fancy’s conversation, the younger Crane decides to fake a pregnancy to rip her sister’s relationship apart. Fancy is devastated by the news, fearing that her relationship will be torn apart by Luis’s families with her sister and aunt, but Luis vows that Fancy is the only one for him, proposing to her on April 30. Fancy and Luis eventually discover Pretty’s treachery, and after Pretty tries to scar Fancy’s face with acid, Sheridan reveals that Pretty’s scar has been fake all along. Luis and Fancy quickly realize that the youngest Crane child is mentally unwell, and Pretty is sent to a mental institution. The couple are deeply upset by Pretty’s plight, but are also happy to be free of her machinations, and begin planning for their imminent wedding. Fancy and Luis are married on July 23, and Fancy tells Luis that they are expecting a baby in the series finale. It is assumed that Julian becomes head of the Crane Empire with Fancy and her unborn child as heirs presumptive based on Julian’s statements in the series finale.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Fancy Crane, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley, a promising botanist from Seattle, is seduced by Marc LeGrande into assisting him with the theft of an Egyptian artifact containing ancient herbs. Fearing she would implicate him in the theft, he attempts to poison her with the herbs, which are deadly and untraceable. She survives this murder attempt and discovers she has acquired an immunity to all natural toxins and diseases.

Post-Crisis: Life in Seattle and Gotham

Her origins were revised in ”Shadow of the Bat Annual” #3. Pamela Isley grows up wealthy with emotionally distant parents. She later studies advanced botanical biochemistry at a university with Alec Holland under Dr. Jason Woodrue. Isley, a timid, shy girl, is easily seduced by her professor. Woodrue injects Isley with poisons and toxins as an experiment, causing her transformation. She nearly dies twice as a result from these poisonings, driving her insane. Later Woodrue flees from the authorities, leaving Isley in the hospital for six months. Enraged at the betrayal, she suffers from violent mood swings, being sweet one moment and like poison the next. When her boyfriend has a car accident after mysteriously suffering from a massive fungal overgrowth, Isley drops out of school and leaves Seattle, eventually settling in Gotham City.

She begins her criminal career by threatening to release her suffocating spores into the air unless the city meets her demands. Batman, who appears in Gotham that very same year, thwarts her scheme, and she is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum. From this point on, she has a kind of obsession with Batman, he being the only person she could not control. Over the years, she develops plant-like superpowers, the most noticeable being a lethal toxin in her lips; she is able to literally kill with a kiss.

In subsequent issues, she states that she only started a life of crime to attain sufficient funds to find a location to be alone with her plants, undisturbed by humanity. A few years later, she attempts to leave Gotham forever, escaping Arkham to settle on a desert island in the Caribbean. She transforms the barren wasteland into a second Eden, and is, for the first time in her life, happy. It is soon firebombed, however, when an American-owned corporation tests their weapons systems out on what they think is an abandoned island. Ivy returns to Gotham with a vengeance, punishing those responsible. After being willingly apprehended by Batman, she resolves that she can never leave Gotham, at least not until the world was safe for plants. From then on, she dedicates herself to the impossible mission of “purifying” Gotham.

At one point, Batman travels to Seattle to ascertain information on Pamela Isley’s life before she became Poison Ivy. Here, Batman states that both of Pamela’s parents are dead. When and why they died has been left undetermined.

While in Arkham, Poison Ivy receives a message through flowers that someone is to help her escape. That night, two women, Holly and Eva, successfully break Ivy out and bring her back to their employer. She is less than happy to discover that it is the Floronic Man, formerly known as Dr. Jason Woodrue, her former college professor that conducted the experiments on her. The only human portion of him remaining is his head, while the rest of his body is plant-based.

After striking a deal with him in the underground tunnels of Gotham, Ivy receives a trunk full of money in return for samples of her DNA. Woodrue intends to combine their DNA to create a “child”, all while flooding the streets of Gotham with high-powered marijuana. The purpose of this is to create a world economy run on hemp and to have their offspring control it. Batman intervenes, but is overcome by Woodrue’s henchwomen, Holly and Eva. However, Ivy turns on Floronic Man and lets Batman go to fight the intoxicated maniac. In the end, Batman decapitates the Floronic Man, and Ivy escapes with her money.

At times, Ivy demonstrates positive, even maternal traits. When Gotham City is destroyed in an earthquake, rather than fight over territory like most of Batman’s enemies, she holds dominion over Robinson Park and turns it into a tropical paradise. Sixteen children who are orphaned during the quake come to live with her, as she sympathizes with them, having suffered a traumatic childhood herself. She cares for them like sons and daughters, despite her usual misanthropy.

That winter, Clayface (Basil Karlo) pays Ivy a visit, hoping to form a bargain with her. This would entail her growing fruits and vegetables, having the orphans harvest them, and him selling the produce to the highest bidder. She wants nothing to do with the plan, and she attempts to kill him with a kiss. Clayface overpowers her, however, and imprisons Ivy and the orphans for six months in a chamber under the park’s lake. He feeds her salt and keeps her from the sun to weaken her. Eventually, Batman comes and discovers the imprisoned orphans and Ivy. The two agree to work together to take Karlo down. Batman battles Clayface and instructs Robin to blow up the lake bed above, allowing the rushing water to break apart the mud, effectively freeing Ivy. She fights Karlo, ensnaring him in the branches of a tree and fatally kissing him. She then proceeds to sink him down into the ground, where he becomes fertilizer for Ivy’s plants. Batman, originally intending to take the orphans away from Ivy, recognizes that staying with her is what is best for them, and they remain in her care until the city is restored. Also, as part of a bargain to keep her freedom, Batman arranges it so that Ivy provides fresh produce to the starving hordes of earthquake survivors.

Soon after, Ivy finds Harley Quinn, who had almost been murdered by the Joker, among the debris of the earthquake and nurses her back to health. The two have been best friends and partners-in-crime ever since.

After Gotham City is reopened to the public, the city council wants to evict her from the park and send her back to Arkham Asylum, as they are uncomfortable with the thought of a “psychotic eco-terrorist controlling the equivalent of 30-odd square blocks.” They also mistakenly believe that the orphans in Ivy’s care are hostages. The Gotham City Police Department threaten to spray the park with R.C. Sixty, a powerful herbicide that most certainly would have killed every living plant in the park, including Ivy, and more than likely do harm to the children. Ivy refuses to leave the park to the city and let them destroy the paradise she had created, so she chooses martyrdom. It is only after Rose, one of the orphans, is accidentally poisoned by Ivy that the hardened eco-terrorist surrenders herself to the authorities in order to save the girl’s life. Batman says that, as much as she would hate to admit it, Ivy is still more human than plant.

Later on, she and other Gotham characters are manipulated by the Riddler and Hush. Her task is to hypnotize both Superman and Catwoman, using Catwoman to steal ransom money from Killer Croc after the original plan is interrupted by Batman while Superman serves as a ‘bodyguard’ when she hides in Metropolis; however, she abandons Catwoman to be killed by Killer Croc, and Batman is able to keep Superman busy in a fight- aided by the kryptonite ring he was given long ago- long enough for the Man of Steel to break out of the spell. Soon afterwards, the Riddler, who is being chased and attacked by Hush, approaches Ivy and seeks her protection. Ivy, who is angered by the manipulation, battles the Riddler physically and psychologically. She comes to physically dominate her opponent, humiliating Riddler and temporarily breaking his spirit.

