The Titanic Tragedy Foretold: A Mini-Essay

     On a bitter April night, an eight-hundred-foot ship collided with an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic. Equipped with only twenty-four lifeboats, the massive vessel quickly foundered and took with her all but thirteen of the 3,000 souls aboard. Named Titan and touted as the largest and safest craft afloat, the ship’s sinking mortified the world. The tale, related in Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella Futility, was published fourteen years before the Titanic tragedy and, with its striking similarities to the historic event, is regarded as one of the foremost examples of psychic premonitions surrounding Titanic’s sinking. It is not, though, the only case. From Celia Thaxter’s poem “A Tryst” (1872) and William T. Stead’s novel From the Old World to the New (1886) to Herman Melville's poem “The Berg” (1888) and Mayn Clew Garnett’s short story “The White Ghost of Disaster” (1912), several works of literature have presented stories of pernicious iceberg collisions. In all of the aforementioned texts, the fated encounter involves a massive ship (often the largest, safest, and most luxurious), human vanity which propels the vessel forward at break-neck speed through a dangerous ice field, a limited number of lifeboats (this scarcity is either present at the start of the voyage or caused after the collision damages most of the crafts), and a severe loss of life. 
     For some, such as Rustie Brown, these parallels to the Titanic disaster extend beyond mere coincidence and reinforce notions that her doomed maiden voyage was preordained, with each fictional tale a forewarning of potential tragedy which went unheard. For others, such as George Behe and Martin Gardner, the stories are not psychic predictions, but the authors’ keen understanding of the technological complacency which had consumed the era. After Germany entered the transatlantic race following the Naval Review at the Spithead roadstead in August of 1889, the competition reached a fevered pitch as shipping lines viciously fought to produce the largest and fastest ships. Regulators, particularly the British Board of Trade, were incapable of keeping pace and, out of frustration, fashioned generic standards (the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, for instance, set lifeboat minimums to sixteen crafts for vessels over 10,000 tons). Bedazzled by progress, much of the world fed into the notion that these transatlantic behemoths were indestructible pinnacles of industrial might. For a small majority, the luster gave way to concern and the realization that inadequate safety regulations and a blind confidence in technology made perfect ingredients for disaster (in 1911, for example, Shipbuilder magazine commented “it makes one wonder if these new super liners might be too big to navigate properly”). Hence, according to Behe and Gardner, authors such as Robertson and Stead were not divinely inspired to warn of Titanic’s sinking, but simply tapping into a growing concern at the time. Brown and her peers contend that it’s a sound argument; however, they raise an intriguing rebuke: if these authors were using fictitious sea disasters to explore the dangers of outdated policies (especially the Merchant Shipping Act), why would each one select an iceberg collision? 

Works Referenced

Behe, George. Titanic: Psychic Forewarnings of a Tragedy. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press, 1988. 

Brown, Rustie. The Titanic, the Psychic, and the Sea. Lomita, CA: Blue Harbor Press, 1982. 

Gardner, Martin. The Wreck of the Titanic Foretold? Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998.

Haunted Farm Sign

$15 - $20 (based on 2016 prices)

Makes one sign

For this project, I employed the years of experience my brother and I gained crafting tombstones out of insulation foam and created a wooden sign to greet visitors and set the haunt's tone. In fact, it’s the first time in Haunted Hill’s history that I incorporated a sign into the display which both catered to the theme and incorporated the company’s name: Haunted Pumpkin Hill Farm. It’s a concept I would like to continue each Halloween.

• One 2’ x 2’ board of foam insulation
• One 8 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying latex paint in flat yellow*
• One 8 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying latex paint in flat orange*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in forest green*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in cherry cobbler*
• One bag of plastic cockroaches (roughly two dozen bugs per bag)
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*

1. Draw the outline of your sign onto the insulation board. If you feel comfortable free-handing the design, use a pencil or pen to lightly sketch the form. If not, create a pattern with paper and trace it onto the foam.

2. With the rounded end of a pen, gently press into the foam and fashion planks, knots, and wood grains. Try not to make these indentations too pronounced. You want them deep enough to remain present after several coats of paint, but not so deep that they appear fake and unnatural.

3. Trim the boarder of your sign with a sharp knife. If your design has intricate patterns, I recommend using an electric hot knife. For something simple, a standard steak knife works well.

4. On a newspaper-lined surface in a well-ventilated area, give both sides of the sign two even coats of paint. Although you can apply more than this, keep in mind that multiple coats will fill the wood designs you created and make them invisible.

