Okay, finally getting to the Melonheads. I've been putting off talking about these
guys because I really don't like the mythology surrounding them. And you'll see
why in a moment. Although some folklore
purists may not like it, I've decided to create my own story behind these
elusive beings, incorporating some other semi-famous pieces of
"weird" New England.
First, the original lore.
The stories vary somewhat, but the gist of the myths involve an old
asylum for the criminally insane where the doctors carry out horrific
experiments upon the patients. After
years of torture, the patients escape and murder the doctors, burn down the
asylum, then flee into the surrounding woods.
They live out there for years, hidden from civilization, growing more
and more savage. Their gigantic heads
are either a pre-existing hydrocephalic condition or caused by decades of
inbreeding. They attack people on lonely
wooded roads, dragging them back to their lairs to devour them.
Hopefully by now you can see why I dislike this mythology.
The biggest problem I have is that this story relies primarily on the lazy,
hurtful stereotype of the mentally-ill as being dangerous and savage. People struggling with mental illness have
enough prejudice to deal with, without being turned into cannibalistic
boogeymen. Even worse are the versions
of the story where the Melonheads' enlarged craniums are caused by hydrocephalism. Because having
a debilitating disease naturally makes you a monster, of course.
I should mention that there's another version of the
Melonhead story that portrays them as the descendants of an exiled Colonial-era
family who hid in the woods and, once again, degenerated into sub-human
cannibalistic monsters due to inbreeding.
Still not really any better.
So, here's my version of the Melonhead origin story:
In 1852, Pastor and Spiritualist John Murray Spears began
claiming he was in touch with "The Association of Electrizers", a
coalition of spirits that included Benjamin Franklin, John Quincy Adams, Thomas
Jefferson and other famous persons. Their reason for contacting him, so he
claimed, was to bring new technology to mankind and create an age of spiritual
and social prosperity. The key to this revolution was the creation of a mechanical
Messiah dubbed the "New Motive Power".
Spears gathered his followers to a shed in Lynn,
Massachusetts, where they built their Messiah out of machined rods and other
bits of copper, zinc and magnetic iron.
To give the thing life, one of Spears' female followers even underwent a
"spiritual pregnancy and labor".
Once everything was
in place, Spears followed through the ritual as dictated by the Electrizers to
finally bring his New Motive Power to life.
But nothing happened. The machine
failed to work.
Except, it did.
For what Spears didn't know was that the beings who called
themselves the Electrizers had given him instructions not for a new Messiah,
but for a machine to create a gateway between two worlds. Their universe was dying and they were trying
to escape into ours.
The gateway itself had actually been built centuries ago
before any European had set foot in the New World. Its builders were a mystery, for none of the
local First Nations had done it. Perhaps
the gate was created by the same unknown people who built the tower off of
Brenton Point in Rhode Island (which I'll talk about more in my Rhode Island
entry). The gateway was a stone-lined
well dug into a hill in what would one day be Goshen, CT. Two passageways ran off the main well. One was merely a drain to keep the well from
flooding. But the other led to a vast underground chamber where the forgotten
race had assembled a massive mechanical apparatus that would link the two
worlds.
Why it wasn't activated centuries ago isn't clear, nor is it
known why the Electrizers used a pastor in Massachusetts to create their power
source instead of someone closer to the actual gateway. Perhaps time and space weren't obstacles for
this ritual. Whatever the reason, when
the ritual to awaken the New Motive Power was
conducted, the mechanism in the well came to life. A small group of
beings slid through into our world, but something went wrong. The power to the mechanism was cut off
prematurely, and the resulting energy feedback caused the chamber to cave
in. Some of the beings managed to escape
the well before the apparatus and its chamber completely collapsed. But their connection to the old universe was
cut off, buried under tons of stone.
Today the well is known as the Goshen Mystery and can be
found in an old cemetery.
Though similar in appearance to humans, the Electrizer
beings were actually another species of hominid that had become the dominate
species in their reality. Their most
obvious difference from Homo sapiens were their enlarged skulls,
which developed at puberty. Knowing
their appearance would make it difficult to blend in with human society, the
Melonheads (as they were dubbed by the few people who saw them) hid in the
woods, doing their best to eke out a
living. Inevitably, they were distorted
into the monstrous boogeymen of the
familiar tales due to human fears of the strange and unknown. But in truth these beings are no worse nor
better than any other human being. Over
the years, they have made contact with a select few sympathetic humans who have
helped them improve their lives and have even on occasion intermarried (or at
least interbred) with them.
For this drawing, I wanted to avoid the "feral boogeyman" look that the traditional folklore depicts and instead show them as just normal people-- albeit normal people from a different dimension and species than Homo sapiens. The long dark ridge in the background is one of the basaltic dikes of the Metacomet Range which are ubiquitous throughout Central Connecticut.
Sources:
(this is the Ohio version of the myth.)
To learn more about Reverend John Murray Spear, check out these pages:
And here's a site about the Goshen Mystery Tunner:
I originally heard about the Tunnel and Revered Spear from the book Curious New England, by Joseph A. Citro and Diane E. Foulds. It's got a lot of pretty cool, sometimes creepy, places and things to see in all six New England states.
