Halloween is here again, when I feel that I should post something that suits the tone of the day, even though it is sometimes
hard to think of anything. This year I’ve come up with something that’s a perfect fit for the occasion.
This account is absolutely true, as best I can remember it (and I have a very good memory). There was documentation for the story, and I have some of the documentation, although I’m not sure where it is at the moment. The events described did not occur at Halloween, though they do make a good Halloween story.
For many years I volunteered at a museum. One service that the museum provided was identifying natural history specimens for the public. Someone would come across an unusual bone or rock, and bring it in, or otherwise contact us, to get information; the requests were mostly mundane, though sometimes humorous.
One day the museum received an e-mail from a man in Delaware. He had grown up in a three hundred year old house. When he was ten years old, he had found a secret compartment in the wall of his bedroom. Inside was the body of a tiny monster. And it was not some toy or model, but the actual carcass of something that had once been alive.
He attached a photograph with his e-mail. The photograph showed an entity about a foot tall and seemingly bipedal, indeed almost humanoid. The thing appeared malevolent, even demonic. And it looked undeniably authentic, even as it corresponded to no animal known on the Earth.
The man had held onto the monster throughout his life, but he had begun to think that the monster was bringing him bad luck. Eventually, not knowing what to do, he took it to his bartender. (It is at this point in the story that people tend to laugh.) Here my memory becomes fuzzy as to what the exact role of the bartender was in these events, but probably he advised the man on how to find out what the monster was, and what to do with it.
When the e-mail arrived, I had recently been reading about
gaffs, hoaxed taxidermy items such as
Fiji mermaids and
jackalopes. I suspected that the monster might be some similar fraudulent creation. I checked the internet, and determined that the monster was a
Jenny Haniver, a very specialized hoax item produced when a specimen of the cartilaginous fish known as a
ray is extensively altered to appear as some sort of monster. Jenny Hanivers have been manufactured for
hundreds of years; the name is thought to possibly be derived from the ironic French phrase
jeune d'Anvers (meaning “youth of Antwerp”, Antwerp being a prominent location where Jenny Hanivers were made and sold).
This picture from Wikipedia (by M. Violante) is a pretty good approximation of the way that the Jenny Haniver looked, as far as I can remember.
Finding a monster in the walls of a three hundred year old house would make a great premise for a horror story.
