A cheerful little tourist map of Arkham. Once a year, in May, it sings.
Inspired by American Vacations, Larry Nixon, Little Brown & Co, 1939.
No matter where you turn you’re likely to run across something out of the ordinary run of affairs, something you’ll remember to tell the folks at home. Usually it’s something not to be found in the guidebooks, oftentimes not of particular international importance, just what the city editor used to call ‘human interest’ …
No mention of travel guides would be complete without a line on the amusing and useful Cartoon Guides (Augustin, NY). Illustrated and carefully designed, these tiny volumes are as effective in selling a community as any book can be …
Arkham Cartoon travel guide, publisher unknown, in the Augustin style, featuring Arkham and its immediate environs. Publication date unknown, presumed to be mid-to-late 1930s. Guide book and separate map. Map dimensions are 66 cm in width and 31 cm in height. The map’s creator was less interested in geographic accuracy than pictorial interest.
Initial Reading (regular) loses no SAN and gains no Mythos, but earns a check in Art.
Originally a mass-market publication, only a handful survive in Good or Excellent condition in the modern day. Those in less than Good condition either do not have the map or have a damaged map.
Anyone who researches this item in back issues of the Arkham Gazette finds an article published May 1937, business section, Local Guide Promises Tourism Bump. The article says this Guide to Arkham is one of a series ‘published by our friends in Kingsport‘ and shall ‘we trust, attract much-needed tourist dollars to our businesses.’ The publisher is not named and this Guide is their only known publication, though other books in the series are promised on the back endpapers of the Guide.
The map is the Guide’s main attraction. Its illustrations are expressive, often funny, and have an easy, post-Jazz Age style.
The map does not cover things a tourist map would not be expected to cover, the Dump for instance, but some locations of historic interest such as Hangman’s Hill do appear and, where appropriate, so do ghosts, ghouls and witches on broomsticks.
Two locations are marked, neither of which appear in similar Guides of the period. Both are on or near Apple Lane, Northside, just off Derby Lane.
One is Gagnon Farm, Boarding House. The other is a Civilian Conservation Corps Walking Trail, not far from the Farm, with a Clubhouse near the trail.
Gagnon Farm has a unique feature: a colonial period batten wooden door with iron nails embedded in the front marking out diamond patterns, supposedly dating to the 1600s. In the illustration the door is part open and someone can be seen walking through it. The Guide says ‘this is called the Orphans Door‘ without giving further details.
The Clubhouse is described as ‘Miskatonic Pioneers’ and according to the Guide is owned and maintained by a local walking club. Beds and meals can be had by club members and non-club members alike, for a small fee. Club members pay a reduced rate for accommodation.
Guides in Good or better condition have a peculiar quality. Once a year, when the moon waxes gibbous in May, the Guide sings. It is an old tune, The Children In The Woods, and most of the words are too faint to be made out. However, one lyric is clear:
Come all that are executors Of orphans weak in sight; Do what is right and just And give to each that’s right.
Anyone looking at the map in the Guide when it sings sees two small figures, perhaps children, moving close to or on the CCC walking trail. At the same time, the witch on Hangman’s Hill glows with a malignant crimson light.
Full Study of the Cartoon Guide to Arkham when it sings under a gibbous May moon gets 1D3 Mythos. Anyone who earns a full 3 points needs to make a SAN check. Failure does not incur a SAN penalty but does open up the reader to nightmares of being lost in the woods. These hideous dreams last until the end of May. The last in the series always ends with the sleeper emerging from the woods and finding themselves standing atop Hangman’s Hill.
The Children In The Woods
The Children In The Woods is a folk tune about an uncle who murders two orphans to get their inheritance. It is originally English but there are variants, including several New England versions.
A version unique to Arkham has extra lyrics about the Gagnon girls who, according to the song, were done away with by Goody Fowler. The tale alleges their uncle Gerard paid off the witch to get the job done. There is no record of this murder in any written history, and the song lyrics are not transcribed until the 1960s when a folklorist hears it.
Gagnon Farm and the Trail
Property records show that Gagnon Farm remains in the Gagnon family until 1944, when the last surviving Gagnon dies of a heart attack. After that the Boarding House is shuttered until the 1960s, when it reopens for another decade under new management. It closes again in 1973. The property is bought in the 1980s and turned into a private home. It gets an extensive remodel in the late 1990s. The only remaining original feature, by that point, is the colonial period batten wooden door.
Memorabilia from Gagnon Farm’s time as a boarding house, pictures, menus and similar, can still be found moldering on the back shelves of Arkham antique shops.
The CCC walking trail is no longer maintained, but Arkhamites know it exists and it can still be found by someone willing to go looking for it.
The Miskatonic Pioneers died off sometime in the 1960s and the Clubhouse, if it still exists in the modern era, is not well looked after. However, the walking club’s records are kept in Miskatonic University library, local history section. Initial reading (regular) loses no SAN and gains no Mythos, but earns a check in History. Full Study earns a check in Occult and uncovers several mentions of something called the Gagnon Lights, which appear on the trail. This happens irregularly throughout the year, but most often in May. There is no explanation of the lights or why they appear in May, though over the years several Club members offer theories. The lyrics of The Children In The Woods are transcribed in the Pioneer records.