Poison Ivy comes to believe that her powers are killing the children she had looked after, so she seeks Bruce Wayne’s help to reverse her powers and make her a normal human being once more. Soon after, she is convinced by Hush to take another serum to restore her powers and apparently dies in the process. However, when her grave is visited shortly thereafter, it is covered with ivy, creating the impression her death would be short-lived.

Shortly after, Poison Ivy appears briefly in Robinson Park, killing two corrupt cops who killed one of her orphans (although whether this takes place before or after the aforementioned storyline is unknown).

“One Year Later”, Ivy is alive and active. Her control over flora has increased, referred to as being on a par with Swamp Thing or Floronic Man. She also appears to have resumed her crusade against the corporate enemies of the environment with a new fanaticism, regarding Batman no longer as a main opponent, but as a “hindrance.”

After arriving back from a year-long absence, Batman discovers that Ivy has been feeding people including “tiresome lovers”, “incompetent henchmen”, and those who “returned her smile” to a giant plant which would digest the victims slowly and painfully. She refers to these murders as a “guilty pleasure”. In an unprecedented event, her victims’ souls merge with the plant, creating a botanical monster called ”Harvest”, who seeks revenge upon Ivy. With the intervention of Batman, however, she is saved. Ivy is left in critical condition, and the whereabouts of Harvest are unknown.

In ”Countdown #37”, the Piper and the Trickster are hiding out in a greenhouse, picking fruits and vegetables from the plants. They run into Ivy, who is talking to her plants (presumably being told that Piper and Trickster hurt them), to which she reacts by tying them up in vines with the intention of killing them. She is then shown to have joined the Injustice League Unlimited and is one of the villains featured in ”Salvation Run”.

In the “Battle For The Cowl” storyline, she is coerced by a new Black Mask into joining his group of villains that aims to take over Gotham. She and Killer Croc unsuccessfully attempt to murder Damian Wayne.

Shortly after, she escapes from Black Mask’s control and forms an alliance with Catwoman and Harley Quinn, leading into the ongoing series ”Gotham City Sirens”.

Gotham City Sirens

During Hush’s ploy to hurt Batman through hurting his loved ones, Hush kidnaps Catwoman and surgically removes her heart. After being saved by Batman, she is operated on by some of the most gifted surgeons in the world, including Doctor Mid-Nite and Mr. Terrific. Zatanna also gives her a magic antidote to help heal her wounds. In order to get even with Hush, Selina enlists the help of Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Oracle, Holly Robinson, and Slam Bradley to track down all of Hush’s accounts, pilfer them, and leave him penniless. Selina pays Holly, Harley, and Ivy over $30 million each, hoping that they would use the funds to leave Gotham to start fresh somewhere else.

However, Harley uses her money to go on a shopping spree, while Ivy gives her money away to organizations in Madagascar and Costa Rica for reforestation.

After rescuing Catwoman from Boneblaster, a new villain trying to make a name for himself, Poison Ivy takes Catwoman back to Edward Nigma’s townhouse. When there, Catwoman sees that Ivy has been keeping the Riddler under mind control so that she and Harley could use his townhouse as a hideout. Here, Catwoman decides that with Gotham City more dangerous than ever with all the gang wars and a new Batman, a partnership with the other two women would be advantageous. However, Ivy fears that Catwoman has lost her edge and prowess, and consults with Zatanna on the nature of Catwoman’s injuries. Zatanna responds that Catwoman has psychological wounds that would need healing. Ivy resolves that she and Harley would provide Catwoman with “positive female reinforcement”. The three then agree to become a team. However, Harley and Ivy have one condition: they demand that Catwoman reveal to them the true identity of Batman.

Eventually, Ivy and the other Sirens ambush the Riddler at his office (with Ivy using her plants to truss and gag his secretary), telling him that they’ve been framed for the murder of a young nurse. He agrees to help clear their names, and during the discussion Ivy reveals that she has recently taken up a job at the Gotham division of S.T.A.R. Labs under an assumed name (Dr. Paula Irving). She is eventually kidnapped and placed in a specialized containment unit by a researcher named Alisa Adams, but escapes and turns the table on her captor by binding her with vines. Ivy initially informs Adams that she plans to kill her, but instead decides to let her live after seeing a photograph of Alisa’s young daughter. Ivy then threatens the Alisa into keeping her mouth shut about her true identity, telling her that she will change her mind and kill her if she reveals her secret to anyone.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Poison Ivy (comics), under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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*”Anthology of American Folk Music”, 1952, Folkways Records. Re-released in 1997 by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

Filmography

*”Early Abstractions” (1939-56 or 1941-57 or 1946-52 or 1946-57) (assembled ca. 1964) 16& mm, black & white and color, 22 min. Originally silent, then accompanied by a reel-to-reel tape with songs by The Fugs—whose first album Smith produced—and subsequently by an optical soundtrack featuring Meet the Beatles!. Teiji Ito’s musical piece ”Shaman” plays on the 1987 video release. At first the anthology included only No. 1-4, later No. 5, 7, and 10 were added. The individual films however are not divided, they play as one. This anthology, in 2006, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

*”No. 1: A Strange Dream” (1939-47 or 1946-48) hand-painted 35& mm stock photographed in 16& mm, color, silent, 2:20 or 5 min. Initially intended to be screened with and synchronized to Dizzy Gillespie’s ”Manteca” or ”Guarachi Guaro”. “…the history of the geologic period reduced to orgasm length.”

*”No. 2: Message From the Sun” (1940-42 or 1946-48) hand-painted 35& mm stock photographed in 16& mm, color, 2:15 or 10 min. Initially intended to be screened with and synchronized to Dizzy Gillespie’s ”Algo Bueno”. This film “takes place either inside the sun or in… Switzerland” according to Smith. To produce this film he used a technique that involved cutting stickers of the type used to reinforce the holes in 3-ring binder paper. These were applied to 16& mm movie film and used like a stencil. Layers of vaseline and paint were used to color each frame in this manner. The effect is hypnotic, psychedelic and is something like a visual music.

*”No. 3: Interwoven” (1942-47 or 1947-49) hand-painted 35& mm stock photographed in 16& mm, color, 3:20 or 10 min. Reportedly cut down from about 30 min. Initially intended to be screened with and synchronized to Dizzy Gillespie’s ”Guarachi Guaro” or ”Manteca”. “Batiked animation made of dead squares…”

*”No. 4: Fast Track” a.k.a. Manteca” (1947 or 1949-50) 16& mm, black & white and color, 2:16 or 6 min. Silent though possibly intended to be screened with Dizzy Gillespie’s ”Manteca”. The film starts with a color sequence showing Smith’s painting ”[http://www.harrysmitharchives.com/2_artwork/art2.html Manteca]” (ca. 1950) with which he tried to subjectively depict Gillespie’s song, every brushstroke representing a music note. The film concludes with black & white superimpositions.

*”No. 5: Circular Tensions (Homage to Oskar Fischinger)” (1949-50) 16& mm, color, silent, 2:30 or 6 min. Sequel to No. 4.

*No. 6 (1948-51 or 1950-51) 16& mm, color, silent or mono, 1:30 or 20 min. Untraced red-green anaglyph 3-D film.

*”No. 7: Color Study” (1950-51-52) 16& mm, color, silent, 5:25 or 15 min. “Optically printed Pythagoreanism in four movements supported on squares, circles, grillwork, and triangles with an interlude concerning an experiment.”

*”No. 8” (1954 or 1957) 16& mm, black & white, silent, 5 min. Untraced collage. Later expanded to No. 12.

*”No. 9” (1954 or 1957) 16& mm, color, 10 min. Untraced collage.

