Monster in the Museum, A True Halloween Horror Story

 

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land of dark forests where castles sat on mountaintops and rivers flowed past villages as old as Christmas itself, a boy was born in the village of Westtunnen-im-Hamm in the Kingdom of Prussia. 

He was a perfectly geometrical, strong, bright-eyed baby.   His father, a stern principal at the local elementary school, gave the boy a name full of hubris, Hubertus A. Strughold. The name Hubertus meant “shining intellect” and Saint Hubert was the Saint that protected hunters. 

His last name, Strughold, meant “stronghold” - like a fortress. His father’s only child was born on Saint Germaine’s Day, three years before the new century; St. Germaine is the guardian of abandoned people, abuse victims, and the poor. 

Hubertus walked to school each day with his father who was a feared headmaster. The boy was a serious student who studied hard and did as he was told without question.  But one night, a comet appeared brilliantly in the inky night sky and the young boy became possessed with the cosmic light. 

As everyone in the village stepped out of their tidy timbered homes to view the once in a lifetime phenomena, soothsayers in the area began to forecast that plague, war, and disaster were in the making because of the comet’s approach.

The oraclers reminded the farmers and tradesmen that every time the comet appeared, kings, popes, and beloved people died, deadly storms developed, and milk turned sour. Dogs began howling along with the chatter and excitement in the air. 

Rumors were whispered and past that some men might turn into wolves on full moons, ogres would show up in town looking for good people to display their brute-force upon, and bugabears would arrive to steal the children.

 The town chronicler pointed out the story in his ledger that a millennium ago, the same time the comet blazed overhead in the 1300’s, the Black Death also arrived. A ship bringing spices and silks from the Far East had left the town empty except for nine families whose surnames graced all the community’s current residents.

Young Hubertus compulsively drew pictures of the moving trail of ice, gas and dust particles that always pointed its tail away from the sun. He wrote simple, cryptic formulas, drew triangles, boys climbing ladders onto clouds, and predictions that looked like mathematical spells on his slate tablet and in his copybook.

From that day on, the townspeople said Hubertus had his head in the stars. He made ridiculous predictions that men would one day fly and travel to the stars; he questioned adults if they thought dogs or hamsters could live on the moon. He filled his notebook with drawings and conjectures.

His father told him, “Heads up,” while they walked to school; he strayed in others’ paths on the narrow old medieval streets because he wouldn’t look up from his copy book.  Hubertus wasn’t paying attention to where he was going because he was wondering if time could be stopped so people could travel faster.

His teachers and the neighbors shook their heads at this strange child. During the six months the comet was visible, the townspeople were advised by healers to avoid the comet’s miasma and be sure to balance their humors; medical salesmen sold anti-comet sugar pills, comet-protecting umbrellas, and gas masks for the six hours it took for the Earth to pass through the cyanogen gas from the comet's tail. 

And apparently the comet prevention program worked; there were no cyanogen deaths when the planet whooshed through the tail; no one caught cometus vometus, so the comet pills seemed to have saved the day and was money well spent.

It was all very exhilarating to Hubertus. The last day the comet was visable, a full eclipse of the sun was set to appear. Hubertus knew that he should protect his viewing eye with dark glass to look at the eclipse, but did not consider covering his other eye.  

The sun's intense light made “blind spots” in the boy’s right eye; he could no longer see facial features or read other people’s emotions from that eye, and when he looked backwards, he could only see forward. He was doomed to forget what was behind him and he began to speak only in the present and future tense.

And true to the soothsayer’s prediction that people would die, the boy’s father passed away three years after sighting the comet, when his son was nearing 13 years old. Without the protection of a father, rocks were chucked at the brilliant boy’s head as he walked to school; one hit him so hard that it cracked his moral compass.

His mother began to accompany her son to school, glaring at would-be rock chuckers, and holding her boy’s hand tight - it wasn’t a helpful solution.

Hubertus went on to attend the University of Muenster where, as a young student, he neglected the cafes and arts scene, did not visit historic sites, and paid no attention to festive celebrations. 

