WHAV local radio, Haverhill, reports last month’s filming of…
“a new documentary, Strange Magick, filmed partly in Haverhill and with a significant focus on the city in the 1920s […] Haverhill native and WHAV writer Dave Goudsward helps investigate the connection between Howard Philips Lovecraft and infamous occultist Aleister Crowley”
Goudsward is also an executive producer of this…
documentary [that] explores a possible conspiracy between them [Lovecraft and Crowley] produced by their mutual acquaintance with fellow amateur author Myrta Alice Little.
It seems to be taken for granted that the occult loon Crowley was there as a spy or somesuch, and that they knew each other, since there are… “re-enactments of pivotal moments in Lovecraft, Crowley’s and Little’s acquaintanceship” and apparently the makers even rope old ‘Tryout’ Smith(!) into the conspiracy, all in an effort to highlight… “Crowley’s actions in the United States” for British intelligence. Alleged actions, I should add.
But I guess it might actually be a ‘what if’ pseudo-documentary, which an unwary WHAV reporter has wrongly assumed to be a plausible and factual documentary?
Definitely not a pseudo-documentary… but not a ‘factual’ documentary in the strictest terms either… it begins as sort of a documentary about the research- and then gets into some uncharted territory…
But we are doing our best to stick to the available research and primary sources, so as to realize some of the scenes from history with phantasmagoric touches (see Errol Morris’s Wormwood- albeit on a microbudget- as an influence)
Two chapters are up, which serve as primers for the story… with the final two chapters (chapter premiering on the September 22nd) going to some new places…
https://www.youtube.com/@strangemagickfilm
…but there’s no question Crowley was doing spy work for Britain in the USA, as Rick Spence’s research proves.
And the Myrta Little research by Dave Goudsward (and drawing from some articles here on TENTACLII as well!) has some highly unusual touch points with the Crowley story.
Our recreation of ‘The Haverhill Convention’ will be in the third chapter, premiering on the fall equinox (September 22)