5. Once the paint has dried, you can begin sketching your lettering onto the sign. As before, you can free-hand your design or create a pattern using paper. Since I wanted to experiment with the text’s layout, I created a pattern that allowed me to do this and transferred it onto the sign.

6. With a fine-tipped brush, paint over your markings. If you want the sign to have a clean appearance, stop at this point. If you want to give your sign a grimy appearance, water down brown acrylic paint and brush it across the surface, ensuring the liquid settles in all of the cracks and fissures (you can also use a spray bottle for the application). Allow the mixture to sit for a few minutes and then wipe it clean. You may want to experiment with the consistency prior to doing this: the more water you add, the fainter/lighter the wash; the less water you add, the deeper/darker the wash.

7. Since I wanted a bloodier appearance, I skipped the brown wash and used scissors to make deep scratches in the foam. Following this, I filled the markings with cherry cobbler paint.

8. Splatter the sign with cherry cobbler paint to create blood smatters and glue cockroaches to the surface. Try not to over think your application of both (a random pattern produces the best results). NOTE: The particular cockroaches I used were made with a slick plastic which did not adhere with standard glue. As a result, I used superglue to affix them to the prop.

9. With scissors, carve “haunted” above the lettering of the sign and fill the markings with black paint. To make this appear burned into the wood, smudge the edges.

10. Create more blood splatters with cherry cobbler paint. Again, try not to over think your application (a random pattern produces the best results).

 

*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.

“The Wreck of the Hesperus” (A Poem)

I was first introduced to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow through “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Since then, both poet and poem have remained among my favorites (read his poem "The Skeleton in Armor" here). According to Eric Haralson, the tale pits human pride (embodied in Hesperus’ captain) against nature and, as is often the case, nature wins. Interestingly, the poem was inspired by a violent storm which hit the Massachusetts coast on the night of December 15, 1839. As Robert Gale highlights, one of the many ships wrecked that night was the schooner Favorite, whose passengers and crew were found lifeless along the shore of Gloucester the following morning. Among the bodies was Mrs. Sally Hilton, who had been tied to a windlass bitt by those aboard in an effort to save her life.

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed in the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That open in the month of May.

The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.

Then up and spake an old Sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.

"Last night the moon had a golden ring,
But to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.

Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the North-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.

Down came the storm, and smote amain,
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.

"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale,
That ever wind did blow."

He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.

"O father! I hear the church-bell ring,
O say, what may it be?"
" 'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!" -
And he steered for the open sea.

"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that connot live
In such an angry sea!"

"O father! I see a gleaming light,
O say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.

Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.

Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ who stilled the waves,
On the Lake of Galilee.

And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Toward the reef of Norman's Woe.

And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf,
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.

The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.

She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.

Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!

At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast,

The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this
On the reef of Norman's Woe!

Works Referenced

Gale, Robert. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.

Haralson, Eric, ed. Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century. Chicago, IL: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Ed. Louis Untermeyer. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1980.

Bloody Milk Bottle

$3 - $5 (based on 2016 prices)

Makes one bottle

This project was a quick artistic break from the drudgery of producing dozens of pumpkins and cornstalks for 2016’s theme. Using an old olive oil bottle and some spare paint, I crafted this prop in a little over a day. In hindsight, I wish I had made more to scatter throughout the haunt and place in a vintage milk jug carrier by the front door.

• One 12 oz. glass bottle
• One 8 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying latex paint in flat white*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*
• One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in cherry cobbler*

1. On a newspaper-lined surface in a well-ventilated area, give the bottle three even coats of white paint. You want the coverage to be solid enough to adequately cover the glass without becoming too thick and cakey. To achieve this, apply each coat individually and allow it to fully dry before the next application.

2. After the paint dries, sketch your label on the side of the bottle in pencil. You can create your own design or copy one from a vintage milk bottle. If you plan to make multiple versions of this prop, it might prove useful to fashion a stencil out of cardboard or cardstock.

3. Once your design is ready, use a fine-tipped brush to trace over the pattern with black paint. If you accidentally smudge the paint, you can always touch up the bottle with a dab of white paint on a toothpick.

4. Starting from the top of the bottle, allow globs of the cherry cobbler paint to pour down the sides. To control the flow and direction of the streaks, rotate the bottle as the paint drips downward.

5. If you want additional gore, use a brush with splayed bristles to create smears along the base or cover your fingers with paint and add bloody fingerprints to the bottle.

*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.