The flag that flew over his school looked like a chessboard on a mustard background; he surmised it represented that success required strategy and that sandwiches were a delicious, sustaining element of life.

Hubertus became a medical doctor; Doctor Strughold focused his medical practice with research on keeping pilots safe and warm. He did his research diligently and profoundly.

When his country began a war, the doctor dutifully supported his leader and was given a military appointment as a Luftwaffe Colonel so he could investigate, evaluate, and experiment on the effects of high altitude travel to his heart’s content.

He began with guinea pigs.  And here is a warning: if cruelty, crushing, starving, suffocation of living creatures gives you nightmares, read no further!

The Luftwaffe Colonel’s first experimentation was on how to keep cold pilots alive after they had been shot down into the North Sea by enemy pilots. Hubertus began his research by having his guinea pigs put in pressure chambers and testing their nitrogen levels after they stopped breathing. 

They were sealed into ice water vats or left outside in freezing temperatures and their demise was charted; they were boiled up in giant tubs and autopsied while they were still squealing and struggling in pain. 

Another trial team was starved and forced to drink sea water, and when they couldn’t, they were injected with the salty liquid and the results were charted.  The subjects were given a glucose medication and liver biopsies were done on them without anesthetics - the medicine and surgery left no survivors. 

The guinea pigs were locked inside of a portable air pressure chamber that simulated free falling from a high altitude without oxygen; some died and the rest were useless for further research so they were “put down.”  

Juvenile guinea pigs were placed in vacuum chambers to simulate the effects of high-altitude sicknesses and oxygen deprivation. The  rapid  decompression caused them to gasp and struggle for breath, convulse, their jaws twitched, their organs failed, the lining of their lungs tore, and blood bubbled through their eyes and ears and noses.

The thorough doctor detailed his freezing, falling, and suffocation findings and shared his charts and graphs with the other doctors; he said this was important medical information for future flights from the troposphere to the exosphere.

As the winners of the war marched toward Hubertus’ leader from all sides, scientists began to hide or burn their research notes and equipment, soldiers took off their uniforms, and the culpable tried to disappear from their consequences.  

The winners of the war decided they needed the scientists’ brilliant minds to establish new Middlewerks in their own countries so they could compete with each other in air and space and military operations.

The researchers were divided among the victors and they received housing and jobs with large salaries. They traveled to new homelands and several thousand scientists crossed the ocean and took a train to the desert to begin work.  

They stood on a bridge and were given visas; they walked over the bridge covering a stream of water they would not bother to call a river, and eventually became citizens of their new home. Their wives and children, sisters and brothers and parents were allowed to join them. 

Dr. Hubertus Strughold did quite well in his new digs. He wrote books and presented papers on topics like the “time of useful consciousness.”  He received accolades and awards, traveled the world and became known as the Father of Space Medicine in his new country far from his homeland of castles and rivers. 

Dr. Strughold met Walt Disney as they both sailed on the Queen Mary to England; they became good friends. He lunched with Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun, a fellow scientist from his homeland.  The governor of his new state invited him to his mansion and he rubbed shoulders with the rich and powerful.

 As his research continued, he developed a “Space Cabin Simulator,” a tiny space with an aircraft seat and an instrument panel. It had life support systems for closed loop cabin atmosphere maintenance and urine distillation pure enough to drink. Hubertus had learned how to keep the cabin pressure constant to keep an astronaut alive. 

After men were sent to the moon, the Doctor's portrait was put into a university’s stained glass window along with other notable scientists like Marie Curie; a library was named in his honor; he was a much requested dinner speaker. 

Dr. Strughold was declared the Father of Space Medicine in a shining gold space museum on a hill in the desert where he had first arrived in his new homeland.

When the space doctor was 71 years old, he married a pretty, blond, much younger, merry widow named Mary. They made each other’s lives very comfortable for the next 17 years, she with amenities in a comfortable home on her ranch, and he with the generous salary he received in his new homeland. He got a nurse and she got a purse.

It wasn’t until after the Doctor died peacefully at an old age, after his photograph was hung in the gold cube museum and a university and his name was put onto a library that his reputation began to crumble.

