Creative History

  A large mob has gathered on the streets of Amsterdam.  Standing at the center of the swelling, slowly moving crowd with his legs and wrists in shackles is a bookish rather mild looking middle-aged amateur botanist from London. A wealthy merchant who has been intermittently jostling and shoving the unfortunate shackled Englishman shouts out to the crowd, “He cut my Admiral van der Eyck !  Death to this devil!” Once the crowd hears what this amateur botanist has actually done their shouts reach a feverish blood-thirsty pitch. “Death to the Englishman,” they chant.  “Death!  Death!” The Admiral van der Eyck that the Englishman has cut is a flower.  It is a specific kind of tulip bulb, that at this moment in the winter of 1636 in Holland is worth a small fortune.  In December of 1636 Admiral van der Eyck tulips were selling in Dutch cities for 5,000 florins apiece, or twice the yearly salary of an average Dutch laborer. This is the height of...

  On March 21, 1947 an anonymous tipster, giving the simple alias of Charles Smith, called the 122nd precinct of the New York City Police Department. The tipster insists that there is a dead body locked inside and decomposing in a four story brownstone located at 2078 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 128th Street.  He says that there is a terrible smell emanating from the building.  Other than mentioning the odor the caller refuses to provide any further information and promptly hangs up. Despite the gravely serious assertions made by the anonymous tipster the police, at first, are not overly concerned about the matter.  They know that the brownstone mansion located at 2078 Fifth Avenue is the home of the reclusive and eccentric Collyer brothers.  It is routine for neighbors to call and complain about repulsive odors or strange sounds coming from the four story home in the middle of the night and it is just as common for teenage pranksters to call 911 asserti...

  On a cold night in the middle of January about a dozen farmers, shopkeepers and police officers set off into the woods. This ragtag posse is armed with shotguns and revolvers.  They have brought their dogs along to fetch the game that they’re out hunting.  They are following tracks in the freshly fallen snow, hoofprints, but these hoofprints are not like those of a horse or of any animal that these men have ever seen before.  These hoofprints are large and cloven in two like the tracks of a devil. All night, for the past several nights, the residents of Springfield Township, New Jersey, have heard a gut-wrenching screeching howl filling the air.  And they have been startled and awoken in the middle of the night, from their deep winter’s slumber, by the thudding sound of hooves landing on their rooftops.  Now, a group of armed citizens has taken it upon themselves to set out to try and kill or capture the creature that has been terrorizing them all. ...