Short Story 125: Sightings at Twin Mounds

Robert Pirkola · 28 Apr 2015, 21:20 · from 2015-April.txt.gz

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From: rpirkola at hotmail.com (Robert Pirkola)
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:20:20 +0000
Subject: (urth)  Short Story 125: Sightings at Twin Mounds
Message-ID: <BAY172-W52AA697F5172D9A684FD0ADFE80 at phx.gbl>

This story continues to bug me but I really haven't come up with a way to make my theory really hang together as well as it should. ?
The more Wolfe I have read, the more I see your point about functional, motivated prevarication. ?With that, some extra information that
I have been backlogging regarding SATM:

The name Stanley J. Robakowski.

According to my sources, the first name means "lives by the stony grove", which could imply a cemetery.

Robakow appears to be Polish for "worms". ?"-ski" as a Polish suffix also seems to denote some noble lineage for the bearer.
This certainly continues to imply death and graves.

No ideas on the "J".

This story appears to be an extract from a book of the type popularized by Charles Fort. ?I came across
reference to Fort in annotations to H.P. Lovecraft's work that I had been recently reading. ?Within days,?
Marc had mentioned Fort?in his write-up for ?All the Hues of Hell? a GW story written?around the same time as SATM.
I have Fort's works in my to-read pile, but haven't gotten around to it yet. ?Might this be a better template than the avowed
Sasquatch book?
?
I had previously questioned the function of the wendigo in the story, arguing that it was unnecessary to the way the story works
other than to point us towards cannibalism. ?It could also serve the function of being wholly allusive, pointing us towards?
Algernon Blackwood by way of his story ?The Wendigo?.??This story seems to have little relation to SATM, but other?
AB stories have interesting parallels.??For example, the werewolf story ?The Camp of the Dog? featuring AB?s famous?
psychic detective John Silence,?discusses the means by which a werewolf comes into being.? It apparently is a psychic portion of a person that?
is repressed, but which ultimately escapes, taking with it some portion of the physical matter of the person?
less than the whole, so that it is a combination psychic/physical creature.? The creature is largely?
invisible and the actions of the werewolf are unknown to the person that spawns it, and vice versa.??
Other AB stories involving John Silence have interesting similarities as well, but my book is not before me at the moment so?
I cannot reference them specifically. ?In any event, "Secret Worship" is one, which involves a long-demolished monastic school
reappearing to a former student when he visits the area. ?The former student engages in ghostly and diabolical
interaction with his former teachers. ?The story is written in a way that made me think of seeing the twin mounds through?
the eyes of Robakowski. ?A couple of passages make this point.? I will try to supplement later.

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