I had a chance to visit the University of California Berkeley's Bancroft Library yesterday, which houses a collection of letters between Haas, the fantasist Clark Ashton Smith, and Smith's wife Carole.  Apparently, the material was donated to the library by Don Herron in 2006.

I'll have more to say later, but one ironic bit: After Clark's death, Carole was looking for a repository for her husband's materials.  She had some dealings with the Bancroft, didn't like the place at all, and swore that nothing of his would ever end up there.

Best laid plans and all that.

According to Don Herron's The Literary World of San Francisco & Its Environs, Bay Area Forteans frequently met at 478 Union Street.  This housed the Pencraft Writers Studio, run by pulp authors Kenneth MacNichol and Polly Lamb Goforth.  (Goforth was also a sorceress who used the same form of magic as Haas.) 

In some of my earlier writing--nothing published, I think--I said that George Haas lived on College Street in Oakland.  This was wrong.

According to the manuscript material at the CSL, he lived at

5375 Manila Avenue
#209
Oakland, CA 94618

which, according to Google, is just off College Street.

In the early 1930s, Clark Ashton Smith wrote a story called "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" about a disconcerting archeological discovery on the planet Mars.  The tale was eventually published in Weird Tales.

Robert Barlow, an anthropologist and friend of H.P. Lovecraft used the story's title as the name for his closet, where he kept his collection of Weird Tales.  Barlow, fearing that he would be outed, committed suicide in 1951.

George Hass then started using the name--The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis--to describe his home, which was given over not only to Weird Tales (kept in a wooden chest), but books on related topics, sculptures by Clark Ashton Smith, collections of oddities collected during Haas's time with the Navy.

Of course, much of this material is Fortean--in nature (unexplained) or in inspiration (challenging to scientific conventional wisdom).  There is a strong element of Romance--capital R--in the collection, hope that the objects will inspire one to think weird thoughts.

[And Forteans are collectors, if nothing else right?  Fort collected.  And the Forteans collect.]

Don Herron writes,

“Our man Haas us no George-come-lately to the field of Fortean research, having been a member of the original Fortean Society’s San Francisco branch . . . .” (5)

Eats and meets up at Dave’s Cafe, 42nd and Broadway (5).

“To visualize events so vividly that they come to pass is George’s brand of sorcery.  When he read White Shadows in the South Seas and the other volumes dealing with the South Pacific, for example, he was compiling a large and detailed mental picture of that area.  George believes his powers of visualization took him to those lush isles by means of a Navy hitch even more surely than working and saving for a tourist cruise would have.” (13).

“A good imagination is essential in making this brand of parapsychology operate, and reading fantasy and science fiction is one thing George credits his imaginative abilities to.” (13)

 “Robert Barbour Johnson was a writer for the original Weird Tales magazine.  He penned “Far Below,” They,” Lead Soldiers,” and several other shockers.  Both he and George belonged to the San Francisco branch of the Fortean Society.  The group met in a writer’s studio to discuss UFOs and other strange phenomena."  Johnson an artist, interested in the circus, and wrote about Gold Gate Park.  For many years lived on Telegraph Hill, under the shadow of the Coit Tower, though moved away from the Bay Area.  He and Haas still correspond.   “These two men keep the Fortean spirit and the sense of the fantastic alive and very well indeed” (24).

“Another of George’s friends is a self-proclaimed ‘ultra-weird’ artist.”  Ralph Rayburn Phillips.  “Phillips often came down from Portland, Oregon, where he has lived for many years, to attend various Bay Area science-fiction conventions and Fortean meetings.  He has known the Inhabitant of the Vaults for about a quarter of a century.  A Zen Buddhist, Phillips is the author of the booklet Bulls of Zen.  His artwork has appeared in many fanzines and gallery showings over the years, and a good number of articles in Portland newspapers have been devoted to this ‘ultra-weird’ figure who draws much like Lovecraft writes” (26).

“‘Never-Throw-Anything-Away’ Haas" (29).

 “His interest in Bigfoot grew naturally from his Fortean activities.  During the 1950s George collected flying saucer reports, which led after awhile to the collection of Bigfoot reports.  His file on Bigfoot and miscellaneous outre subjects comprise on of the best Fortean reference libraries in the world” (31)

Haas says, “As a good Fortean and as a student of Buddhism, I don’t ‘believe’ in anything, accepting anything and everything, so-called natural laws included, on a temporary basis only” (33).

 Nb: Robert Payne’s The Lord Comes influenced Haas; he shared it with Clark Ashotn Smith, who credited the book with stimulating his interest in Buddhism.

I visited the California State Library History Room on Wednesday.  They have a complete run of Round Robin, as well as some other works of N. Meade Layne, which I was able to look through.

More in line with the circle, though--on the circumference, I guess--they had some manuscript material from George Haas, as well as a copy of Don Herron's book.  Currently, I am working up a post on it.

George Haas, on Clark Ashton Smith:

Klarkash-Ton's, too, was a Fortean mind, ever questing, never denying. He was intensely interested in the unexplained, the unknown. I remember our discussing The Books of Charles Fort that day []11 September 1953] and our discussion naturally turned to UFOs, the "flying saucers." Klarkash-Ton had seen one, had seen something, a year or two before. It was on a hot night and he had been lying outside on his sleeping bag, gazing upward into the depths of space. Suddenly he became aware of a large object, like an indistinct shadow, darker than the night, passing slowly above him, blotting out the stars..

LATE ADDITION: Apparently, Smith described the even in a letter to H.P. Lovecraft.  The letter was dated 1933, but in it Clark said the sighting occurred four or five years previous.

I have lots of tendrils out in starting this project-I feel very unfocused, not only because the project is still in an unorganized state, but life is, too.

There's a way around this, though.

As Charles Fort famously wrote, "one measures a circle, beginning anywhere."  Meaning, in my case, that I just need to pick a starting place.  And for now, I have: George Haas.

Haas was an Oakland, CA, Fortean, and I have started to collect information on him.

Don Herron wrote a chapbook about him.

The Oakland Public Library has some newspaper articles on him.

It also has the Berkeley sci-fi 'zine Rhodomagnetic Digest, which may have some info on him.

And, finally, the University of California Berkeley houses some letters between him and Clark Ashton Smith, and Auburn, CA, sci-fi/fantasy/horror writer.