Piecing Together A Legacy

Phone Calls: Business of the day.

2010-10-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

So, as mentioned, this morning I found the rolodex I remembered seeing from my dad's security boxes at the bank. He had a little less than a hundred contacts stored in there. I promised myself I would take it easy and relax, today, but I broke that promise and went through all of these numbers.

The vast majority of them were disconnected, and I only had a handful of calls that actually connected, and even fewer conversations. I've listed them below. I guess I've started getting very detail-oriented when describing my investigations to the internet; let me know if that's good or if I'm just complicating things?

Obviously it would be irresponsible to post the numbers themselves, or any real full names... so don't even try them.

Every conversation began with an awkward introduction which, by the end of all this, was pretty practiced. "Hello, my name is _____, I'm calling because my father was recently declared dead and I found your number in with his things. There's a memorial service tomorrow, if you knew him." Then I...

---Spoke to a woman named Mary, which was a name he'd mentioned in the journal from the year he disappeared. She said she hadn't heard from my father since college, where they'd been friends. She also knew my mother and asked me how she was holding up. She said she might come to the memorial but had to check her schedule. If she does, I could press her for details about what my dad was like in college, but I could already have gone to my mother for that.

---Spoke to Jonathan, apparently a former employer and friend of my dad's from the years he lived in North Hampton. He said he owned a construction firm and that my dad was briefly one of his carpenters. He was reluctant to talk about my dad's work habits, probably because he didn't want to offend me right before my father's memorial service, but he did chance to say that dad had a problem with work attendance but was otherwise a cool guy, and that he used to spend time with him at a local pool hall. He said he'd swing by the memorial service.

---Spoke to what turned out to be a second cousin of mine and cousin of my father's who lived in CA and hadn't heard about the memorial yet. She explained that she was pretty distant from the rest of the family but had always liked my father. She said she maintained a pen-pal kind of relationship with him that tapered off years ago. I asked her if it wasn't too personal whether she could send me copies of the letters she got from him, and pressed her memory as to when she stopped getting his mail. She hadn't heard that he'd dropped off the face of the Earth, somehow. She was really upset to hear it and said she'd drop everything and fly out here if she could manage. Very sweet lady.

---Was told I had the wrong number or that they didn't know who I was talking 15 times. Three of these were now businesses (a pizza place and two laundromats). One of the Laundromats was called Greener Cleaners, and was listed in the rolodex under Lucy Green, but the receptionist said she had no idea who that was. I was particularly insistent, though, so she advised me to call back during the week when the owner would be there.

---Left 32 Messages (Included among these were two Peters, either of which might possibly have been the Peter from his journal).

---43 were just disconnected numbers, redirecting me to an error message. This included a third Pete labeled as "Petey."

So I just spent hours on the phone for four (shaky) possible leads. I'm really hoping some of those folks return my messages.

Brainstorming: I need to have questions prepared for anyone who shows up at the memorial, because it might be my only chance to talk to some of them. Suggestions?

In Summary

2010-10-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

A quick recap, as promised last night. I'll try not to be too verbose in the interest of getting to the point. Brevity is whit, after all, but it's hard, because there are a lot of details and I can never be sure which of them are important.

Growing up, my parents were divorced. My mother was an ex-Catholic-turned-atheist and my father was... eccentric. My mother had primary custody of me, but I saw my dad for a weekend every few weeks. When I was fourteen, he disappeared off of the face of the Earth, leaving behind a lot of unanswered questions.

My dad had a very diverse set of spiritual beliefs, and I've never been able to classify them. I initially went to the message board /X/ to share some of his more peculiar beliefs (and stories about and experiences with him) from when I was little, in the hopes that they could help shed some light on where his ideas came from.

The best descriptions that they came up with were that he is "eclectic," a "general occultist," and that he drew his ideas on spirituality from many sources, and didn't follow a specific path or religion. However, some people later pointed out trends implicating him with Thelema, a kind of occult practice founded by Aleister Crowley. (Much debate ensued as to what degree of involvement he held, and several practitioners of Thelema graced us with their insight.)

Included among the many things he left behind is a strangely expansive list of properties around New England and even as far West as Nebraska. Many of these properties were abandoned before he even disappeared, and my mother and I knew nothing of them. His own finances were also something of a mystery. The lawyer I've been talking to about his accounts tells me that his funds primarily came through a suspicious landscaping company and from World War II bonds bought in his name long before he was born.

I also have a number of his old possessions on hand, including books, journals, and knick-knacks, with more in a security box at the local bank. The journals are not particularly lucid or helpful, but have given some clues as to what was going through his head before he went missing. There are a number of references to "C" which I'm still not sold on any one explanation of, but the prevalent theories seemed to be that it stood for either Corona or Choronzon. Also unaccounted for are an "A" and a "B".

For more details, see the first post on this blog, which contains the original thread and discussion.

Now, for things I have to do in the near future, and commitments I've made towards working this out:

--I've promised to make scans of the pages of his diaries. I've reiterated that they are largely mundane, uninteresting, and incomprehensible, so I will try only to scan the pages I think actually contain content of interest.

--On Sunday there is going to be a memorial service. I'll get a chance to talk to some of my dad's relatives, from whom I have been estranged. Furthermore, some of his old friends might show up... some of whom were almost certainly involved in his spiritual beliefs and activities.

--Later this week I will be press-ganging a friend or some friends into accompanying me on a road trip out to some of my dad's properties, in the hopes of discovering further hints as to why he owned them and what happened to him.

I think that that is a pretty accurate summary of everything so far. It is not a very detailed account, but again, there's more information available via the first post.

As for my part in all of this, mostly I am just looking for some closure. While this is certainly a pretty strange story, it is easy to jump in and see conspiracies and lurking danger and glamorous secrets behind every corner. And while I am sort of hoping that that's what I find, I have a realistic sense of what to expect.

Events So Far!

2010-10-23T00:05:00.000-07:00

Alright. So, if you're new to my situation, a good place to go to start is the 4Chan thread that spawned this blog, on the /x/ messageboard, "For the discussion of paranormal images."

4Chan threads are notoriously short lived, and the events I've committed to covering will probably cover several weeks worth of investigation, if not months. I've preserved an imageless version of the . I'll edit this post with a link if the thread makes it into 4Chan's archives, as it'll be complete up to the thread's death, whereas this is not quite up-to-date at the time of writing.

A copy of the thread.

It's a long story, but I really encourage you to read it if you're new, because I'm not going to be doing much in the way of recaps, with one or two exceptions, possibly tomorrow to kick things off... if I have time.

EDIT: /Sanctuary/ has also been kind enough to provide a second archive, which I *believe* is mostly up to date and has the original images. They're not terribly important to comprehension, just eye candy while dealing with all of the text. Except in certain places where people were throwing runic arrangements around. That version is here. Thanks, anon.