One day a museum visitor stood in front of the picture of the Father of Space Medicine.  He shivered and seemed to be gasping for breath.  The man had a number tattooed on his arm.  He recovered himself long enough to take a picture of the doctor’s picture and he hurried off to contact other people who also had numbers tattooed on their arms.

It seems that researchers in his old country of rivers and castles had discovered evidence that had not been burned or hidden and witnesses that still remembered names and faces.

The Doctor’s subjects had been guinea pigs metaphorically, but literally they were human beings - prisoners of war, gypsies, citizens of other nations, followers of other religions, and most frighteningly, children, who fit so perfectly in tiny research spaces. 

The Doctor’s picture was taken off the space museum wall, his stained glass portrait was painted over, and his name was chipped off the library. After his past actions were revealed and his legacy destroyed, a woman who worked with Dr. Strughold commented to the newspapers, “But he seemed like such a nice man.” 

“There are monsters among us. There always have been and there always will be,” Rob Thurman wrote  in his novel about survival, family, and hidden worlds and pasts of monstrous men.  We tend to forget that Frankenstein was actually the doctor, and not the creature who is never given a name.

Dr. Hubertus Strughold was brought to El Paso, Texas by the U.S. government during Operation Paperclip in 1947. A 1946 memorandum at the Nuremberg Trials listed Strughold as one of thirteen "persons, firms or individuals implicated" in war crimes committed at Dachau. His picture was removed from the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico in 2006.

La Luz, God, Gold, and Glory - Part I

There is some debate over the founding of La Luz, New Mexico. Some historians claim it was first established as a mission by Spanish Franciscan friars in the 1700s and called Nuestra Señora De La Luz (Our Lady of the Light). It seems plausible; Fray Diego de Santander was 110 miles north of La Luz in 1659 at the pueblo of Gran Quivira. The mission and pueblo dispersed in 1672 due to disease, drought, and Apache raids.

The Franciscans were diligent record-keepers and their archives are a dependable and important resource for historians; the friars documented their travels, geography, interactions between Spanish and Natives, births, baptisms, sacramental records of marriage, conversions, epidemics and deaths. No written evidence has been found that there was ever a mission at La Luz Canyon in the 1700s.

It can be argued that some of the first steps to establish the unincorporated village of La Luz may have begun with Juan Vázquez de Coronado, born as the second son into a noble family in Salamanca, Spain. The first noble son’s job was to preserve the wealth of the family; the second and following sons needed to either join the military, become priests, or seek their fortunes.

Coronado sought his fortune in New Spain (modern Mexico), and immediately found it on arrival by marrying the Governor’s twelve year old daughter.  His mother-in-law was from a Converso Jewish family.  During the Inquisition in Spain, Jews had three options: leave Spain, convert to Christianity, or be burned at the stake.

Coronado’s wife’s dowry was a large encomienda - a grand estate staffed with native workers who involuntarily labored for protection, food, and religious instruction. But the glory of being a wealthy landowner was not enough for Coronado.  

Spain had become the richest nation in the world by forcefully taking gold and silver from the Americas. Coronado mortgaged his encomienda to hunt for the gold that was rumored to be in the north.  

After encounters with the Zuni and Hopi pueblos, Coronado met a community of people in what is now the panhandle of Texas.  They were nomadic Apache buffalo hunters and gatherers. They were not awed nor impressed by the Spanish, their guns, nor their "big dogs" (horses). 

The hunters came out of their tipis to look at the men wrapped and hatted in metal sitting high on their “big dogs" and asked the Conquistadors who they were. The Apache encampment held several hundred tipis with more than a thousand people gathering together for at least this time of the year. 

Plains Tipis

Spanish Conquistadors

Coronado left the hunters and continued toward the Seven Cities of Gold in the geographic center of what is now the United States. The big cows (buffalos) were never out of their sight.  

The seven cities were straw-thatched villages with about two hundred houses near fields containing the Holy Trinity of corn, beans, and squash. A copper pendant was the only evidence of a precious metal the conquerors found.

