Getting a factual biography out of the enigmatic Miss Etta Diem is near impossible. The only facts that are clear is that she was born along time ago and now lives in a very large old Victorian house that as been partially converted into a cafe and dry goods shop. A good many of the Archive staff and students find their way to Etta’s shop for the unique to malicious items that she offers. You too can visit her shop and enjoy the various things to be found there…

Etta Diem’s Attic Shop: ettadiem.etsy.com
Etta Diem’s Journal: ettadiem.livejournal.com

Etta Diem’s Attic Shop is a part of the Etsy’s Dark Side Street Team

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519 Providence Road… this is where I live.

The area is relatively secluded along this portion of Providence Road, as most of the people who have found residency here want to remain undisturbed. About five miles up the road is Etta Diem’s place, where there is the occasional swelling of living folk. Past her, about another ten miles is the Archive, what one would call a specialized type of university. In the other direction are a few homes, all belonging to eccentrics that surpass any of the people being boarded here. Did I mention that? Yes, 519 Providence Road is a very large old Victorian house that a sweet little old woman by the name of Miss Emma runs as a boarding house. All in all, I like the patch of earth I call home, just as I like the people I call my house mates and neighbors.

Today one of those patrons of this road has come to call on me. This is who I’m interacting with presently. I just mentioned her, this is Etta.

“No one was home. Can you believe that?! In a boarding house with half a country living in it and no one was here to pick up a package!”

I adore Etta, so I don’t correct her here. The boarding house only gives room and board to a handful of people, and most of them are the type who will never answer the bell of the front door. This being the case, it never surprises me that Etta ends up with most of our deliveries.

“So anyway, open it up! Let’s see what’s in there.” She exclaims.

Have I ever written about Etta? Yes, at length and under the disguise of many different character names, but one can never write enough about the truly, naturally eccentric Etta.

What is the current date? It honestly escapes me, but this is of no consequence. Whatever the year may be, Etta looks like someone caught a hundred years behind it. She’s told me the year of her birth, and being of an astronomer’s, and subsequently a mathematician’s mind, I know she cannot naturally look her age having claimed birth at such a date. So I hold most things in relation to her to be relative. All thing concerning Etta are relative to Etta, and keeping this in mind nothing that springs from her mouth ever unsettles me.

“Open up!” She squeals. And this I do.

A box sits before me, one that was dropped off at Etta’s cafe and dry goods store instead of my home. Chances are she has already looked inside of the package and sealed it up, or else she wouldn’t have stayed around to see my reaction to it.

I open the box to find a slightly smaller wooden box within the parcel. Taking this from the cardboard box I open it, feeling almost like someone toying with Russian Dolls. But no smaller box greets me within the wooden box. Instead I find a multi stacked box of velvet lined shelves that hold small scissors. Scissors that look as though an artist set to them.

Etta lets out a small whistle to show her appreciation. This more than anything tells me she took a peek into the package before bringing it to me. I stare at the first display of five specialty scissors that are adored with very intricate detailing resembling insects.

“They’re beautiful!” Etta exclaims.

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She is believed to be a former student, and a meddling self-appointed paranormal investigator, hell bent on incriminating our fine institution – possibly in retaliation for her grants being pulled, being expelled, or possibly being turned into a twisted and ugly ichtheosapien. Which, we are not quite sure.

We ask that all strange parties (other than our usual breed of ‘strange’) spotted in any sensitive area (that would be most everywhere), be immediately reported to our excutives through the proper artifacts or the most convenient ceremony.

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Babel-Jean and her brother lived a very hard life with their single mother. Originally Josephine lived in a sparse fishing community on the New England coast. This was the type of community were superstition and gossip ruled the common folk rather than hard logic and reason. Because Josephine was well liked in the community, and the Tea family well respected, gossip about the young unwed mother did not delve into the area of promiscuous behavior or an affair that ended in the birth of the twins. Instead many of the townsfolk whispered about Josephine’s unhealthy fascination with the sea and the myths associated with it. Many of the older townsfolk remembered a very young Josephine who liked to tell sea based faerie tales and who wanted to convince everyone she was actually a selkie instead of a little girl. The preposterous idea was spread that Josephine had spent too much time looking into the salty waters and finally garnered the attention of the creatures all the fishermen knew lurked out there. So instead of Josephine finding herself the talk of rude whispers and back room conversations, the foul tales focused more on her strange, babbling twins. Josephine was seen as a woman to be pitied for so foolishly trusting the sea when fishermen knew the sea was not to be trusted. The result of her foolishness and her punishment was the two fatherless children that never seemed to weigh enough or look anything but pale.