*”No. 10: Mirror Animations” (1956-57) 16& mm, color, 3:35 or 10 min. Study for No. 11. “An exposition of Buddhism and the Kaballah in the form of a collage. The final scene shows Agaric mushrooms growing on the moon while the Hero and Heroine row by on a cerebrum.”

*”No. 11: Mirror Animations” (1956-57) 16& mm, color, 3:35 or 8 min. Features Thelonious Monk’s ”Misterioso”. Cut-up and collage animation. Later expanded to No. 17.

*”No. 12: Heaven and Earth Magic” a.k.a. ”The Magic Feature” a.k.a. ”Heaven and Earth Magic Feature” (1943-58 or 1950-60 or 1950-61 or 1957-62 or 1959-61) (reedited several times between 1957-62) 16& mm, black & white, mono, initially 6 hours, later versions of 2 hours and 67 min. Extended version of No. 8. Collage animation culled from 19th century catalogs meant to be shown using custom-made projectors fit out with color filters (gels, wheels, etc.) and masking hand-painted glass slides to alter the projected image. Smith explains, “The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land, in terms of Israel and Montreal. The second part depicts the return to Earth from being eaten by Max Müller on the day Edward VII dedicated the Great Sewer of London.” Jonas Mekas gave the film—which is often regarded as Smith’s major work—its title in 1964/65.

*”No. 13: Oz” a.k.a. ”The Magic Mushroom People of Oz” (1962) 35& mm widescreen (scope), color, stereo, 3 hours or 108 min. but only 20-30 min. are known to survive. Unfinished commercial adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s ”The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” which was shelved after Harry’s close friend, the executive producer and primary financial backer Arthur Young died of cancer. Portions released as No. 16, 19, and 20. From the reported three to six hours of camera test footage (rushes) only ca. 15 minutes, in the form of non-color-corrected rushes, is known to be extant. The only completed bit is ”The Approach to Emerald City”, a 5 (other sources say 9 resp. 12) minute sequence set to music from Charles Gounod’s ”Faust”.

*”No. 14: Late Superimpositions” (1963-64-65) 16& mm, color, 29 min. Structured 122333221. Features the beginning of the opera ”Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny” by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht as recorded in 1956 by Lotte Lenya, the ”Norddeutscher Radiochor” (Max Thurn) and the ”Norddeutsches Radio-Orchester” (Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg). Later expanded to No. 18. “I honor it the most of my films, otherwise a not very popular one before 1972.” Shot in New York City and Anadarko.

*”No. 15” (1965-1966) 16& mm, color, silent, 10 min. Animation of Seminole patchwork.

*”No. 16: Oz – The Tin Woodman’s Dream” (1967) 35& mm widescreen (scope), color, silent, 14:30 min. Consists of ”The Approach to Emerald City” (cf. note on No. 13) followed by about 10 minutes of kaleidoscopic footage shot ca. 1966. See also No. 20.

*”No. 17: Mirror Animations (extended version)” (1962-76 or 1979) 16& mm, color, 12 min. Features Thelonious Monk’s ”Misterioso”. Extended version of No. 11 printed forward-backward-forward.

*”No. 18: Mahagonny” (1970-1980: shot 70-72, edited 72-80) 16& mm, color, tetraptych screen (initially with four 16& mm projectors, now composited onto a single 35& mm strip), 141 min. (edited down from over 11 hours of material). With Allen Ginsberg, Jonas Mekas, Patti Smith and images of Robert Mapplethorpe installations. “A mathematical analysis of Marcel Duchamp’s ”The Large Glass”, expressed in terms of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera ”Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”” upon which it is loosely based. Smith divided the images into four groups (Portraits, Animations, Symbols and Nature) and, with the assistance of Khem Caigan, arranged them as a series of procedural permutations in relation to the opera: every reel contains twenty-four scenes forming the palindrome PASA-PASNA-PASAP-ANSAP-ASAP-N. Note that the entire series hinges on Nature. Extended version of No. 14 (it also uses the same 1956 German language recording) Smith considered this film to be the ground-breaking harbinger of his unfinished masterwork, which was to have been an explication of the Four Last Things.

*”No. 19” (1980) 35& mm widescreen (scope), color, silent. Untraced excerpts from No. 13. See also No. 20.

*”No. 20: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten” (1981) 35& mm widescreen (scope), color, silent, 27 min. Consists of No. 16 and No. 19.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Harry Everett Smith, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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In Bram Stoker’s novel Count Dracula’s biography, characteristics, powers, abilities and weaknesses are narrated in a piecemeal way by multiple narrators, from different perspectives. The most informative of these narrators are Jonathan Harker, Abraham Van Helsing and Mina Harker.

Biography

Count Dracula (his first name is never given in the novel) is a centuries-old vampire, sorcerer and Transylvanian nobleman, who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass. Contrary to the vampires of Eastern European folklore, which are portrayed as repulsive, corpse-like creatures, Dracula can exude a veneer of aristocratic charm which masks his unfathomable evil.

Details of his early life are obscure, but it seems that Dracula studied the black arts at the academy of Scholomance in the Carpathian Mountains, overlooking the town of Sibiu (also known as Hermannstadt) and became proficient in alchemy and magic.. Taking up arms, as befitting his rank and status as a Voivode, he led troops against the Turks across the Danube. According to the character Abraham Van Helsing: Dead and buried in a great tomb in the chapel of his castle, Dracula returns from death as a vampire and lives for several centuries in his castle with three beautiful female vampires, who lay similarly entombed in the chapel beside him. His relations with these so-called “Brides of Dracula” are intimate, and two of them seem to bear a possible family resemblance though whether they be his lovers, sisters, daughters or an incestuous combination of these, as some have conjectured, is not made clear in the narrative.

As the novel begins in the late 19th century, Dracula acts on a long contemplated plan for world domination, and infiltrates London to begin his reign of terror. He summons Jonathan Harker, a newly qualified English solicitor, to provide legal support for a real estate transaction overseen by Harker’s employer. Dracula at first charms Harker with his cordiality and historical knowledge and even rescues him from the clutches of his three bloodthirsty brides. In truth, however, Dracula wishes to keep Harker alive just long enough for his legal transaction to finish and to learn as much as possible about England.

Dracula leaves his castle and boards a Russian ship, the ”Demeter”, taking along with him boxes of Transylvanian soil, which he needs in order to regain his strength. During the voyage to Whitby, a coastal town in northern England, he sustains himself on the ship’s crew members. Only one body is later found, that of the captain, who is found tied up to the ship’s helm. The captain’s log is recovered and tells of strange events that had taken place during the ship’s journey. Dracula leaves the ship in the form of a wolf.

Soon the Count is menacing Harker’s devoted fiancée, Wilhelmina “Mina” Murray, and her vivacious friend, Lucy Westenra. There is also a notable link between Dracula and Renfield, a patient in an insane asylum compelled to consume insects, spiders, birds, and other creatures — in ascending order of size — in order to absorb their “life force”. Renfield acts as a kind of sensor, reacting to Dracula’s proximity and supplying clues accordingly. Dracula begins to visit Lucy’s bed chamber on a nightly basis, draining her of blood while simultaneously infecting her with the curse of vampirism. Not knowing the cause for Lucy’s deterioration, her companions call upon the Dutch doctor Van Helsing, the former mentor of one of Lucy’s suitors. Van Helsing soon deduces her condition’s supernatural origins, but does not speak out. Despite an attempt at keeping the vampire at bay with garlic, Dracula entices Lucy out of her chamber late at night and drains her blood, killing her and transforming her into one of the undead.

