H.P. Lovecraft 5: Kingsport Traditional Geocache
H.P. Lovecraft 5: Kingsport
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Related Web Page
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Best access to this cache is via Waterside Cemetery (since 1859), open until dusk. You can turn in off of West Shore Drive and park at the Main Office, or you may drive (or walk) around and explore this wonderfully large, labyrinthine cemetery. No rollerblading or skateboarding, one would hope that would apply to most (if not all) cemeteries. Please always be respectful of the grave sites as well as those visiting the grave sites.
This cache is part of a series devoted to honoring the “actual” geographic locations of celebrated horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional towns, and the real towns he refers to in Massachusetts (most of which are in Essex County). There are plenty of H.P. Lovecraft-influenced caches (try searching by keywords Cthulhu, Lovecraft, Innsmouth or Arkham), however our caches are positioned for “historic authenticity” as best we could manage. Where is the first cache in this series? It is not ours, nor is it nearby, however we defer to GC9497 in Providence, Rhode Island. The Related Web Page above links to Lovecraft’s Wikipedia page.
Some of the stories that feature Kingsport that we felt the need to highlight, there’s also these (visit link)
“The Terrible Old Man” (1920): He first used a New England setting for this. This is the story that first mentions both Arkham and the Miskatonic (river) Valley.
“The Festival” (1923): The unnamed narrator is summoned to Kingsport to participate in a strange ceremony held by his distant relatives.
“The Strange High House in the Mist” (1926): Professor Thomas Olney meets the lone occupant of the eponymous dwelling, which lies atop a high cliff on Kingsport's coast. Weird as it may sound, I think the Hardy Boys’ adventure “The House on the Cliff” predisposed me to enjoying Lovecraft’s short story (see gallery).
“The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” (1927): John Merritt mentions Kingsport and the strange rites he had heard were performed there.
And since we’re in a cemetery, we also recommend “The Hound” (1924) which contains the first mention of the occult text The Necronomicon (visit link) .
We’d like to credit much of our research for these tribute caches to this Wikipedia link “Lovecraft Country”: (visit link) . We revisited some of Lovecraft’s short stories to fine-tune these locations (understandably the map locations for his fictional towns are less than stellar), plus these caches also had to be good hides, so we made some informed assumptions to do so. Enjoy!
To complete the creepy feeling, there’s nothing like Lovecraft-inspired artwork, so I added an exacting illustration of “The Strange High House in the Mist.” Where could this be in Marblehead?
The cache here is a 5”x5”x2” Lock ‘n’ Lock, and is our first Marblehead cache. The cache is positioned just off of the cemetery grounds and just off of the beach below. If you should find a travel bug in this cache or any other cache, please be sure to log it electronically twice, once when you grab it and again when you put it in another cache. This must be done so that its travels can be tracked. You must be a signed on member to do this. If you are not a signed on member of geocaching.com and do not intend to become a member, please do not take the travel bug. Membership is free. Join up and get in on the fun. Please use caution when hunting and replacing a cache. A muggled cache could lead to the loss of Travel Bugs or Geocoins.
First-To-Find prize is an American coin rarer than our usual leave, a Liberty Dime from 1907 Denver that is .900 silver. The designer of the coin, Charles Barber, was Chief Engraver of the mint and because of his position, a default “winner” of his submission of his own design. This coin is old enough for Lovecraft himself to have spent it, perhaps buying himself some Edgar Allan Poe to read…? Co-First To Find goes to Froedo Bagginz & HostaHead (LasaCana). What is that they say about the perfect warrior not needing sleep? FB&HH should keep mum from the military their geocaching-induced insomnia…!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onfr bs gerr, qba’g trg zhttyrq ol frn!