Lovecraftian Followers - Picnic at Hanging Rock

[T. Kelly Lee]

One of my favorite "Lovecraftian" myths is that surrounding the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.  The great thing about this story is that since it's publication and the movie made about it, people think it's real.  It has become a part of popular local Australian history that some take very seriously.  

Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_(novel)

The skeptical educator Brian Dunning has dedicated the latest episode of his podcast to the story and it's great: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4308

The novel itself is very Lovecraftian (though likely not influenced by HPL) - but the fact it has become mistaken for reality is what makes it so damn great!!!

Edited to fix link -- GU

[Bob Lovecraft]

I have never heard of this novel, but I may try to find a used copy of it soon.

Bob

[T. Kelly Lee]

I have never heard of this novel, but I may try to find a used copy of it soon.

Bob

I dig it.  Haven't seen the movie in years, but it impressed me as being suitable strange when I was a kid. 

[Genus Unknown]

I had the movie recommended to me years ago by a film buff friend who knew my taste for the mysterious and supernatural, but I admit I've never followed up on it.

[Inner Prop]

Hey I just listened to that.  I follow Brian regularly and listen every Tuesday morning.

Did you hear the one about the Hell Sounds last week?  It seems thouroughly debunked, but the image it evokes is tremendous!

[T. Kelly Lee]

Hey I just listened to that.  I follow Brian regularly and listen every Tuesday morning.

Did you hear the one about the Hell Sounds last week?  It seems thouroughly debunked, but the image it evokes is tremendous!

Absolutely.  I remember the hell sounds story when it first got round and it seemed to good to be true at the time.  The more recent craze has been the "gabriel's trumpet" video that was filmed in Russia.  It has now been debunked as well, but also quite creepy. 

Algernon Blackwood did a gothy story called The Damned about a group of people who keep hearing the sound of the gates of hell rushing closed.  It just gives you a bit of the creeps. 

[DustyTome]

Hey I just listened to that.  I follow Brian regularly and listen every Tuesday morning.

Did you hear the one about the Hell Sounds last week?  It seems thouroughly debunked, but the image it evokes is tremendous!

Absolutely.  I remember the hell sounds story when it first got round and it seemed to good to be true at the time.  The more recent craze has been the "gabriel's trumpet" video that was filmed in Russia.  It has now been debunked as well, but also quite creepy.  

Algernon Blackwood did a gothy story called The Damned about a group of people who keep hearing the sound of the gates of hell rushing closed.  It just gives you a bit of the creeps.  

Ah, three more Skeptoid fans! It occured to me that The Gates of Hell would be a good Lovecraftian story. Perhaps with someone finding the expedition diary of the group that discovered the sounds.

P.S. I just found out that Blackwood's The Damned is available for free as a Kindle ebook. There are a bunch of other horror/suspense titles as well. http://tinyurl.com/6w9eclo

[Deadhand]

One of my favorite "Lovecraftian" myths is that surrounding the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock.  The great thing about this story is that since it's publication and the movie made about it, people think it's real.  It has become a part of popular local Australian history that some take very seriously.  

Wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_(novel)

The skeptical educator Brian Dunning has dedicated the latest episode of his podcast to the story and it's great: http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4308

The novel itself is very Lovecraftian (though likely not influenced by HPL) - but the fact it has become mistaken for reality is what makes it so damn great!!!

Edited to fix link -- GU

I saw the movie version on TCM perhaps a year ago, and loved it.  However, it does require patience, as the mystery develops very slowly, almost abstractly, and there's no "ah ha!" moment.  I would put the movie version of Rock in the same category as La Moustache and Cache, also of the "something's not quite right here" genre.  

[old book]

"The Gates of Hell" isn't totally apocryphal, despite debuting on the Art Bell radio show. Likewise, the strange sky noises aren't confined to Russia and most of them aren't all that trumpet-like. The one recorded in southern Alberta was more celestian-pan-pipes-like. Picnic at Hanging Rock was one of the stupidest films I've ever seen, so absurd it should have caused laughter, but gave way to yawns and the desire to flee at any cost instead. Nonetheless I sat through it. It is truly bad, in a way Liquid Sky attempted but was unable to achieve. I'm glad to hear at this late date that it was NOT based on a true story.

