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.

Confirmed acquisitions: The Orne Library has copies of:

• The Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred in Olaus Wormius’ Latin version, as printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. (History of the Necronomicon and The Dunwich Horror)
• A collection of journals, and old badly kept books from the belongings of Wilbur Whateley. (The Dunwich Horror)
• The Book of Eibon (The Dreams in the Witch House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shadow out of Time)
• Unaussprechlichen Kulten of Friedrich von Junzt (The Dreams in the Witch House, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shadow out of Time)
• The Daemonolatreia of Remigius
• The Pnakotic Manuscripts
• The Golden Bough, full 12 volumes of the third edition set (CoC RPG scenario Halloween_At_St._Odilio's)
• Various books on cryptography (these are real books, Lovecraft copied the list verbatim from his Encyclopaedia Britannica):
  • Trithemius’ Poligraphia (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror)
  • Giambattista Porta’s De Furtivis Literarum Notis (The Dunwich Horror)
  • De Vigenère’s Traité des Chiffres (The Dunwich Horror)
  • Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta (The Dunwich Horror)
  • Klüber’s Kryptographik (The Dunwich Horror)
  • Other books by Davys, Thicknesse, Blair, and von Marten in the subject of cryptography ("Davys’ and Thicknesse’s eighteenth-century treatises").

Rumored but unconfirmed acquisitions (mentioned by Lovecraft, not necessarily in connection with the library):

• The Picatrix
• Joseph Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus (The Festival)
• The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
• By way of Joseph Curwen (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward):
  • Hermes Trismegistus' Hermetic Corpus in Mesnard's edition
  • The Turba Philosophorum
  • Geber's Liber Investigationis
  • Artephius's Key of Wisdom
  • The cabbalistic Zohar
  • Peter Jammy's set of Albertus Magnus
  • Raymond Lully's Ars Magna et Ultima in Zetsner's edition
  • Roger Bacon's Thesaurus Chemicus
  • Fludd's Clavis Alchimiae
  • Trithemius's De Lapide Philosophico
  • A fine volume of the forbidden Necronomicon conspicuously labelled as the Qanoon-e-Islam
  • Magnalia Christi Americana by Cotton Mather
  • Wonders of the Invisible World by Cotton Mather

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)
• Dr. Cyrus Llanfer (Derleth), Chief Librarian after Armitage
• Ward Phillips (II) (Derleth), Chief Librarian before Armitage (early 1800s)

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
• Professor Seneca Lapham (Derleth), Anthropology
• Professor Laban Shrewsbury (Derleth), Anthropology and Philosophy

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)

History

• Dr. Elliot Mills (Miskatonic University (Supplement))
  • Professor in the Department of History, specializing in American Indian history and tribal lore

School Infirmary

• "Old" Waldron
  • Head Doctor

Other

• Ward Phillips (I) (Derleth), first president of the university (late 1700s)
• 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
• Re-Animator film series:
  • Dr. Dan Cain, Hospital
  • Dr. Graves, Hospital
  • Dr. Carl Hill, Medical School

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.

Trivia

It is speculated that the word "Mis-katonic" is derived from Greek chthonic, since many of Lovecraft's monsters and gods were chthonic, but Lovecraft declared that the word was "a jumble of Algonquin roots."

Depending on the writer, mottos for MU have ranged from "Ex Ignorantia Ad Sapientiam; Ex Luce Ad Tenebras" (Out Of Ignorance Into Wisdom; Out Of Light Into Darkness) to "A Small Sacrifice for Knowledge", and their mascot has been stated as everything from the Badger to the Fighting Cephalopods (as in, "Go ′Pods!").

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