Van Helsing and a group of men enter Lucy’s crypt and kill her reanimated corpse. They later enter Dracula’s residence at Carfax, destroying his boxes of earth, depriving the Count of his ability to rest. Dracula leaves England to return to his homeland, but not before biting Mina.

The final section of the novel details the heroes racing Dracula back to Transylvania, and in a climactic battle with Dracula’s gypsy bodyguards, destroying him. Despite the popular image of Dracula having a stake driven through his heart, Mina’s narrative describes his throat being sliced through by Jonathan Harker’s kukri knife and his heart pierced by Quincey Morris’s Bowie knife (Mina Harker’s Journal, 6 November, ”Dracula” Chapter 27).

Characteristics

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Count Dracula, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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1960s

Although Ultron first appears in ”Avengers” #54 (1968), the character is disguised for the majority of the issue as the Crimson Cowl, with his face only revealed on the last page of the issue and no name given to the character. The character leads the Masters of Evil against the Avengers. In the following issue, #55 (Aug. 1968), the character is identified as Ultron-5, the living automaton, although his origin is still unknown. In ”Avengers” 57 – 58 (Oct-Nov. 1968) in a flashback sequence it is revealed that Ultron is the creator of the “synthezoid” the Vision, whom it tries to use as a weapon to destroy the Avengers. The Vision, however, destroys Ultron with the aid of the Avengers.

Further flashbacks reveal that he is the creation of Henry Pym, and based on Pym’s brain patterns. The robot gradually developed its own intelligence and rebelled, and almost immediately suffers from an Oedipus Complex, whereby it feels irrational hatred for his “father” Hank, and demonstrates an interest in Hank’s lover Janet van Dyne, the Wasp. Rebuilding itself and upgrading five times, Ultron then hypnotizes Pym and brainwashed him into forgetting that the robot had ever existed.

The character’s next appearance is in ”Avengers” #66 – 68 (July – Sept. 1969), where the character, now referring to itself as Ultron-6, uses the fictional alloy adamantium to upgrade his body to an almost indestructible state. Taking the name Ultimate Ultron, its plans to destroy humanity are again thwarted by the Avengers.

1970s

A crossover story between ”Avengers” #127 (Sept. 1974) and ”Fantastic Four” #150 (Sept. 1974) features Ultron (now Ultron-7), recreated by Maximus with the body of the android Omega, attacking the wedding of the Inhuman Crystal and the Avenger Quicksilver, and battling the Avengers, Inhumans, and Fantastic Four before being destroyed once again. The character next appears in ”Avengers” #161 – 162 (July – Aug. 1977) as Ultron-8 where it is responsible for the creation of Jocasta whom it wishes to take as a robotic bride. Shortly afterwards, in ”Avengers” #170 – 171 (April – May 1978), the Avengers, with the aid of Ms. Marvel battle and defeat Ultron-8.

1980s

His next appearances are in ”Avengers” #201 – 202 (Nov. – Dec 1980) as Ultron-9 and in ”Marvel Two-In-One” #92-93 (Oct. – Nov. 1982) as Ultron-10; both appearances feature brainwashed heroes recreating and then defeating the robotic menace. After being briefly recreated (as Ultron-11) by the Beyonder and appearing on Battleworld during the Secret Wars, and for a brief encounter with the Thing, Ultron is destroyed again. The Thing, however, does bring Ultron’s head back to Earth as a souvenir. The head of Ultron-11 is dropped and forgotten by the Thing when there is an attack by the alien Dire Wraiths.

A new Ultron (Ultron-12) enters into an alliance with the villain the Grim Reaper and his allies (Nekra; the Erik Josten Goliath; Man-Ape and the Black Talon) in a bid to destroy the Reaper’s brother, Wonder Man. Although the villains are defeated by the West Coast Avengers, Ultron-12 begins to form a relationship with his “father”, Henry Pym. Ultron-12 begins calling itself Ultron Mark 12, in an effort to sound more human. Rebuilding itself, Ultron-11 comes into conflict with Hank Pym and Ultron-12. With the assistance of Wonder Man, they destroy Ultron-11. Ultron-12 then deactivates, but tells Pym it was glad it could help save him.

1990s

Ultron appears as a pawn of Doctor Doom; having been rebuilt with all previous personalities active at the same time, resulting in a form of robotic madness. Ultron fights Daredevil before a programming conflict deactivates the robot.

Another version of Ultron appears (Ultron-13) and is stopped by the ”West Coast Avengers”. After escaping captivity this version attempts to obtain a new form of vibranium called Nuform, but is repelled by the combined efforts of Iron Man, the Black Panther and Spider-Man. Ultron (Ultron-11) next briefly appears as a captive of a highly advanced Doombot, but is freed when the Doombot is defeated by Deathlok.

Ultron-13 escapes from prison and upgrades into “The Ultimate Ultron”, (technically Ultron-14) and captures the West Coast Avenger Mockingbird, using her brain patterns to create a new robotic mate called Alkhema. Alkhema aids Ultron but both are eventually jettisoned into space through a ruse by the Vision. The character reappears with Alkhema, and together they plan to create a “volcanic winter” by placing bombs underneath several volcanoes. The West Coast Avengers stop the pair once again, and Alkhema rebels and leaves Ultron. Another Ultron (Ultron-15) is found by the Vision, but is discovered to have been “infected” by human emotion and is seriously deteriorating, displaying symptoms that resemble alcoholism. This Ultron and a recreated Jocasta decide to explore the world with the Vision for a time.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Ultron, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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Dr. Michael Morbius was created in response to the comic-book industry’s self-censorship board, the Comics Code Authority, lifting its ban on vampires and certain other supernatural characters in February 1971, and not as a challenge to the code, as many believe. Writer Roy Thomas and penciler Gil Kane created the character as a living man who is given vampiric abilities via scientific rather than supernatural means. Kane was instructed to specifically avoid Gothic fashion elements and design a costume for Morbius that was akin to those of superheroes or supervillains, and he specifically chose the red and blue primary colors that were the staple of characters like Spider-Man and Superman.

Morbius debuted in ”The Amazing Spider-Man” #101 (Oct. 1971), the first issue of Marvel Comics’ flagship Spider-Man series written by other than character co-creator and editor-in-chief Stan Lee. Lee, busy writing a screenplay for an unproduced science fiction movie, bequeathed the series to his right-hand editor, Thomas. “We were talking about doing Dracula, but Stan wanted a costumed villain. Other than that, he didn’t specify what we should do”, Thomas said in 2009, adding that part of the character conception came from an unspecified science-fiction film of Thomas’ youth, depicting a man turned into a vampire by radiation rather than magic. Thomas said the name “Morbius” was not deliberately taken from the antagonist Dr. Morbius in the movie ”Forbidden Planet”.

