The Lost Canyon Project: Monsters in the Dark

Monsters in the Dark

Once again, I had a week dominated by a domestic project which involved shovels, dirt, hundreds of concrete curbstones, and pavers, and nothing that remotely resembled either assistance, or fun. But I did complete the clerical stuff on archive 13. The catalogue is up to date with 808 entries at 500 pages even.

And just to set my obsessive compulsive teeth on edge, the last two packing boxes will fit archives 9 and 10, and archives 12 and 13 perfectly , but there is no way I can fit archive 11 in a box and have room for anything else.

So that means that tomorrow, when I go down to the storage I have to leave archive 11 here and come home with a box for it so I can take it back later. I wanted to take all the completed work to the storage in order, and in one trip. But I’m just getting silly over pointless details. Welcome to The Lost Canyon Project.

With this archive, all of the collected works from Pete Hampton’s shows and stories are recorded. I took great care to catalogue the paintings in the order that Pete stored them, but it soon became apparent that many of the sequences were scattered over several collections. There is material for “The Deep Dark Hole” in archive 11. The Pigrat sequence for today’s post was likewise scattered across several collections. Similarly, Jeff’s encounter with the old lady in Rideout Heights is spread out in several archives. As I mentioned, I’ll be going to the storage Monday morning. By next week we should have pictures from the last collection of large assorted works.

A visit to Pete’s hut in the Lost Canyon was more than an overnight camp-out, and all night bull session with your best pal. The Whittier Hills was a world of pristine beauty in the day, and the realm of monsters and nightmares after dark. In previous posts we’ve seen visits from the mangled corpse of Joseph the oilman, in “The Terrible Thing”. We've seen the attack of the Monster from “The Midnight Terror.” We’ve seen the Telehonepolies, strange hostile birds from “The Lost Era”, and had an encounter with Green Mist that left a man hanging headless from a tree.

But somehow, the Pigrat from “The Lost Canyon Trip” was Pete’s favorite mythical creature. When Pete talked about his show, he seldom failed to mention the frightening and fatal encounter with this unheard-of animal.

Part of the reason for the overnight camp-out in “The Lost Canyon Trip”, was that Pete wanted to trap a California Thrasher. How does one trap a bird? Easy. Box. Bait. Stick. String. Just like in The Roadrunner. Only it really can work. (Pete did trap his bird.) But back to the camp-out.