It was the fall of 1914 when a heady rumor began to circulate amongst the Allied troops of World War I. In August of the same year, the British Expeditionary Force made its first incursion into German-occupied Belgium, only to find itself greatly outnumbered at the city of Mons. St. George and an armed brigade of angels, the story went as it passed from man to man, had appeared on the frontline and repelled — or, in some tellings, smited — the enemy horde, allowing the English to mount a safe retreat. 
After the truth behind the erstwhile urban legend came to light, Machen’s early novels and stories — which had fallen out of favor around the turn of the century — enjoyed a brief renaissance. Initially an author of gruesome and wanton horror stories, the Welsh novelist’s critics had labeled him as an apologist of black magic — the supreme irony being that, in fact, he was. Fifteen years before his the story of the “The Bowmen” was disseminated in churches across England, he had been a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn — an occult secret society that also counted William Butler Yeats and Aleister Crowley as members. 
On December 1, 1887 the first story about the fictional but historically famous British sleuth Sherlock Holmes was published. The story was “A Study in Scarlet” and first appeared in “Beeton’s Christmas Annual” capturing front page space. The work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is well known in popular fiction, television and cinema. But the man behind the man is a little less familiar.
Born May 22, 1859, Doyle was still in his 20s when he created the character of Sherlock Holmes. It wasn’t an easy upbringing for Doyle and his family and his experience colored the man he was to be. Born into a Scottish family to a story telling mother and alcoholic father, Doyle was sent to England for his schooling. Being Scottish, he was teased by his English classmates and had a hard time adjusting. He did discover however that he had inherited his mother talents for story telling and writing.
Doyle left school at 17 bolstered rather than beaten down by his upbringing and circumstances. Despite coming from a family of well known artists, Doyle chose medicine as his career path. Perhaps this is where the character of Dr. Watson came into being. Doyle chose to be the foil to his own imagination rather than the central character of his books.
The character of Holmes actually came from a college professor Doyle met during his schooling. A master of logical deduction and puzzle solving, the professor inspired Doyle and influenced his writing.
As a medical student, Doyle was offered a position as a ship’s doctor and had the opportunity to travel to the Arctic. Throughout his travels and during his studies, Doyle was publishing short stories to make a little extra money. Although he did work as a doctor both off and on board ship, Doyle encountered many circumstances that left him poor and dissatisfied.
Eventually, Doyle set up his own practice in Plymouth, England and worked hard as a doctor during the day and as an author at night. He spent a year perfecting and drafting “A Study in Scarlet”. Despite trying out other characters and story lines after this, it was the Sherlock Holmes mysteries that changed Doyle’s life and catapulted him toward literary fame.
Doyle wrote, married, had children, traveled and wrote some more. He was a dedicated and passionate author. In 1893, Doyle killed off the Holmes character disappointing thousands of fans but Doyle had other things on his mind. His father died, his wife became fatally ill and he sank into depression. Doyle’s later life was filled with paranormal investigation, trips to America, service in Africa during the Boer war, a new marriage, more children and of course, writing stories, plays and poetry to solidify his place as one of Britain’s most celebrated Victorian writers. He passed away in 1930.
Many writers yearn for the talent and luck of a man like Arthur Conan Doyle. Few are aware of the colorful and sometimes dark life he had to lead in order to color his pen just so. Still, because of him we have Holmes and Watson and remain historically grateful.
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Born in Albany in 1874, Charles Fort, the so-called “father of modern phenomenalism, ” was something of a factotum in his early years. After a formative trek from England to the south of Africa, Fort spent the next decade of life working odd jobs, while attempting to gain a foothold as a newsman and science fiction novelist. During this time, Fort produced ten books — only one of which ever saw publication.
Fort’s interest in seeking out anomalous phenomena seems be an outgrowth of an inborn anti-authoritarian streak. Never in his work does he to claim to know the cause of these freak occurrences outright; rather, he merely points to the inability of then-modern day science to account for events that shouldn’t be possible, yet were witnessed by dozens – and sometimes hundreds – of bystanders. 
Such theories, however, may have been yet another mode for Fort to thumb his at the powers-that-be. He labeled himself an intellectual agnostic and wrote in the very first chapter of Lo! that “I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written.” After his death in 1932, Fort’s many followers carried on his curiosity driven crusade, eventually resulting in the founding of The Fortean Society the very same year and The International Fortean Organization in 1965.
There are many characters in our society we are familiar with whether from books and comic books or television and movies. One of the characters we know from a variety of media is Conan the Barbarian but little is known about how he came into being. Conan is a character from the sword and sorcery genre created by a writer from Texas named Robert E. Howard in 1932. Howard’s Conan stories began as a series of articles submitted to the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. Howard’s influences ranged from the Greek writer Plutarch to the mythology works of Thomas Bulfinch. Howard wrote many more Conan stories over the next 4 year completing 21 stories. 
Conan books have been written and published by various different authors over the last 50 years, many of them trying to imitate the style of Robert E. Howard. The original Conan stories written by Howard were allowed to go out of print and were unavailable in their original form. In 2003 the original Howard stories were collected and printed by British Publisher Wandering Star and were republished in the U.S. by Ballantine. These volumes included Howard’s original stories but expanded on them by offering his notes and letters on the setting and for the world of Conan which provided a more complete look at the history of Howard’s ideas and the genesis of the character. Regardless of the history of the character the books, comic books, and the movies of the 80s have kept the Conan character alive and well in the imagination of society since he was first put into print in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard. 
We’ve all heard the longstanding tales of alligators running rampant in the sewers of New York City. The logic goes that baby gators were purchased as pets, either in local pet stores or by tourists vacationing in Florida. After quickly outgrowing the confines of their owners’ apartments, they were flushed down toilets and into the sewer system, where they soon bred and infested the labyrinthine network of pipes tunnels beneath Manhattan.
The sewer component first entered into the myth three years later, after a gang of teenage boys spotted a moving shape beneath them as they shoveled snow into an open manhole cover near the Harlem River. Using a makeshift lasso, they were able to snag the animal’s neck and haul it to surface – where they quickly realized they caught a live alligator. The gator lunged and, in response, the boys beat it to death with their shovels. After dragging the carcass to nearby garage, it was determined that the beast weighed 125 pounds and measured some seven-and-a-half feet in length.
When no gators turned up, May decided to take a look for himself. Upon visiting an undisclosed location somewhere in the five boroughs, he stumbled upon a so-called “colony” of the creatures – which measured roughly two feet apiece — living in the sewers’ shallow waters. Highly distressed by his discovery, May claimed that he had all of the animals exterminated, though no corroborating account as ever emerged to verify his story.
