The Black Bag Archive

The Black Bag Archive. Number Five: The Horror.

< last week inscriptions, corrections, revisions

This picture was used as the cover illustration for a record album recorded by a garage band who called themselves "Dragonfly". I used to have a copy of this record way back when.

As I’ve mentioned before, the various “archives” of pictures and notes are the boxes, and bags of work that we took from Pete’s apartment and storage space. Some of these are collections that Pete assembled himself and packed away for storage. Other boxes are what we assembled from piles, and pieces of work that we found as we cleaned. The fifth archive is such a collection: several folders and envelopes gathered in a plastic trash bag. Of special interest was the Horror Stories envelope.

I want to start out this week by reminding my few readers that the stuff I’m writing about right now happened over fifty years ago. Of course, being engaged in this project, I have spent no small amount of time reading Pete’s notes, and most recently, seeing pictures that I haven’t seen since I was a kid.  I’m waking up stories that have slept for decades. I’m giving you my recollections as they arise. 

 But these accounts are just that: my sometimes patchy recollections from a very long time ago. They are only as accurate as memory.

 I met Pete in August of 1963. My family was visiting our friends, the Meade family, in California. The Meades had been our neighbors in Michigan. They moved to La Habra some time in ’61 or ’62.

As I mentioned, Pete lived a couple houses up from the Meades, and they used to let Pete pass through their yard to get up to the Heights. I remember thinking he was nice, for a big kid, and he could do frog sounds. 

 My brothers and I didn’t realize that our summer visit was actually a scouting expedition. We moved to La Habra in December of ’63. I was 11 years old, and in the 6^th grade.  Pete and I became friends during that year.

Pete was an odd sort of friend. The difference in our ages didn’t matter to him, but still, I was a kid, and he was an adult. As I mentioned last week, you didn’t invite Pete to go ride skateboards with your pals. But almost every time we visited the Meades, I’d head up to his house, and spend some time. One of the very cool things about visiting Pete were his scary stories.

 We’ve seen The Cone, and other monsters in “The Deep Dark Hole”.  Now we’ll get to visit The Terrible Thing, The Midnight Terror, and You Made Marks in My Driveway. Oh. and Mold To You! We’ll see Mold To You, also.

I recall, at least, the skeletons of these four tales. Pete used to love to scare the crap out of us kids with this stuff. He put on a one man show, starring as the creepy melodramatic narrator, all the characters, and filling in the tale with eerie sound effects, and flashing these pictures at us with a gargled scream. My youngest brother had nightmares over this stuff.

Actually, there was less in this collection than I had hoped. I had hoped to find more illustrations, and some written material to go with them. Perhaps it will surface in another box or folder. All of these pictures are sketches for horror movies, and they’re done on paper, cardboard, and even on the covers from spiral notebooks.

We’ll start with The Terrible Thing: 

 

Oilwell man pickup/ oilwell hills/Oilman telling me stories of long ago up there

1970
A weird dream In lower wash of oilwell/ of deserted oil machinery/ was a long dead man hanging [between] two transformer poles/ hanging [by] the neck bones/ maybe part of the "Joseph" story, "The Terrible Thing"

 

"Joseph!"  screamed mother- They said he was still alive when they left him by that old engine house./ A most unusual horror story ever- all about the oilwell hills- Drawn in 1961 by Pete Hampton

I heard of the accident and then I rushed to the scene by the oilwell. I didn't look, I already knew who it was. Joseph, my real husband. It was terrible poor Joseph..

Drunk Roy Parker: Ah hush, Mary. She never been herself since the damn accident
Ah, you're drunk, Roy...

Late one night we were sitting by the fireplace and then suddenly I heard a deep growling sound outside in the night.
"I never heard a sound like that before..."
"Roy, what... "

Martha sees Joseph in her room at night. A tapping in the dark-
A most realistic horrifying movie ever made we hope, but it will cost $1000. for right equipment- Actual sounds of ancient oilwell hills in show. This place is now gone to so-called progress. 



