It was the Day of the Deep One

Life is full of funny connections, coincidences you might say. As a practicing accountant and SCEPTICAL INQUIRER subscriber, I take a jaundiced view of what Jung calls synchronity or what surrealists prefer to think of as "objective chance", yet I am convinced that the laws of probability can produce highly unusual results more frequently than is commonly assumed. Take the matter of an unexpected legacy  - from, on the face of it, a most unlikely family source. It is no exaggeration to claim that I owe my present philosophical outlook to what amounts to an offhand gift of fate. 

 

My knowledge of the thing began in 1983 with the death of my granduncle, John C. Dunn, Chaplain emeritus at Mercy Hill Hospital, Brichester, Ohio. An ardent advocate of Irish independence in his youth, this relative, then a plumber by trade, was convicted of treason for refusing to register for the draft in World War I and served two years of a twenty-year sentence in Atlanta Federal Prison, so his passing at the age of ninety-four may be recalled by at most a few other ancient Fenian fanatics. In his dotage he was an unapologetic supporter of the I.R.A. and proudly displayed a "Brits Out of Eire" bumper sticker on his '67 Pontiac GTO.

I was by no means my grand-uncle's only heir, for his survivors included dozens of nephews and nieces, the late children of those of his late brothers and sisters who elected not to take holy orders, as well as hundreds of their offspring, who promise to keep the Dunn line increasing exponentially for at least another generation. In his last years, though. I was his closest kin, both geographically and emotionally. Soon after I entered college at nearby Oberlin, my mother urged me to call on "Uncle Johnnie", then the most venerable member of our Clan, at the home of retired priests where he had a room. I did so, via the intercity Brichester bus line, and was delighted to discover that we had shared a common interest - not in religion or politics, mind you, but in amateur journalism.

In his mid-twenties my grand-uncle had been active in the Patridgeville Amateur Press Club, whose ranks happened to include the future occult authors Halpin Chalmers and Fred Carstairs. Father Dunn (the name by which I addressed him) had no taste for genre fiction, though he was aware in his own way of the modern reputations of these two illustrious Patridgeville natives. Having devoured their works in my early teens, I was amazed at my good fortune to find a blood link to my literary heroes. At our first meeting I was able to coax my relative into telling me all he could remember of the pair - which admittedly wasn't a whole lot after more than six decades. Still, I gathered enough material to fill one issue of my fanzine, DROWING CORTEX, for the Order of the Secret Watcher, the a.p.a devoted to Halpin Chalmers and his circle.

Thereafter I visited Father Dunn on average once a semester, since without a car I had to rely on not-always-convenient public transportation while he avoided all highway driving.