Harzan's Monograph

Title: Harzan's Monograph on Induced Hauntings, AKA:

• Harzan's Monograph
• Harzan's Monographs
• Induced Hauntings
• Astral and Astarral Co-ordination and Interference by Harzan with addenda by Carnacki

Origin: "Harzan's Monograph" Appears in William Hope Hodgson's series of Carnacki: the Ghost-Finder stories

Description

A Gaslight-era (1870s?) parapsychological and "pseudoscientific" tome describing colours, lights, and electricity as forms of "vibrations" whose interactions can be manipulated to either create or destroy supernatural phenomena.

Harzan's Monograph, with Addenda by Thomas Carnacki

• author: ? Harzan
• Language: English (?)
• Number of known copies (if rare):
• Last known location of surviving copies (if rare):

Physical Description: (no description)

General Content:

A pseudoscientific or parapsychological monograph written by an authority on psychic phenomena, "induced hauntings", and supernatural interference, filled with speculations and experimental notes on electromagnetic "vibrations" and their effects on the Astral and "Astarral" Planes, Ghosts, Spirits, and psychic phenomena.

Carnacki's addenda to Harzan's monograph speaks vaguely of the terrible importance of maintaining a balance of "positive" and "negative" forces in these vibrations which must cancel each other, lest the Ab-natural world gain too much power.

Among the topics of Harzan's discussions are references to (difficult to replicate) experiments in which Harzan claimed on multiple occasions to have used electrical machinery to shift the natural balance of electromagnetic vibrations to manipulate supernatural phenomena, either creating hauntings, or "cleansing" an existing haunting of the "imbalance of vibrations" which presumably induced them. Harzan also wrote at length on the role of colours - both in "natural" spectra and "ab-natural" spectra of visible and invisible colours - in supernatural phenomena.

Among the most notable inventions known to have been based on Harzan's research and experiments in the monograph is Thomas Carnacki's "Electrical Pentagram", a device claimed to offer protection from supernatural forces. The monograph is also known to have heavily influenced the Carnacki Institute's methods and theories.

According to a special Rationalwiki article on the "The Woo Science of Harzan Resonance", Harzan appears to have coined such terms as "ab-natural" and "ab-human", and wrote frequently of light, color, electricity, ectoplasm, and even matter itself in terms of "vibrations"; the article supports a claim that pseudo-scientific theories, inventions, and literature using such terminology are derivative of Harzan's Monograph on Induced Hauntings, and can be useful in tracing "woo" based on Harzan's claims back to that source.

Mythos Content

Spells:  ?

• Sanity Loss: ?
• Mythos Knowledge: ?
• Occult Knowledge: ?

Quotes

"I believed the origin of the happenings to lie in a strange but perfectly understandable cause, i.e., in that phenomenon known technically as 'attractive vibrations.' Harzan, in his monograph on 'Induced Hauntings', points out that such are invariably produced by 'induced vibrations', that is, by temporary vibrations set up by some outside cause. This is somewhat abstruse to follow out in a story of this kind, but it was on a long consideration of these points that I had resolved to make experiments to see whether I could not produce a counter or 'repellent' vibration, a thing which Harzan had succeeded in producing on three occasions and in which I have had a partial success once, failing only because of the imperfectness of the apparatus I had aboard...."
— William Hope Hodgson, "The Haunted Jarvee"

"'You had better read Harzan's Monograph, and my Addenda to it, on Astral and Astarral Co-ordination and Interference,' said Carnacki. 'It is an extraordinary subject, and I can only say here that the human-vibration may not be insulated from the astarral... without immediate action being taken by those Forces which govern the spinning of the outer circle. In other words, it is being proved, time after time, that there is some inscrutable Protective Force constantly intervening between the human-soul (not the body, mind you) and the Outer Monstrosities....'"
— William Hope Hodgson, "The Whistling Room"

Appearances

• Fiction: William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki: the Ghost-Finder stories

Associated Mythos Elements

• jargon: "electromagnetic vibrations", "balanced energy", "Astral and Astarral coordination", "induced haunting", "ab-natural", "ab-human"
• artifact: The Electric Pentacle, a radiation-based device for generating a sort of protective circle around investigators, based on research by Harzan and Carnacki
• tome: Sigsand Manuscript (apparently a source of occult information for Harzan)
  • tome: Incantation of Raaaee
  • tome: "Saaamaaa Ritual"
  • cult: "Ab-human Priests of Raaaee"
• tome: Garder's Lectures (related content)
• character: Thomas Carnacki, supernatural detective whose theories are based on this monograph
• cult: Carnacki Institute
• cult: Crowley Project
• location: Other Side and the Seven Planes (AKA "Astral or Astarral Planes")
• race: Intelligent Hauntings, Residual Hauntings
• race: Inhuman Spirits: Poltergeists, Elementals and Demons, including the "Aeiirii" and far more dangerous "Saiitii" and "Outer Monstrosities"

Heresies and Controversies

• Harzan's Monograph has been used in various branches of "mythos" research, ranging from Professor Quatermass' investigations into so-called "Stone Tape Hauntings", to the development of such dubious technologies as the Electrical Pentagram, Tillinghast Resonator, "Barrett De-Energizer", the Koren Helmet, and Spengler Portable Proton Generator, to Miskatonic University's equally dubious physical and parapsychological research into the primitive use of carven symbols in warding off evil spirits, and a notable but induplicable examination of an "ab-naturally-coloured meteorite" reported to have fallen on a rural Massachusetts farm in the 1880s. (fan speculation)
• Harzan directly claims that electrical phenomena can be induced by manipulations of colour, light, and electricity; implicit in the Monograph's conclusions is the idea that such manipulations can also alter matter and physics, or even open doors between the "natural" and "ab-natural" worlds.