Prof. Julian Ashcombe
Professor of Folklore, Miskatonic University
- Age
- 52
- From
- New England
- Lives
- Faculty Row — Halsey's Office
- Now
- In Arkham
Before Arkham's business
Author of 'Customs of the Miskatonic Valley' (1914), which sold ninety copies. Corner office on Faculty Row since 1911. Unmarried, clubbable, lonely.
Enthusiastic, discursive, charming, absent-minded. Cannot resist a digression or a locked door.
Afraid of
Irrelevance · Heights
Believes
Folk belief is memory wearing a mask.
From the journal
I will speak to Bell tomorrow.
The county histories yielded nothing. I am looking in the wrong drawer, or the wrong century. Turned the lamp down twice, but the figure at Arkham Historical Society keeps the room too bright for sleep. It isn't finished.
I must set this down while the shape of it is still in my hands (they are shaking — I shall blame the port). A step, stone, worn — and then only weeds when I knelt. No conclusion.
An unsigned letter today. It wants me to think again about what happened at Arkham Historical Society. I find I want to know the answer too. I own myself afraid.
Christ Church, at 8.00 p.m. Here is the treasure — Eight Names: The Christ Church memorial to the lost of the Great Fog has eight lines. Seven bear names. The eighth is blank, and has been re-cut twice. (I must cross-reference this with Mather, and with the 1847 pamphlets.)
At 9.00 p.m. we reached Arkham Historical Society—a place of few windows and entirely too much history. Folk-memory, dressed up. A town telling itself old stories in new clothes. I will admit — here, where nobody reads — that I was frightened.