STALKING OUR LADY OF DARKNESS page three of three (click here to return to page two) or (click here to go all the way back to page one)

“After a bit, they all decided they were hungry and should eat together at the German Cook’s around the corner…” These days, the restaurant around the corner serves Vietnamese food.

“A second-hand bookstore on Turk Street…” McDonald's Bookshop at 48 Turk

“You know Lotta’s Fountain there on Market?”  In the novel, Thibaut de Castries enlists Jack London, George Sterleng and others to engage in an occult ceremony at the fountain, which, on a lark, they agree to.  Imagine their shock when at the exact same moment, a nearby building collapses for no apparent reason!  Later, de Castries claims his powers are responsible for the 1906 earthquake.

“In the street outside the Veteran’s Building, Franz resumed his sidewise and backward peerings, now somewhat randomized, yet he was conscious not so much of fear as wariness…”

Our Lady of Darkness again mixes fact with fiction by telling us that Thibaut de Castries “had only one other literary acquaintance at that time—or friend of any sort, for that matter.  Dashiell Hammett, who was living in San Francisco, in an apartment at Post and Hyde, and writing The Maltese Falcon.”

Hammett was a good enough friend (in the novel, at least) to bury the deceased de Castrie’s ashes at the top of Corona Heights. Any wonder there seems to be a sinister presence up there?

“Why shouldn’t a modern city have its special ghosts, like castles and graveyards and big old manor houses once had?”

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All text and pictures (except for the quotes from Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness) are ©2005 Perry Lake and/or Mike Humbert