A tragic and sympathetic antagonist in his initial two-issue arc, having acquired his vampiric addiction while researching a cure for his own rare, fatal blood disease, Morbius collided again with Spider-Man and others in ”Marvel Team-Up” #3-4 (July & Sept. 1972). Morbius went on to star in in ”Vampire Tales”, a black-and-white horror-comics magazine published by Marvel’s sister company, Curtis Magazines, appearing in all but two of the mature-audience title’s 11 issues (Aug. 1973 – June 1975). All but the first and last of these were written by Don McGregor, with penciling by Rich Buckler and by Tom Sutton, primarily. After his first two ”Vampire Tales” stories, Morbius concurrently became the star of his own feature in Marvel’s bimonthly ”Adventure into Fear” anthology series, beginning with issue #20 (Feb. 1974) and continuing through #31 (Dec. 1975), the final issue of that title. These were written, successively, by Mike Friedrich, Steve Gerber (who wrote the first Morbius solo story, in ”Vampire Tales”), Doug Moench, and Bill Mantlo, working with a wide variety of pencilers. Morbius segued. During this period, Morbius again appeared as an antagonist in the Spider-Man one-shot, ”Giant-Size Super-Heroes” #1 (June 1974)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Morbius, the Living Vampire, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The Phantom Blot, or simply “The Blot”, made his first appearance in ”Mickey Mouse Outwits The Phantom Blot”. In this story, Chief O’Hara hires Mickey to capture this new criminal who calls himself The Blot. According to O’Hara, he is the smartest thief they’ve ever met. Detective Casey, however, calls this new criminal a looney. The only thing he steals is cameras of a special type and he smashes them open on the spot. The strange crime and the motive behind it resembles closely the Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Six Napoleons.

In the end, Blot is captured and unmasked. Most later stories featuring the villain don’t unmask him, in order to give him a more mysterious character.

Many artists and writers have furthered the Phantom Blot throughout the years. The first re-apparance was in the Italian story ”Topolino e il doppio segreto di Macchia Nera”, written by Guido Martina and drawn by Romano Scarpa, published in 1955 in issues 116-119 of ”Topolino”, the main Italian Disney magazine. In the United States, after a long absence, he was revived in the serial “The Return of The Phantom Blot” (drawn by Paul Murry) that ran in issues 284-287 (May-August 1964) of ”Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”. This was followed by a comic book series of seven issues (1964 to 1966) devoted to the Blot and his crimes. He next turned up in the mid-1970s in two issues of ”Super Goof” written by Mark Evanier and drawn by Roger Armstrong. Comic book historian Joe Torcivia notes Armstrong was the first to draw the character with a mouth, making him look like a shadow instead of someone under a black cloak. This convention has since been followed by many artists, including Murry.

The Phantom Blot was unmasked at the end of ”Mickey Mouse Outwits The Phantom Blot”. The Phantom Blot’s gaunt face and thin mustaches, as revealed at the end of ”Mickey Mouse Outwits The Phantom Blot”, were reportedly based on the features of Walt Disney himself.

While still being a criminal, he usually operates as the mastermind behind gangs rather that a common crook. He prefers pulling strings rather than being directly involved.

During his career he steals large amounts of money and invests them in business. His relative wealth allows him to finance his ambitious plans.

He is a skillful hypnotist and occasionally uses this skill to force others to do his bidding. He has even ordered Mickey himself to act as a criminal in order to frame him. He has quite a talent in acting. The Blot often operates in disguise and has acted under various aliases and identities, adopting many different personalities to suit his parts. He has some scientific knowledge, mainly in physics, mechanics and biology, and has often used this in his plans. He has invented various devices he uses as weapons. He claims to be an artistic nature and has considerable skill in painting, which he uses to create forgeries of famous works of art. He later proceeds in stealing the original and leaving his copy behind.

He seems to have ways to get information about everything that is going on in the city and even from the police headquarters. His ways of persuading others to follow him include using their own greed, promising them means of revenge or blackmailing them. He enjoys seducing citizens with no criminal records to act as his agents. He has a fairly good knowledge of psychology and is very skilled in spreading fear to his victims, causing them to doubt their relationships and in some cases even their own sanity. He often uses their vanity to turn them into pawns.

He is a master of escape. Even if the police do manage to capture and imprison him, which rarely happens, he is soon out again. Other times he takes advantage of the terrain or weather. In one issue where he is attempting a robbery on a winter night, he is seen in his normal black outfit. Goofy, who has taken a job as a night watchman, is patrolling the businesses when the Blot realizes he must abort his plans and says “I always come prepared”, where he removes his black robes and replaces them with white ones, allowing himself to camouflage with the snowy streets. Though he desires money and power his greatest lust is for fame. Some of his plans have no monetary gain for him but their purpose is to spread fear to the public, adding to his reputation. The Blot is himself very vain and his desire for money and power is only surpassed by his desire to immortalize his name in “the annals of crime”.

Along with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Super Goof, Eega Beeva, Minnie Mouse, and Chief O’Hara have all encountered the Blot, and thus successfully tried to stop him. The Blot sometimes teams up with other bad guys like the Beagle Boys and Mad Madam Mim, who is madly in love with him — while he considers her a lunatic. At the height of the villain’s popularity, he was given his own comic book, which lasted for seven issues.

He returned for the comic book series, Wizards of Mickey, unmasked though he still operates by pulling strings.

In Europe

His depiction in Disney comics has varied with the artists using him: in stories published by Egmont, as well as French stories, he is always shown wearing his hood, while in Italian ones, he frequently appears unmasked, sometimes not wearing his cloak at all. In these he wears everyday clothes and is unmasked, though he is still up to criminal schemes ranging from robbery and smuggling to espionage, sabotage and extortion.

French translators often took liberties with Italian material and apparently decided that the Phantom Blot’s appearances without his cloak and mask should be classified as depicting a completely different character. In the French translations of the Italian stories where the Blot appeared unmasked, he was frequently given the name ”Jo Crisse” (a term usually used as a form of insult), while he retained his Italian name ”Macchia Nera” in the original Italian versions.

In European stories he is often presented as a more dangerous figure than the American version. While still trying to kill Mickey and his allies he has other agendas as well. He has also frequently clashed with Super Goof.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article Phantom Blot, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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The Hound of Death

William P. Ryan, an American journalist is having lunch with a friend called Anstruther when he hears that the latter is about to visit his sister in Folbridge, Cornwall at her house called “Treane”. Ryan has heard of the place and tells a story from the recent First World War when he heard of a German attempt to take over a convent during the Rape of Belgium. As soon as the soldiers entered the building it blew up, killing them all. It was proven that the soldiers had no high explosives on them and speaking with the locals afterwards Ryan was told of one of the nuns having miraculous powers and she brought down a lightning bolt from heaven that destroyed the convent and killed the Germans. All that was left of the building were two walls, one of which had a powder mark in the shape of a giant hound. This scared the local peasants who avoided the area after dark. The nun in question survived and went with other refugees to “Treane” in Cornwall and Anstruther confirms his sister did take

in some Belgians at the time.

In Cornwall, Anstruther finds out from his sister that the nun, Marie Angelique, is still in the area. She has constant hallucinations and is being studied by a local new young doctor by the name of Rose who intends to write a monograph on her condition. Anstruther meets Rose and persuades him to let him meet the young nun.

She is boarding with the local district nurse. She talks of her dreams but when Anstruther tells her of the story he heard from Ryan, she is shocked to realise that what she thought was a dream was true – that of unleashing the “Hound of Death” on the Germans as they approached the altar. She rambles about the “City of Circles” and the “People of the Crystal” and when they have left her, Rose tells Anstruther that he has heard her mention crystals before and he produced a crystal to her on a previous occasion to test her reaction. She gasped, “Then the faith still lives!”

The next day, the young nun tells Anstruther that she feels that the crystal is a symbol of faith, possibly a second Christ, and the faith has endured for many centuries. Rose tries a word association test in which Marie Angelique makes references to signs – and the sixth sign is destruction. Anstruther starts to feel uneasy about Rose’s interest in the case, suspecting something more than purely medical motives.

