​A happy but haunted Fortean.

Dulcie Brown was her married name, from her second marriage. I’m not confident of her maiden name; it was probably Ford, but I cannot say for certain. If I’m right, then her father was Jay Ford, her mother Hattie, or Harriett, and she herself  may have gone by Beulah, or perhaps the census take got it wrong. Dulcie was born in Oregon—on 25 February 1899—but moved to California at some point. (The Fords moved from Oregon to California sometime between 1900 and 1910.) According to later reports, she finished only eighth grade, which wasn’t surprising for a girl who grew up on a farm.

As Dulcie remembered it, her father had a sense of humor. He’d grown up in Iowa—Jay Ford was from Iowa, too—and had supposedly been kept busy hunting bears for his family, who enjoyed ursine meat above all else. (Already this sounds like a fable.) Soon enough, he became an adept. In 1968, Dulcie wrote about his failsafe technique, trying to capture he father’s voice:

“I’d track that ol’ bear ’til I could see the whites of his eyes. Then I’d sneak up on him, kinda easy like. When he’d get sight of me he would lomp [sic] up on his hind legs and put his arms around me and start huggin’ me. Right then I’d start ticklin’ his belly. Then that bear would start laughin’ and I’d keep on ticklin’ him. It wasn’t long before he laughed himself to death. I tell you, that’s the best eatin’ thar is—laughin’ bear meat.”

​Speculations about a flying saucer enthusiast and Fortean:

The notice—the only notice—in Doubt is scant, the last name Rockmore attached to an item in issue 36. But I recognize the last name: there’s a Rockmore credited in some other Fortean-inflected writing, by Ivan Sanderson and Desmond Leslie. Elliott Rockmore. And Elliott wrote to Eric Frank Russell about a year earlier. So—we’re going to say that the Rockmore credited in Doubt is Elliott Rockmore.

But then more speculations are needed. Elliott Rockmore is mentioned here and there in science fiction publications and flying saucer ones into the 1950s. But the only bit of biographical information is that he was located in Brooklyn. Not much to go on.

A hard driving Fortean.

Arturo (Arthur) Castillo was born 3 November 1930 in Chicago. (Some reports have it as 30 November, but that is incorrect.) His mother was the former Dorothy Ada Rice, an artist an art teacher who attended the Art Institute of Chicago. His father was Servillano “Bill” Castillo, a postal worker who was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the United States in 1920, via Seattle, somehow ending up in the Midwest. (He studied at the University of Minnesota.) Bill had just turned 30 when Art was born; Dorothy was 26. They had been married just over a year. Art was their only child.

He attended Taft High School in Chicago, Illinois. I do not know if he had any more formal education, but he followed his mother’s interest and became an artist. His work was showcased in science fiction ‘zines, for he was also a devoted reader of science fiction, a member of fandom, where he promulgated his social and political ideas: generally speaking, leftist and anarchist. He had illustrations in “the Journal of Science-Fiction” no later than Fall 1952, which was based in Chicago, and probably other artwork in other ‘zines around the same time. In 1951, at least, he seems to have been living with William Donaho, who would go on to form the Berkeley ‘zine Habakkuk. (He gave Donaho’s address as his own in a letter to Eric Frank Russell.)

​

So astounding a Fortean life, even her admirers cannot believe it all. This one is massively long.

Lilith Lorraine went by many names, so many it is not even easy to identify her birth name. The conventional sources have her born 19 March 1894 and give her name then as Mary Maud Dunn. None of this information, though—as far as I can tell—come from contemporary documents: birth certificates, newspaper announcements, etc. Her birthdate is given on her death certificate and, while she was alive, she did say that her birth name was “Mary Maud.” Probably this is true, but in the 1900 and 1910 censuses she went only by Maud or Maude.

She was the only child of John Beamon Dunn and Lelia Nias. Maud descended from what amounts to royalty in Corpus Christi, Texas; her paternal grandfather had been one of the first settlers, of the area, having migrated from Ireland, and her father was a Texas Ranger and cattleman. In 1932, Lilith—lets call her that for simplicity—would edit his memoirs, Perilous Trails of Texas. “Red” Dunn, as her father was nicknamed, collected Corpus Christi memorabilia, which he donated to a local museum, after he had spent years displaying it.

Ralph Rayburn Phillips did not live in the Bay Area—he was a Portlander.  But, he did come to the Bay Area often, and was among those who dropped in on the Fortean meetings, at least according to Don Herron.  And so I have included him here, among the Bay Area Forteans.  There’s not a lot on Phillips, but it is possible to piece together an outline of his life from census records, a file held at the Portland Art Museum, and a brief biographical sketch in the spring 1953 issue of the fanzine Destiny.

Ralph was born to George T. and May G. on 17 October 1896 in Rutland, Vermont.  George T. was a native Vermonter—as were his parents—born just after the end of the Civil War in August 1865.  May G. was just a little younger than her husband, born in March 1866 to a couple who had emigrated from Canada.   They were married in 1892, when both were in their late twenties.

George’s father had been a farmer and car inspector; May’s had been a carpenter.  George became a dentist.  The family seemed to start out in good financial standing: by 1900, they owned their home, free and clear.