Fray Francisco Juan de Padilla stayed in what is modern day Kansas to save souls and was eventually killed.  Two other men who stayed with the priest hightailed it back to Mexico City and told the story of the Father’s murder.  Fray Padilla became the first Catholic American protomartyr.  Fray Juan de la Cruz, who stayed behind at Tiguex Pueblo near modern day Bernalillo, New Mexico, suffered the same fateful end. 

Coronado traveled back to Mexico City where the royally titled and entitled “conqueror” continued to bankrupt his wife’s encomienda, the third largest in New Spain. He was the Governor of Nueva Galicia - present day states of Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Zacatecas.

Coronado encouraged others to go north by writing his own travel brochure about New Mexico: “The soil itself is the most suitable that has been found for growing all the products of Spain, for, besides being rich and black, it is well watered by arroyos, springs, and rivers. I found plums like those of Spain, roses, nuts, fine sweet grapes, and mulberries.”

Meanwhile, the people of the Great Plains began to see the value of those “big dogs” who had been making their way north without their Spanish riders. Bison could be hunted on horseback on a larger scale and feed more people. Horse technology allowed for raiding farming tribes quickly and efficiently - riders could swoop in at 30 mph and steal away with the ubiquitous corn, beans, and squash and perhaps a few women and children to serve as slaves until they integrated into the band. 

Horses also took on a military role: nomads could carry more gear, transport more food, and travois bigger tipis. The Apache, Navajo, Ute, Comanche and northern Plain tribes took to equines like teenagers to telephones.  While the Conquistadors were back in New Spain after their “failed” expedition, the Natives spent the next few years perfecting their hunting, raiding, and warring equestrian techniques. 

Alternately, King Phillip II was idly considering more ways to wring mass wealth out of the Americas.  Too much gold and silver, apparently, wasn’t enough for the richest monarch in the world. He appointed Don Juan de Oñate as the governor, captain general, caudillo, discoverer, and pacifier of New Mexico, a territory that had not yet been conquered. Oñate understood he must pay for this endeavor himself. 

 

Oñate Crest

Juan de Oñate was the affluent son of the Noble House of Haro, a Spanish-Basque Conquistador who had received a silver mine encomienda from the King. Oñate's mother, Doña Catalina Salazar y de la Cadena, was from a family of Jewish Conversos. 

Don Juan de Oñate married the granddaughter of Moctezuma, the Aztec ruler of Mexico, Isabel de Tolosa Cortés de Moctezuma, , who was also the granddaughter of Herán Cortés, conqueror of Mexico. Ironically, the etymology of the origin of the name Oñate is derived from the Basque word "oña" which originally meant “foot.”

Twenty-two years before the Mayflower left England, the entrada left for New Mexico to find riches for the Crown; 20% of any profits (the royal quinto) would be sent back to their blessed King.   The promise of titles, encomiendas, land grants to settle New Mexico, and adventure enticed Oñate to finance 400 soldiers, 130 families, 1000 head of cattle, 1000 head of sheep, and 150 mares on a quest across the Chihuahuan Desert dunes and up the trail by the Rio Bravo River. Franciscan Friars accompanied the settlers to peacefully convert the Natives to Christianity.

The first capital of New Mexico spanning two years was San Juan de Los Caballeros near Ohkay Owingeh at the fork of the Rio Grande and the Chama Rivers, but in 1610, the capital became La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asisi. Oñate sent out scouting parties in all directions to search for gold and silver, but they returned empty-handed. 

Without the gold or silver booty, the soldiers began to demand tribute from the Pueblos. 

The Acoma pueblo refused to contribute the food they had stored for winter and Oñate’s hungry army, armed with steel swords and armor, guns and horses, killed over 800 Acoma people, enslaved 500, and cut the left foot off of all men over the age of 25. 

Acoma Pueblo

Acoma Pueblo - Edward Curtis photo

    

The Franciscan friars got busy. By 1630 there were 25 Pueblo missions and 50 priests serving more than 60,000 Christianized Puebloans in 90 pueblos. Some of the outlying  pueblos were abandoned because of Apache and Navajo raids.  The conquistadors found the raiders on horseback difficult to control or capture to work on the encomiendas. 