Next week: Mold to you, and other tales>

Inscriptions, Revisions, Corrections

 Inscriptions, Revisions, Corrections

<previous: When we were kids

Before we get started, I want to make note of a couple of corrections. (I do make mistakes)

I have corrected the spelling on Jeff Goslowsky's last name (Hope I got 'em all ) 

Also I mis-quoted Dee Gayer last week when I was talking about Pete. Dee's phrase was "...odd in a good way", and I wrote "...crazy in a good way." Now corrected.

My apologies.

Pete frequently wrote notes on the back of his paintings. Several of the paintings in archive 4 have some interesting inscriptions, and we’ll take a look at a few of those. Also in the fourth archive were some large paintings, and notes from the 

Deep Dark Hole

nightmare story. I’ve added the new pictures, and revised the text a little. Now more gruesome! Check it out. I’ll talk a little more about Pete, and we’ll see some really choice examples of Pete’s work.

And back to archive 4. I've run across this several times. Paintings that were Pete's favorites are marked as both "Not for sale", OR  for sale at  what Pete figured was an exorbitant price. (First two pics from earlier posts)

Not for Sale/or $1150 /Wild cucumber vine. Whittier Hills.

Part of tank and Cloud Peak sky. Lost Canyon/$50,000 exact replica of hills./To large company $50,000 for original painting of precise area up there./ Lost Canyon

After the thunderstorm was over I saw what looked like a giant mushroom or cumulo nimbus cloud towering thousands of feet into the atmosphere. Two vapor trails give relative size and height. The vapor trails are four miles away from it. Inside of what looks stationary is a violent turbulence of hail ice and snow. What must it look like looking down from the top of this great cloud? Inside there is lightning and thunder and gusty winds. When a thunderstorm reaches its peak just before it starts to dissipate it may take on fantastic shapes. It is about fifteen miles away from this canyon. What a beautiful sight.

Here are the new Deep Dark Hole pics with inscriptions.

 This is the “Cone”, or “Horn of Death” that would hover over my bed at night when I was 4 ½ years old.  It is in a cave in my dreams yet it was in the bedroom too as dreams can be in two different places at once. It would try to grab me with its long, poisonous tongue and eat me up. I was afraid that a roll in the bed covers might be a Cone.

 

The Cone attacking the Salagite Wizzora in cave somewhere in the earth. Many chambers. Large cave underground I saw when I  was 4½ -7 years.  Didn’t understand then what it was./Was I abducted?/Pulverizes you like a wood chipper

  Was I abducted by Martians, aliens?
It killed the Salagite Wizzora salamander-like creature. Walt Disney cartoons always frightened me because it reminded me of that gruesome sight in the center of the earth. Picture of me at five years old. There was blood, blood everywhere and on me too!   

 

Last week I was talking about Pete working with us neighborhood kids on parts of his show, and how, despite the difference in age, none of our parents had any reservations about us  hanging out with Pete. The kids listed on the credits panel were all pre-teens. By 1966 / '67 they were entering junior high. Soon enough, saving the hills would fall off their list of important things to do. They moved on, and Pete kept working on the show. He would find other friends.

That pattern would repeat itself for the rest of Pete's life, and with all Pete's friends, myself, Jeff, and Dee included. 

 That was the thing with Pete. Pete was fun to be with.  But you didn't invite Pete to ride skateboards with your pals, or go swimming at the beach.  If you went to spend some time with Pete, spending time with Pete was what you did. When you visited Pete you stepped into his world. 

The day came when we finished school, got a job, maybe started a family. Or just moved on. Pete was always part of the time before that stuff took over our lives. Pete was always there in the hills.

  I wrote last week: Pete may have been a little odd, but there was goodness, and a genuine innocence at his core. There was a great darkness there as well. You can see the roots in his horror stories. Next week.

 

Dire Wolf in Whittier Hills 
The Glu-Comis thing left huge footprints in dust on a dirt road. I could have made a perfect plaster cast of them. Huge footprints June 1952. Proof that what we heard in 1970 really was true.

Next week: The Black Bag Archive:Horror>