Ten years later, still in Rutland, Vermont, the house became a bit fuller.  According to the census, they took on a boarder from French Canada, and May’s parents, Joseph and Philament Harper were also living with the Phillips.  Later evidence also suggests that Ralph had two younger sisters, although they were not captured by the 1910 census.  George was the only one working: he was called a “physician.”  Ralph was then a student—at “Eastern public schools,” where he studied art.

As he remembered much later, Ralph was a rebel from an early age.  He told the Oregon Journal in 1970, “I remember walking out of a Baptist Church in anger.  I learned early to hate hopeless conformity.”

By 1920, the family had relocated to Portland, Oregon, without the boarder or May’s parents, who had likely died by this time.  According to a brief biography down for a fanzine, the move came when Ralph was eighteen, so about 1914.  George now sold farm implements, which seems a step down in prestige, although the family did still own its home.

According to his later recollections, Ralph had continued to study art at high school in Portland, and apprenticed to a commercial artist.  The census backs this up, listing his career as commercial artist.  (He was still living at home, and so it is likely helped contribute to the family finances.)  At some point—maybe in the 1910s, maybe later—he also attended the School of Applied Art in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Sometime in the next ten years, George died, and the family’s fortunes declined.  By 1930, they had moved into a rental, and Ralph took a new job—as an organizer and salesman for a fraternal order.  The monthly rent was a rather steep $25, but the house had to be big enough to fit Ralph, his mother (who was not working), his sister Iris.  Iris had just married a marine engineer, James C. Barrie, but he was at sea when the 1930 census was conducted.  Nonetheless, the artistic spirit continued to flow through the family.  Iris listed her occupation as poet—a brave choice, indeed!

Ralph would live in Portland until his death in 1974, going from Bohemian to Beatnik to Hippie.  The Oregon Journal reported in 1970, “He has been a familiar figure in the SW Park Blocks for years—tall, silver-haired, simply but neatly dressed, and always barefoot.  You usually see him on a park bench, sucking on his pipe, as he reads his latest library book, all the while absent-mindedly wriggling his toes.”

During the next decade—if not before—Ralph’s professional world expanded.  Probably he received his first real exposure doing Western scenes for the Portland-based magazine “Northwest Background.”  At least, he did seem to publish in this magazine, and this work was the most traditional, his later pieces indicating extensive experimentation, which takes time.  In the mid-1930s he became intrigued by Buddhism and travelled to Buddhist temples in San Francisco and Los Angeles; for a time he was director of something he called “American Buddhist Society.”  Likely this was the American Buddhist Society and Fellowship, founded in 1945 by Robert Ernst Dickhoff, who would later try to link UFOs to Buddhist mythology.  (Phillips’s connection to Buddhism seemed to attenuate some over the years: in a 1949 form for the Portland Museum of Art, he made the connection prominent, but he told the Oregon Journal in 1948 he no longer had formal connections to Buddhism.)

Phillips seems to have had a long-standing interest in H.P. Lovecraft and Weird Tales, and this was reflected in his art by the 1940s, when he started to call himself a painter of the “Ultra Weird.”  He explained this as “mystic, occult, weird, macabre, psychic-inspired.”  He also called his work “modern,” which may have been a nod to the likes of Picasso, although it cut across genres.  A few times, at least, he blended his mysticism with his Western scenery, creating images of Native Americans that he thought would interest Spiritualists, who sometimes used Indians as spirit guides.

His methods were occult, too.  He tried to get himself into a detached state of mind so that he could receive inspiration from what he called “the invisible world.”  He worked at night, when he could see (imagine?) strange faces and alien presences outside his window.  Sometimes, the images—and titles—came to him fully formed.  His work was often abstract, but—signs of Fort, occasionally had unexpected clarities.  He told the Oregon Journal, “I start a picture with no idea what the finished product will be.  Often it turns out to be a colorful network of lines, but somewhere in the picture will appear a cat carrying a kitten.  Weird, isn’t it?”

The technique and subject matter can sound like a parody of those who uncharitably criticized abstract expressionism—created around the same time that Phillips was working—as something a kid could doodle.  But Phillips didn’t see it that way.  “Any Tom, Dick, and Harry can paint what he sees, but few can do my type of work.”

Phillips sold paintings to Weird Tales and fanzines; he displayed at science conventions in Los Angeles (1946) and Philadelphia (1947).  Robert Bloch, author of Psycho and another devotee of Lovecraft, owned some of his work, as did Erle Korshak, a Chicago science fiction fan who co-founded Shasta Publishing.

How Phillips became involved with the Bay Area Fortean community is unclear.  In the late 1940s, he was renting an 8x10 room in a mansion near the corner of SW 12th Avenue and Clay in Portland, where his “favorite friend” was an owl that lived in the eaves.   Perhaps he met Haas at a Buddhist temple?  Perhaps he met some of the writers at one of the conventions?  Perhaps they made contact with him to praise his works.  (Haas, after all, was collecting Clark Ashton Smith’s art.)  He also developed a fan in Chingwah Lee, an art dealer in San Francisco’s Chinatown and art critic.  At any rate, it is known that by the late 1940s he was visiting the San Francisco Bay Area for artistic inspiration, meaning he had connections by then—just as Chapter Two was founded.