Around 1675, there were signs that revolt against the Spanish was impending.  There was discord and quarreling between the missionaries and the military.  The priests believed the soldiers were there to protect the missions and they weren’t doing their jobs because missionaries and whole pueblos were being wiped out by the Apache and Navajo.

The military believed its jobs was to encourage laborers to labor when they were reluctant, inspire Puebloans to feed them and provide them with female company, to search for their own gold or silver, and to look for new workers who would involuntarily enjoy the encomiendas’  protection and religious instruction.

The friars and the medicine men also became quite contentious with each other.  It seems that most people were quite attached to their own native ceremonies and religion and not at all happy to see missionaries destroy sacred Pueblo objects and ceremonial sites. Medicine men were arrested, punished and sometimes killed for practicing “sorcery.”

The encomienda system seemed counter-productive.Brutal forced labor, exploitation, suffering, and pressuring Pueblos to work on their own lands to provide sustenance to their captors did not entice people to work well.  There were crop failures and food shortages and the Pueblo people believed their misfortune was a result of not practicing their own religion. 

It was becoming evident to the Governor that a conspiracy was afoot and he sent an appeal to Mexico to send more troops. Help did not arrive and the storm broke on August 10, 1680; the Pueblo Revolt was organized and led by Popé, a medicine man from San Juan Pueblo.

Pope' with knotted rope

Knotted ropes had been sent out to each Pueblo with instructions to untie one knot each day. When the last knot was untied, it was the day to exterminate the Spaniards, sparing no one - except a few women and girls who were kept as captives.

The Spanish settlers south of Santa Fe were warned in time to escape, but those in the north-east and west perished to the tune of over 400 people and 21 missionaries. Santa Fe, with its population of 1000, was besieged for nearly a week by 3000 Puebloans. 

The Spaniards evacuated New Mexico and headed south to the Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe del Rio del Norte de los Mansos in present-day Juárez near Paso del Norte, the pass between the mountains that led into New Spain.

On their way south, the fleeing Spanish took refuge at the Isleta Tiguan Pueblo near Albuquerque. The Tiguans had not participated in the revolution and many joined with the survivors on their journey to El Paso del Norte. Some historians argue that the Isleta Tiguans were hostages taken to insure the Spanish wouldn’t be attacked.

They stopped again in Socorro to regroup - the mixed entourage now included Spanish, Isleta Tigua, Piro, Tompiro, Tano, and Jemez  Pueblo refugees and hostages. 

Almost two thousand people were escorted down the trail that followed alongside  the Rio Bravo by a Spanish supply train. Rebels shadowed the retreat from the north but did not attack the escapees. 

The King of Spain gave the Tiguas a new home beside the Rio Grande, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo. They were under the charge of friars of the Church of Corpus Christi de los Tiguas en el Reino de la Nueva Mexico de el Distrito de el Paso Canton Bravos. 

Likewise, the  Piro, Tanos, and Jemez Indians fleeing the Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico were given a land grant at Socorro del Sur under priests at the Nuestra Señora de la Limpia Concepción de los Piros de Socorro del Sur.

The missions at Ysleta, San Antonio de Senecú, San Elizario, San Lorenzo, and Socorro were established for the pueblos and can be visited today.  Although the tribe is federally recognized, the State of Texas has been contentious with the pueblo, removing their gambling license and implying they were more of a community than a tribe (for the last 300 years after moving to their present location).

Twelve years after the Pueblo Revolt, the King of Spain worried that the French might be encroaching on New Mexico and sent Diego de Vargas back in to re-conquer the Pueblos and re-settle the Spanish settlers.  It was messy, people died on both sides, but concessions were made.

Spain’s best accidental weaponry was infectious disease; 95% of the indigenous population died or would die from smallpox, measles or influenza because of the lack of immunity in Native populations. The catastrophic death rates led to societal chaos and many tribes were completely wiped out. 

The pueblos were also consistently raided by the Apache, Ute, and Navajos; the Spaniards and Puebloans developed an uneasy truce with each other to allow the Spanish soldiers to keep them safe. Most of the missions were reestablished; some of the people from the missions in the south went back north to their original homelands. 