[T. Kelly Lee]

"The Gates of Hell" isn't totally apocryphal, despite debuting on the Art Bell radio show. Likewise, the strange sky noises aren't confined to Russia and most of them aren't all that trumpet-like. The one recorded in southern Alberta was more celestian-pan-pipes-like. Picnic at Hanging Rock was one of the stupidest films I've ever seen, so absurd it should have caused laughter, but gave way to yawns and the desire to flee at any cost instead. Nonetheless I sat through it. It is truly bad, in a way Liquid Sky attempted but was unable to achieve. I'm glad to hear at this late date that it was NOT based on a true story.

But both the gates of hell and the trumpets have been pretty soundly debunked.  Bryan Dunning takes on the gates of hell in his Skeptoid episode and skeptic called VoodooSiXX takes on the trumpets on his Youtube channel.  He shows that virtually all of them have the same audio signature - and he's even able to trace where the parent audio came from.  I like a good hoax, me - in fact I like to hoax Bigfoot footprints, myself.  But these audio hoaxes are just no fun. 

[old book]

Yeah, true enough, most of the youtube posts were actually the same soundtrack laid over different video. And a lot of the hetergenous remaining were train sounds. Still, there's that "Blue Book" percentage of unexplained. I enjoy a good debunking as much as the next fellow, but I don't always subscribe fully, depending on the circumstances, arguments, phenomena, etc. I'm perfectly willing to believe the TWO count 'em TWO holes of hell stories from the former Soviet Union were pure hype, but I also know there is an oil-well hole that's been burning for decades over Siberia way, and the Art Bell "soundtrack" wasn't totally inconsistent with the strange noises that could emanate from such a fire. Although I tried, I couldn't hear the Devil when he played that soundtrack, only "the screams of the damned" a little bit, but I had to visualize it strongly before I could make it sound like that in my head.

As far as Hanging Rock the film goes, I probably had an allergic reaction and nothing more. It's supposed to be some sort of a cinema classic. I found it just awful.

[Eric Lofgren]

To be honest, I never heard of Picnic at Hanging Rock until this thread. I started watching it just after that and was unable to finish it. Not because I didn't like it, but for other reasons. I'll finish watching it at some point. But I did find it and the story interesting. I actually think there's some sort of unique endemic zeitgeist in Australia when it comes to cinema. They have tended towards some pretty outrageous stuff at times, in the past. If you include this one and add some others I've seen like The Third Wave and This Quiet Earth. Very trippy stuff and somewhat ahead of it's time perhaps.   

[old book]

I think The Quiet Earth is actually from New Zealand, but it is a great and strange film.

[HeirophantX]

Yet another Skeptoid fan here.

I think we should start a threat about hoaxes we would like to perpetrate ourselves

[T. Kelly Lee]

Yet another Skeptoid fan here.

I think we should start a threat about hoaxes we would like to perpetrate ourselves

Oh, man, this is really almost a kind of obsession with me.  I have a background in forensic anthropology (my undergraduate work) and spent a lot of time making a pair of perfect bigfoot feet.  It didn't cost a lot, either.  I started with a set of size 18 Nikes that I bought at Ross for $25.00.  I cut the bottoms off and I use MOST of my own size 13 foot for the foot - so it preserves the dermal ridges and all that stuff.  And then I just used a little latex and wood to fill in the rest of the foot - also cast with my own foot.  Because the footprint is made by me and my own working toes, etc it leaves the kind of imprint a real giant foot would leave - the only part that's fake is the heel area - and that's the lest flexible part of the foot anyway.  The best part is, I can walk around in them and they just look like me wearing big basketball shoes.  In the winter, with jeans and coat on, you don't even notice them.  

So far, no one has yet picked up on them.  I want someone to find them, then send a cast to Jeff Meldrum, have him confirm them as "real," and then out the footprints in an article for a skeptical publication.  I've never made any secret of the fact I hoax bigfoot footprints.  When people ask me what I'm doing - I confess right away and explain the project.  I even had a game warden ask me why I was out in the woods in deep snow.  I explained and he just said, "um, ok - go ahead."