Some time later, Anstruther receives a letter from the nun in which she voices her fears of Rose and that the doctor is trying to obtain her powers by trying to progress to the sixth sign. The same day he hears from his sister that both Rose and the nun are dead. A landslide swept away the cliffside cottage they were in and the debris on the beach is in the shape of a giant hound. He also hears that Rose’s rich uncle died the same night, struck by lightning although there were no storms in the area and the burn-mark on him is in an unusual shape. Remembering comments from Marie Angelique, Anstruther wonders if Rose acquired the ancient (or possibly future?) powers of the crystal but he failed to control them properly, resulting in his own death. His fears are confirmed when he comes into possession of Rose’s notes which detail his attempts to become a superman with “the Power of Death” in his hands.

The Red Signal

A dinner party is taking place in the London home of Jack and Claire Trent. Their three guests are a Mrs Violet Eversleigh, the famous psychiatrist Sir Alington West and his nephew Dermot West. The talk turns round to precognitive abilities and premonitions which Sir Alington is dismissive of, believing them to be both coincidences and situations that are talked up after the event. Dermot is not so sure and describes such feelings as having a red signal – “danger ahead!” – and tells one story of near-death in Mesopotamia when he avoided being murdered by an Arab servant. What he does not tell the group is that he is experiencing the red signal tonight at the dinner party.

He ponders who could be the source of danger, his thoughts moving to his love for Claire Trent, a feeling that he constantly suppresses in view of the fact that Jack Trent is his best friend. Coming out of his reverie, the conversation has turned to madness and the dangers of suppressing delusions. Sir Alington looks pointedly at Claire Trent who is visibly disturbed by this talk.

One of the purposes of the evening is to meet a medium who is there to conduct a sitting. She does so and warns one of the people in the room not to go home as there is danger there.

The party breaks up and Sir Alington asks Dermot to accompany him home to Harley Street before going on to join his friends at the Grafton Galleries. Once inside, he tells his nephew that he knows of his infatuation for Claire and not to give into it. He disapproves of divorce and speaks of a history of insanity in their family and his suspicions of homicidal mania. The discussion becomes emotional and Dermot utters a threat to his uncle, one which is overheard by the manservant, Johnson, as he brings in drinks.

Going to the Grafton Galleries, Claire tells Dermot that his feelings for her are shared and because of this she wants him to go away. He asks her to join him but she refuses.

Going back to his flat, Dermot is once again assailed by the feeling of danger and, to his astonishment, finds a revolver hidden in a bedroom drawer. There is a knock on the door and Dermot opens it to the police. The feeling of danger makes him tell the police that he is Milson, his own manservant, and the police tell him that his “master” is wanted for the murder of Sir Alington who was shot dead earlier that night after being overheard arguing with his nephew. The police search the flat, find the revolver and decide to leave an officer there in case West “comes back”.

Dermot escapes from the flat through the kitchen window while supposedly getting drinks and quickly bumps into Jack Trent who gets him away to his own house. He locks himself in a room with Dermot, produces a gun and then insanely confesses to the murder. Sir Alington recognised his condition and was at the dinner party to assess his true mental state. Dermot assumed that his uncle was speaking of Claire who was actually assisting Sir Alington in his diagnosis. She now also assists the police gaining entry to the house and the locked room. Jack shoots himself before they can take him.

The Fourth Man

Canon Parfitt manages just to catch his train on time for a night journey. In his first class carriage he is reacquainted with Sir George Durand, a famous lawyer. A third man in the carriage introduces himself as Dr Campbell Clark, an eminent physician who is an expert on conditions of the mind. There is a fourth man with them who appears to be asleep.

The three other men, confessing to various degrees of insomnia talk through the journey. Their conversation covers the idea that a body can house more than one soul and Dr Clark cites the case of a French girl called Felicie Bault. She was a Brittany peasant who, at the age of five, lost her parents when her father in a drunken rage strangled her mother and he was then transported for life. She was taken into the care of a Miss Slater, an English woman, who ran a charity orphanage in the area. Felicie was slightly backward and brutish-looking and Miss Slater had an uphill task to teach her the rudiments of reading and writing. In later years she had one maid’s job after another due to her perceived stupidity and laziness. Suddenly, at the age of twenty-two, a change came over her. Following a mental illness she split into three or four distinct personalities. The first was the continuation of her known self but the second was cultured and educated, able to play the piano and speak two foreign languages. The third had the second’s education but also knew of the coarser side of life and the less respectable side of Parisian society. The fourth seemed dreamy and pious but was suspected to be the third putting on an act. The change in the personalities occurred after a severe headache and a deep sleep and left her with no recollection of the other personalities. The end of the story came when she was discovered dead in bed one morning, somehow having strangled herself with her own hands.

At this point, the fourth man in the carriage laughs and joins in the conversation. He speaks with a foreign accent and tells them that Felicie’s case in inextricably bound up with that of another girl called Annette Ravel. The two girls and the man himself – Raoul Letardeau – were together at Miss Slater’s orphanage. He was a witness to the bullying hold that Annette had over Felicie that included an incident when Annette seems to have successfully hypnotised Felicie into carrying out an act of which she had no memory. He also saw how much Felicie hated Annette. The latter was an ambitious girl who determined to become a famous dancer in Paris. Raoul left the orphanage when work was found for him that took him abroad for five years. Returning to Paris he saw by chance a poster advertising Annette as singing on the stage and met her in her dressing room. She seemed to have achieved her ambitions but Raoul witnessed the unmistakable signs of consumption and two years later he returned to Miss Slater’s orphanage where Annette had retreated, plainly dying but refusing to believe so. Felicie was also there, serving as a maid, as hateful of Annette as ever but still bullied and humiliated by the ruthless woman who seemed to have a strange hold on her.

Annette died soon afterwards. When Raoul returned six months later he was told by an amazed Miss Slater of the first symptoms of Felicie’s abnormal personality changes. He witnessed one of these and also heard Felicie speak of Annette, “taking…the clothes from your back, the soul from your body” and she was plainly in some terror of the dead girl. Nevertheless, she knew that she had strong hands – should she wish to escape…

The other three are amazed to hear the story and Raoul emphasises how much Annette longed for life – her life. The doctor had previously said that the body was a residence for the soul and, as Raoul points out before he leaves the train, if you find a burglar in your house, you shoot him…

The Gypsy

Dickie Carpenter breaks off his recent engagement to Esther Lawes and confides the reason why in the fiancée of Rachel Lawes, Esther’s younger sister – a dour Scot named Macfarlane: Dickie, a former naval man, has had an aversion to gypsies since his childhood when he started to have recurring dreams in which a he would be in a given situation and suddenly feel a presence. When he looked up, a gypsy woman would be stood there looking at him. The sudden appearance of this woman always unnerved him although it wasn’t until some years after these dreams started that he encountered a real gypsy. It was on a walk in the New Forest and she warned him not to take a certain path. He ignored her and the wooden bridge he was crossing broke beneath his weight, casting him into the fast-running stream below and nearly drowning him.

These occurrences came back to him when he returned to England and started to see the Lawes family. At one dinner party he saw a woman called Alistair Haworth who he seemed to see in his own eyes as wearing a red scarf on her head, just like the gypsy of his dreams. He walked on the terrace with her after dinner and she warned him not to go back into the house. He did so and found himself falling for Esther Lawes. They got engaged a week later and two weeks after that he again caught sight of Mrs Haworth who once more warned Dickie. He again ignored her and that very night Esther stated that, after all, she didn’t love him.

The reason he is now confiding in Macfarlane is that he is due for a routine operation and he thought he saw in one of the nurses in the hospital the image of Mrs Haworth who warned him not to go ahead with the surgery.