Josephine Tea eventually tired of this type of talk and the cruel attention many of the townsfolk directed at her children. Before her twins were old enough to enter school, she packed up and quietly left town in the middle of the night. She found her way inland, finding sweatshop like work at a factory deep within the town of Boston.

Babel-Jean’s young life in Boston is not very well known to her fellow Archive staff. She has a memoir she penned, but has entrusted it to an unknown staff member with instructions that it only be published after her death. Her fussy nature and severe need to follow rules has prompted many of the Archive staff to conclude that Babel-Jean is quite a bore and probably spent much of her life in the rigid environment of the sweatshops like her mother. They reason that her lack of a true childhood before being thrust into the stressful academic world played a big part in her evolution into strict old maid. But contrary to this opinion (and the assertion by most younger Archive staff that she is old as dirt and acts it) Babel-Jean led a very colorful life in Boston that saw her privilege to very unusual things that would come to dominate her academic choices of study.

Only one intern was ever privilege to a Babel-Jean less guarded. On a very nice spring evening, after helping Babel-Jean complete a full sweep of a series of rare books on ancient diseases, said intern managed to goad his elder into a glass of wine. That was followed by another, and then just one more, till the young intern found himself on the roof of the east wing of the Archive toasting the bright spring moon with a very drunk Babel-Jean. The intern claims that this spirits filled old woman lost all control of her tongue and told him a great many tales. She spoke of her father who was indeed some sort of creature that came from the sea. She spoke of the attic she went into that belonged to an old doctor. In there she found vial after vial labeled with names of ailments she’d never heard of. And she shed tears when she told him the story of her dead twin brother. She spoke of a phantom radio broadcast he was obsessed with and shortly after he claimed to have found it, he disappeared.

The following day no one believed the stories the intern told. This group of scholars could believe in the elder gods and creatures that would put your brain in a special canister and sweep it away to Pluto, but they couldn’t believe that Babel-Jean Tea Hymn had ever been young or exciting. Sadly said intern was killed in a freak library accident a few days later. The gossip died with him.

In her everyday role at the Archive, Babel-Jean heads the Rare Diseases and Archaic Germs Department, using much of her time to study bugs and ailments that no one has ever heard of. She’s currently working on her first book, a complete collection of these diseases. She is one of the Elder Staff members and takes her responsibilities as such very seriously. She is an obsessive memo writer, using them as a means to crack the whip and always remind her fellow Archive staff of what is and isn’t appropriate.

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However, were he to say, step into the light, or the darkness, or whatever force might be calling him away from us, we would bear him no grudge whatsoever, and though it might be hard for us, we would find some way to muddle through it. This, especially because on the other side of the light would be many wondrous things, all the iced cream he could eat, another world, anxiously awaiting a great and forgiving man such as himself - which would certainly be something much much better than haunting the corridors of our university or hanging around his dusty laboratory.

In fact, should he, in his great wisdom, come to the realization that he is in fact dead, we would probably be compelled to build a wing on the archives in his name, erect a statue, and perhaps even fund a moving picture about his adventures and exploits in his great honor – especially should he sign a simple waiver, agreeing not to be summoned by any members of other colleges, or law enforcement representatives.

However, until then, and after, he will always be regarded as the greatest professor ever to grace this establishment, and an all-around spectacular example of learning and of wisdom.

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Prior to joining Miskatonic, for over 10 years he ran the Graduate Program in Blame Assignment at Paradigm Corporate Synergy University, Death Valley NM,  From 1820-1870.  He was also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Dark and Spooky Things, Birmingham, U.K.

His research and teaching activities have focused on issues of Better Living through Dark Wizardry, and Mishandled Artifact Disaster Management. His research themes include impending doom and eldritch sigil risk factors for workers. 

His hobbies include tinkering with and disassembly of unknown objects, breaking strange seals, and reading cryptic passages from mysterious tomes in order to better see if anything happens.

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Dunwich Horror spend some time back in otherworldly dimension due to malicious smelly old man banish dunwich horror from planet of earth.

After return to earth, Dunwich horror want only be left alone to chomp and crunch and smush invisibly, and urges concerned humans of earth to protect horror from evil staff at Miskatonic Archive.

Dunwich Horror likes in free time smushing and crunching, but also like collect conifers and possums for use in decopage.

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