The presidio system began and individual citizens and territorial militias known as "vecinos," or neighbors, were common on the frontier. Locals armed themselves however they could with rocks,  bows and arrows, lances, spears, or if they were lucky, a firearm. Their personal dwellings or a community building often incorporated some type of fortification. 

Meanwhile, the King of Spain noticed that declining output and increased smuggling of gold and silver were affecting his bottom line.  The price of goods from the colonies were cheap and goods made in Spain began to be heavily taxed to make up the difference. 

Industries were not being  developed since cheap imports were available.  Entrepreneurs who became successful in New Spain returned and bought their way up the social ladder by buying titles from the King.  They became wealthy enough to remove themselves from the productive sector of the economy.

Wages of craftsmen, builders, and food producers were at a stable low level causing the middle class in Spain to diminish. Their tax burden to keep the King flush led to the decrease of living standards and marriage rates decreased in Spain. Support for the safety and infrastructure of the New Spain colony was minimal. 

Spain restricted New Mexico’s ability to do business with the neighboring United States and only allowed trade internally and with Spain.  Smuggling was persistent. New Spain became tired of the Crown’s abuses and launched the Mexican War of Independence. In 1821, 300 years of Spanish rule ended and New Mexico became a territory of Mexico. 

Farming communities developed along the Camino Real and Rio Grande and when populations grew too large, or when there were conflicts and disagreements, or there were ecological factors like flooding, drought, land or water scarcity, groups could petition the alcalde (mayor) to open new farmland for the spin-off group. This dynamic, known as "fission-fusion," is a flexible social strategy that helps balance cooperation with competition. 

Some of the settlers were feeling the fission-fusion pressure and received permission to establish a community about six miles north of Socorro. Word of the good farm land spread and several families from Albuquerque, Belen and Tomé joined the new village of Lemitar. They were pioneer and conquistador descendants of Armijo, Chavez, Gonzales, Vigil, Lopez, Sanchez, Romero, and the Santillañes families.  

Lemitar’s population in 1846 was a little over 400 residents.  Governor Manuel Armijo was the last Mexican governor of New Mexico.  After surrendering New Mexico to Gen. Kearny in 1846 during the Mexican-American war,  when the United State stole 55% of Mexico fair and square, Armijo was arrested and sent to Mexico City for cowardice and deserting in the face of the enemy. 

Lemitar Church

     He was acquitted of the charges after proving his 400 Mexican soldiers  were no match against the 1,500 well-armed Americans that entered Santa Fe. He said he surrendered to spare the bloodshed of the Santa Feans. After his acquittal, Manuel Armijo returned to his family farm and ranch in Lemitar east of the church. He farmed and ranched on his property east of the Lemitar church. 

Governor Manuel Armijo

There is a strong local legend of buried treasure related to the governor. One version states that upon his return from Mexico, Manuel Armijo buried a chest of gold Mexican coins somewhere on his property. It was reported that he did not retrieve the buried treasure before he died and his brother looked for years for the buried Mexican gold coins. Another version of the story is that his brother, Juan, found the gold and reburied it across the Rio Grande near his home in Sabino.

In 1860, Lemitar’s population of nearly 800 people outnumbered Socorro's 523 residents.  Persistent flooding convinced a group of families to try their luck across the San Andres Mountains south of the new settlement of Tularosa. The families traveled across the Tularosa Basin to the mouth of a canyon where figs and fruits and black walnuts grew.  

Jose Manuel Gutierrez was one of the men who led the families south and east.  They built a defensive wall, La Muralla, to defend against the Apache who hunted in the mountains that shadowed them from thousands of feet above.  The people who founded La Luz took 400 years to get there.  Their DNA is a roadmap from Spain - thousands of miles traveled for God, Glory and Gold.

(note: I recently worked with a friend from Dona Ana, New Mexico on her ancestry.  The twenty some generations we traced to Spain was a history lesson that included Spanish royalty, Jewish Conversos, conquistadors, ranchers, farmers, Lipan Apache, and Pueblo).

To be continued…