Dickie subsequently dies during the operation and some impulse makes Macfarlane go to see Mrs Haworth at her moorland home. There he is surprised to see that her husband is not really suited to such a striking woman as her. The two walk on the moors and Mrs Haworth tells Macfarlane that he too has second sight. For proof, she asks him to look at a rock and he fancies he sees a hollow filled with blood. She tells him it is a sacrificial stone from olden times and he has had his own vision. She confides that she married her husband because she saw some portent hanging over him and wanted to prevent it. She also tells Macfarlane that they won’t meet again.

Determined to challenge the fates, Macfarlane drives back from his inn to the Haworth’s cottage the next day and finds that the lady is dead. She drank something poisonous thinking it was her tonic and her husband is beside himself with grief.

Back at his inn, the landlady tells him stories of long-gone ghosts seen on the moor, including a sailor and a gypsy. Macfarlane wonders if they will walk again…

The Lamp

A Mrs. Lancaster takes a lease on an empty house that sits in a square of an old cathedral town. Suspicious of the extremely low rent she accurately guesses that the house is haunted and pushes the agent for details. He reluctantly tells her of the version of the story that he has heard about a man called Williams living there some thirty years ago with his young son. Williams went up to London for the day and, being a wanted man on the run, was arrested and jailed by the police. His young son was left to fend for himself in the house but died of starvation. The story goes that the boy’s sobbing as he waits for his father to return can sometimes be heard.

Mrs Lancaster soon moves into the house with her elderly father, Mr Winburn, and her lively young son, Geoffrey. Mr Winburn knows that the house is haunted and hears another set of footsteps on the stairs following his grandson down. He also has a disturbing dream that he is in a town populated by no one but children who are begging him to know if he has “brought him”. In addition, he overhears the servants gossiping about hearing a child cry.

Somewhat oblivious to this, Geoffrey nevertheless asks his startled mother if he can play with the little boy that he sometimes sees watching him but Mrs Lancaster brusquely stops all such talk. A month later, Geoffrey starts to fall ill and even his mother starts to hear the sobs of the other little boy that they seem to share the house with. The doctor confesses to his grandfather that there is little they can do as his lungs were never strong in the first place. One night, Geoffrey dies and his mother and grandfather suddenly hear the sound of the other child’s joyous laughter and the receding sound of two pairs of footsteps. The little boy has a playmate at last…

Wireless

Mary Harter, an old lady in her seventies, has undergone a consultation by her doctor who advises her that she has something of a weak heart and to ensure many more years of life she should avoid undue exertion. Dr. Meynall also tells Mrs Harter’s beloved resident nephew, Charles Ridgeway, of the advice that he has given, adding that she should be cheerfully distracted and avoid brooding.

To accomplish this, Charles persuades his aunt to have a radio installed. She resists at first but quickly comes to enjoy the programmes being broadcast. One evening, when Charles is out with friends, the radio suddenly emits the voice of her dead husband, Patrick, who tells her that he is coming for her soon. Although naturally shocked, Mrs Harter remains composed but thoughtful.

Some days later the radio set emits a similar message and the old lady decides to ensure that her affairs are in order. She makes sure that Elizabeth, her maid, knows where her burial requests are kept and decides to increase the amount she has left her in her will from fifty pounds to one hundred. To accomplish this, she writes to her lawyer and asks him to send her the will that he has in his possession.

Mrs Harter is somewhat startled that day at lunch when Charles makes a comment that when he was coming up the drive of the house the previous evening, he thought he saw a face at an upstairs window and realised afterwards that it resembled a portrait in a little-used room that he has since found out is that of Patrick Harter. His widow looks on this as further proof that her time is near.

That evening, Mrs Harter again hears a message through the radio from Patrick, telling her that will be coming for her at half-past nine on Friday night. She writes a note detailing what she has heard as proof, should she die at that time, that it is possible to receive messages from the afterlife. She gives this to Elizabeth to pass onto the doctor in the event of her death.

On the Friday night in question, she sits in her room with the radio switched on and the will in her hand as she peruses its contents, having had fifty pounds in cash withdrawn from the bank for Elizabeth to supplement the amount contained in the document. She hears the noise of a step outside her room and staggers to her feet, dropping something from her fingers as the door swings open and she sees her dead husband’s be-whiskered figure stood before her. She collapses…

…and is found an hour later by Elizabeth. Two days later the maid passes the note to the doctor who puts it down to hallucinations. Charles agrees, not wanting to spoil things now that his plan appears to be reaching fruition. Having safely disconnected the wire from the radio set to his bedroom and burnt the false whiskers he wore on the night of his aunt’s death, he looks forward to the reading of the will and inheriting his aunt’s money, a sum desperately needed to stave off possible imprisonment as a result of his business misdeeds.

He receives a shock when his aunt’s lawyer calls and tells him that he posted the will onto the dead lady at her request. It can no longer be found among her papers and Charles realises that as he shocked her to death, the will she was holding in her fingers dropped into the fire. No other copy exists and therefore a former will becomes legal. This one left Mary Harter’s fortune to a niece and Charles’ cousin, Miriam, who proved unsatisfactory to her aunt and who entered into a marriage she didn’t approve of. He receives a second shock when the doctor telephones him to say that the results of the autopsy proves that his aunt’s heart was in a worse condition than he thought and there is no way she could have lived more than two months at the outside. Charles angrily realises he need never have set up his elaborate stunt.

The Witness for the Prosecution

A solicitor, Mr. Mayherne, interviews his latest client in his office: Leonard Vole is a young man who has been arrested on the capital charge of the murder of an old lady, Miss Emily French. Vole tells how he met Miss French when he helped her to pick up some parcels she dropped in Oxford Street and, by coincidence, he met her again that night at a party in Cricklewood. She asked him to call at her house and he was ribbed by his friends who joked that he had made a conquest of a rich, lonely old lady.

He did call and struck up a friendship with Miss French and started to see her on many other occasions at a time when he himself was in low water financially. Vole’s story is that Miss French asked him for financial advice despite the testimony of both her maid, Janet Mackenzie, and Miss French’s bankers that the old lady was astute enough herself on these matters. He protests that he never swindled her of a single penny and, if he had been, surely her death would have frustrated his plans? Vole is then staggered when Mayherne tells him that he is the principle beneficiary of Miss French’s will and that Janet Mackenzie swears that her mistress told her that Vole was informed of this change in his fortunes.

The facts of the murder are that Janet Mackenzie, on her night off, returned to Miss French’s house briefly at half-past-nine and heard voices in the sitting-room. One was Miss French and the other was a man’s. The next morning, the body of Miss French was found, killed by a crowbar with several items taken from the house. Burglary was at first suspected but Miss Mackenzie’s suspicions of Vole pointed the police in his direction and led eventually to his arrest. Vole though is delighted to hear of Miss Mackenzie’s testimony about the visitor at nine-thirty as he was with his wife, Romaine, at the time and she can provide him with an alibi.

Mayherne has already wired Mrs Vole to return from a trip to Scotland to see him and he goes to her house to interview her. He is surprised to find that she is foreign and he is staggered when she cries out her hatred of her Vole and that he is not her husband – she was an actress in Vienna and her real husband is still living there but in an asylum. She alleges that Vole returned from Miss French’s an hour later than he claims and, not being her lawful husband, she can testify against him in court.

