A is for Auspicmoriscope and the Asphodel

By Bethalynne Bajema

Huxley Auspex a notable Victorian Spiritualist created his auspicmoriscope with the hopes of pulling the veil away and allowing light onto the shadows of the supernatural. He never thought one of these ghost viewers, the Asphodel, would hold so much more for the most unlikely of victims. The first story in occult authority Etta Diem's penny dreadful of strange machinery and Lovecraft influences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bethalynne Bajema
• Release date: Mar 3, 2017

Bethalynne Bajema

Bethalynne is a Michigan native who spent much of her early life chasing the fae around her grandfather's nearly mythical fairy tale garden. Where the fae weren't calling, the strange shadows in the closet were whispering. When it was finally suggested that she kindly bring herself down from the clouds (and out from those dark places) she turned her expansive imagination towards capturing her characters and their worlds through writing and drawing. The latter has led to her having a notable career as a professional artist for the past twenty years, as well as self publishing many of the stories behind her artwork. Bethalynne's art and writing have been published in Weird Tales Magazine, Dark Beauty Magazine, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, Gothic Beauty Magazine, as well as coffee table books Gothic Art Now, Vampire Art Now, and as a writer for photographer John Santerineross' books Fruit of the Secret God and Dream. Her work is primarily fantasy based with a healthy influence of neo Victorian, horror, and dystopian themes.

Book preview

A is for Auspicmoriscope

and the Asphodel

By Bethalynne Bajema

* * *

The first entry in Etta Diem’s Encyclopedia of Harmful Sensations.

As recorded and written from second hand accounts

from Phineas Luft and Gertrude Vermooth

Auspicmoriscope

auspic-, auspec- +

(Latin: to look, to observe in order

to make a prediction; to see omens)

mort-, mor-, mori- +

(Latin: death, dead)

scope- +

(Abbreviation: short form of various

devices used to see, or view)

In the late 1900’s at the height of the Spiritualist movement, Huxley Auspex took his place among the movement’s elite by creating and ushering into the world the auspicmoriscope. The fantastic claims of this invention were simple: The user looked into the eyepiece and turned the handle and the spirit realm became visible within the instrument’s view finder.

The instrument caused a stir among even the most hardened in the community and Auspex became a quick celebrity, embraced by the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

He followed this rise to celebrity by creating a variety of variations on his original device, each offering claims more