Miskatonic University (Location)

Miskatonic University is a fictional university located in the equally fictional Arkham, Massachusetts. It was introduced in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft.

Building

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Orne Library

Miskatonic University Library

MU Library, Ground Floor

MU Library, Upstairs

The university's Orne Library is famous for its collection of rare occult books, including several authentic tomes such as the Necronomicon, and Book of Eibon. It also has several of the more rare and less famous fragmented and untranslated writings.

The library is headed by the prestigious Dr. Henry Armitage who himself is a great researcher of the occult and linguistics. From experience he has learned to keep much of the collection under lock and key. A guard dog is also kept chained up outside the building.

It has copies of:

• The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century.
• A collection of journals, and old badly kept books from the belongings of Wilbur Whateley.
• Trithemius’ Poligraphia
• Giambattista Porta’s De Furtivis Literarum Notis
• De Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres
• Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta
• Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises
• Klüber’s Kryptographik
• The Book of Eibon
• Unaussprechlichen Kulten of Friedrich von Junzt
• Other books by, Davys, Thicknesse, Blair, and von Marten in the subject of cryptography.

History

Expeditions

The Miskatonic University has funded several expeditions around the world.

Pabodie Expedition

An expedition in 1930 to the Antarctic funded by the Nathaniel Derby Pickman Foundation. It consisted of four men from the University—Pabodie, Lake of the biology department, Atwood of the physics department (also a meteorologist), and an unnamed geologist —besides sixteen assistants; seven of which were graduate students from Miskatonic. The expedition ended in tragedy when a party led by Perey Lake all were killed in a massive snow storm after discovering the Miskatonic Mountain Range. The expedition was followed up by the independent Starkweather-Moore Expedition in 1933.

Faculty

Medical School

• Dr. Allan Halsey (Herbert West: Reanimator)
  • Dean of the Medical School
  • (died August 14th 1903 of typhoid)
• (Prof?) Francis Morgan (The_Dunwich_Horror)

Library

• Henry Armitage (The_Dunwich_Horror)
  • Head Librarian
  • (A.M. Miskatonic, Ph. D. Princeton, Litt. D. Johns Hopkins)

Engineering

• Prof. Frank H. Pabodie (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness)
  • Inventor: a special drill, "unique and radical in its lightness, portability, and capacity...to cope quickly with strata of varying hardness"
  • Inventor: "fuel-warming and quick-starting devices" for aircraft
  • Inventor: "a plan for sinking copper electrodes in thick clusters of borings and melting off limited areas of ice with current from a gasoline-driven dynamo"

Biology

• (Prof?) Perey Lake (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness)
  • Discovered mysterious mountains in Antarctica by following fossils "westward or northwestward"
  • Disappeared in the ill-fated first Antarctic expedition
• Professor (?) Dexter (The Whisperer in Darkness)
  • Professor of Zoology

Anthropology

• Professor Tyler M. Freeborn (The_Shadow_out_of_Time)
  • Anthropology

Math/Physics

• (Prof?) Atwood (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness)
  • Disappeared in the ill-fated first Antarctic expedition
• Professor (?) Upham (The Dreams in the Witch House)

Geology

• (Prof?) William Dyer (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness and The_Shadow_out_of_Time)
  • 1875-?
• Professor Ellery (The Dreams in the Witch House)

School Infirmary

• "Old" Waldron
  • Head Doctor

Other

• Professor Warren Rice (The_Dunwich_Horror)
  • Professor of Classical Languages
• Doctor Francis Morgan (The_Dunwich_Horror and Fritz Lieber's "To Arkham and the Stars")
  • Professor of either Medicine and Comparative Anatomy or Archaeology (original source unknown, Fritz Leiber refers to Medicine and Comparative anatomy in "The Terror from the Depths")
  • Researcher of psychedelic drugs including LSD and mescaline (Fritz Lieber's "To Arkham and the Stars")
• Albert Wilmarth
  • Assistant Professor of English (The Whisperer in Darkness)
  • "unpleasantly erudite Folklorist" (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness
  • Chair of Literature Department (Fritz Lieber's "To Arkham and the Stars")
• (Prof?) Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee (The_Shadow_out_of_Time)
  • 1870-?
  • professor of political economy
  • from 1908 until 1913 experienced a strange change of personality
• Wingate Peaslee (The_Shadow_out_of_Time)
  • son of Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, and also a professor at the university

Courses

The University offers a wide range of courses in almost any subject. Some of them included in the stories of H.P. Lovecraft are:

• Advanced General Psychology
• Calculus D

Alumni

• Frank Elwood (The Dreams in the Witch House)
• Walter Gilman (The Dreams in the Witch House)
• Herbert West (Herbert West: Reanimator)
• (?) Danforth (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness)
  • Grad student
  • Became a professor of psychology at the university (Fritz Leiber's "To Arkham and the Stars")
• Grad Students, disappeared in Antarctica (At_the_Mountains_of_Madness):
  • (?) Gedney
  • (?) Carroll
  • (?) Ropes

Appearances

• At the Mountains of Madness, H.P.Lovecraft
• The Dreams in the Witch House, Lovecraft
• The Dunwich Horror, Lovecraft
• Herbert West – Reanimator, Lovecraft
• The Whisperer in Darkness, Lovecraft

See Also

The horror movie Re-Animator, directed by Stuart Gordon and based on a Lovecraft story, took place at Miskatonic University. As a tribute to Lovecraft, Bill Pullman's character in 'Brain Dead' attended the university, as did some characters in the film Dagon.

The Millennium comics series H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu introduces The Miskatonic Project (created by Mark Ellis with art by Darryl Banks, Daryl Hutchinson and Don Heck), a group of investigators who follow up on the loose ends of Lovecraft's original stories, such as "The Whisperer In Darkness".

Also, the DC Comics character Zatanna, a female magician, uses the alias "Miss Katonic". John M. Ford's Star Trek novel How Much For Just The Planet? puts "Princess DeeDee the First" into a Miskatonic U. sweatshirt at one point. "Dreams in the Witch House" (a short film for the SHOWTIME network's "Masters of Horror" series), also based on a H.P. Lovecraft story and directed by Stuart Gordon, focuses on a Miskatonic University student and takes place in and around the university.

It is speculated that the word "Mis-katonic" is derived from Greek chthonic, since many of Lovecraft's monsters and gods were chthonic.

External links

• A Miskatonic University website
• A mock Miskatonic University site
• Another mock Miskatonic University site
• Other Miskatonic University websites (Google search)

Original Wiki source: Wikipedia