Romaine Heilger does indeed appear as a witness for the prosecution at the committal hearing and Vole is sent for trial. In the intervening period, Mayherne tries to find evidence that will discredit Romaine but he is unsuccessful until he receives a scrawled and badly-spelt letter which directs him to call at an address in Stepney and ask for Miss Mogson if he wants evidence against the “painted foreign hussy”. He does so and in a reeking tenement slum meets a bent middle-aged crone of a woman with terrible scars on her face caused by the throwing of sulfuric acid. This attack was carried out by a man by the name of Max who Romaine Heilger is now having an affair with. Miss Mogson herself was involved with Max herself many years before but Romaine took him away from her. Meyherne is passed a series of letters written by Romaine to Max, all dated, which prove that Vole is innocent and that Romaine is lying to be rid of him. Mayherne pays the crone twenty pounds for the letters which are then read out at the trial. The case against Vole collapses and he is declared “Not Guilty”. Mayherne is delighted at his success but is suddenly stopped in his tracks when he remembers a curious habit of Romaine’s in the witness box when she clenched and unclenched her right hand – a habit shared by Miss Mogson in Stepney.

Some time later he confronts Romaine with the accusation that she, a former actress, was Miss Mogson and that the letters were fakes. Romaine confesses: she loves Vole passionately and knew that her evidence would not have been enough to save him – she had to provoke an emotional reaction in the court in favour of the accused man. Mayherne is unhappy, protesting that he could have succeeded in saving an innocent man by more conventional means but Romaine tells him she couldn’t have risked it – especially as she knew full well that Vole ”was” guilty all along of the murder!

The Mystery of the Blue Jar

Jack Hartington, a young man of twenty-four years of age, is something of a golf addict and consequently has taken a room at a hotel near to Stourton Heath links in order that he can practise for an hour each morning before having to take the train to his dull city job. One morning he is disturbed in mid-swing when he hears a female voice crying out “Murder! Help! Murder!”. Running in the direction of the cry he comes across a quaint cottage outside which is a young girl quietly gardening. When questioned, she denies hearing the call for help and seems surprised at Jack’s story, referring to him as “Monsieur”. Confused, he leaves her and hunts in the surrounding area for the source of the cry but in the end gives up. The evening, he looks through the papers to see if any crime has been reported and follows this action the next morning – a day of heavy rain which cancels his practise routine – but finds nothing.

The next day, the strange occurrence of two days earlier is repeated at the same spot and the exact time. Also, once more the girl outside the cottage denies hearing any such sound and sympathetically enquires if Jack has suffered from shellshock in the past.

The third day, he hears the cry again but this time doesn’t let on to the girl that this is the case when he passes the cottage and instead they discuss her gardening. Nevertheless he is intensely troubled by these occurrences and notices that at the hotel breakfast table he is being watched by a bearded man who he knows to be called Dr. Lavington. Concerned that his sanity is under attack, Jack invites Lavington to join him for a few holes the next morning and the doctor agrees. When the cry is repeated Lavington denies hearing anything. The doctor discusses Jack’s possible delusions and they talk of the possibility of some sort of psychic phenomena. He suggests that Jack go off to work as usual while he investigates the history of the cottage.

Back at the hotel that night, the doctor tells him what he has learnt: The present occupants, who have been ”in situ” for just ten days, are an elderly French professor with consumption and his daughter but a year ago and several tenants back were a strange couple called Turner who seemed to be afraid of something and who suddenly vacated the premises early one morning. Mr Turner has been seen since then but no one seems to have laid eyes on his wife and the doctor, although arguing against jumping to conclusions, theorises that Jack is receiving some sort of message from the woman.

A few days later, Jack receives a visit from the girl at the cottage who introduces herself as Felise Marchaud. She is in terror as, knowing of local gossip that the cottage is haunted, she has started to have a recurring dream of a distressed woman holding a blue jar. The last two night’s dreams ended with a voice crying out in the same way as Jack heard on the links. Jack brings Lavington into the discussion and Felise shows them both a rough watercolour she found in the house of a woman holding a blue jar as in her dream. Jack recognises it as similar to a Chinese one bought by his uncle two months ago which coincides with the date one of the previous tenants left the cottage. Lavington suggests bringing the jar to the cottage where the three of them will sit with it for the night and see what happens. As Jack’s uncle is away he is able to obtain the jar and bring it as requested and Felise recognises it as the one from the dream. Lavington switches off the lights in the sitting-room and the three of them sit in the darkness at a table on which the jar is placed. After a while of waiting, Jack suddenly starts to choke and falls unconscious.

He wakes up in a copse near the cottage in daylight to find out from his pocket watch that it is half-past-twelve in the afternoon. He gets no answer at the cottage and goes back to the hotel where he finds his uncle – newly arrived back from a continental trip. Jack tells him of the events prompting a cry of outrage from the old man: the blue Chinese jar was a priceless Ming piece and the only one of its kind in the world. Jack rushes to the hotel office and finds that Lavington has checked out but has left a mocking note for Jack from himself, Felise and her invalid father, saying that their twelve hours start ought to be ample.

The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael

Dr Edward Carstairs, a noted psychologist, is called in to investigate the case of Sir Arthur Carmichael, a young man of twenty-three who woke up the previous morning at his estate in Herefordshire with a totally changed personality. Carstairs travels down there with a colleague called Dr. Settle who tells him that he feels that the house could be haunted and this phenomenon has connections with the case. The household consists of Sir Arthur, his stepmother, Lady Carmichael, his half-brother of eight years of age and a Miss Phyllis Patterson who Arthur is engaged to be married to. As their horse carriage comes up the drive, they see Miss Patterson walking across the lawn and Carstairs remarks on the cat at her feet which provokes a startled reaction in Settle.

Going into the house they make the acquaintance of Lady Carmichael and Miss Patterson and again Carstairs causes a reaction when he mentions seeing the cat. They then see their patient and observe his strange behaviour – sat hunched without speaking, then stretching and yawning and drinking a cup of milk without using his hands.

After dinner that night, Carstairs hears a cat meowing and this sound is repeated during the night outside his bedroom door but he is unable to find the animal in the house. The next morning he does spy the cat from the bedroom window as it walks across the lawn and straight through a flock of birds who seem oblivious to its presence. He is further puzzled when Lady Carmichael insists that there is no cat in their home. Talking to a footman, Carstairs is informed that there used to be a cat but it was destroyed a week ago and buried in the grounds. There are further appearances of this apparition and they realise that it is targeting Lady Carmichael. Carstairs even dreams of the cat the following night when he follows it into the library and it shows him to a gap in the volumes on the bookshelf. The next morning, Carstairs and Settle find that there is a book missing from the very spot in the room and Carstairs glimpses the truth later on in the day when Sir Arthur jumps off his chair when he spots a mouse and crouches near the wainscoting, waiting for it to appear.

That night, Lady Carmichael is badly attacked in her bed by the ghostly creature and this prompts Carstairs to insist that the body of the dead cat is dug up. It is and he sees that it is the very creature that he has spotted several times and a smell shows that it was killed by prussic acid.

Several days pass as Lady Carmichael starts to recover until one day Sir Arthur falls into the water of the lake. Pulled out to the bank, it is first thought that he is dead but he comes round and he has also recovered his personality but he has no recollection of the intervening days. The sight of him gives Lady Carmichael such a shock that she dies on the spot and the missing book from the library is found – a volume on the subject of the transformation of people into animals. The inference is that lady Carmichael used the book to put Sir Arthur’s soul into the cat, then killed it to ensure her own son would inherit the title and estate.

The Call of Wings

The Last Seance

SOS

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Hound of Death, under the G. N. U. Free Documentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

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