The name of the Devil Town in season 2 of X-Files is Milford Haven, and this “fictional” town is located in the very real state of New Hampshire. Why is this significant? Well, in this post at the other blog, I point out Aleister Crowley’s New Hampshire connection, so I wasn’t surprised when the name of the high school first came on screen: CROWLEY High School. Yeah, subtle.

The Wikipedia entry for this episode mentions this reference, along with another name that jumped out at me for a different reason, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Some of the names used in this episode are popular culture or in-references of some sort. Crowley High School, the setting for most of the action, is a reference to British occultist Aleister Crowley. Mrs. Paddock’s name was based on the toad demon Paddock in the first scene of Shakespeare’s play MacBeth.

Does the surname PADDOCK sound familiar? It sounded familiar to me, so checked online and sure enough Stephen PADDOCK was the man who authorities claimed opened fire from a hotel room in Las Vegas. Here is the Wikipedia summary of that strange event, notice the number of attendees at the concert (emphasis mine):

Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer who perpetrated the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. Paddock opened fire into a crowd of about 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 60 people and injuring approximately 867 (at least 413 of whom were wounded by gunfire). Paddock killed himself in his hotel room following the shooting. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in United States history. Paddock’s motive remains officially undetermined, and the possible factors are the subject of speculation.

Going back to X-Files, the title of the episode uses a German word, Verletzt, which means to be hurt or injured. One of the girls in the episode who attends Crowley High School has clearly been hurt by her step-father, and starts remembering what happened to her. She mentions “American Stonehenge“, so I looked it up and found some very interesting connections, including an echo of the pet-name Agent Scully’s father has for her, which is STARBUCK. I’ll get to the relevance of this name after the excerpt (emphasis mine):

America’s Stonehenge is a privately owned tourist attraction and archaeological site consisting of a number of large rocks and stone structures scattered around roughly 30 acres (12 hectares) within the town of Salem, New Hampshire, in the United States. It is open to the public for a fee as part of a recreational area which includes snowshoe trails and an alpaca farm.

A number of hypotheses exist as to the origin and purpose of the structures. One viewpoint is a mixture of land-use practices of local farmers in the 18th and 19th centuries and construction of structures by owner William Goodwin, an insurance executive who purchased the area in 1937. Some claim that the site has a pre-Columbian European origin, but this is regarded as pseudoarchaeological. Archaeologist David Starbuck has said: “It is widely believed that Goodwin may have ‘created’ much of what is visible at the site today.”

So, the name WILLIAM pops up again, along with STARBUCK. Nice. And what is the significance of Starbuck? It’s a reference to Moby Dick because Starbuck is the name of Ahab’s trusty first mate, who is commonly seen as representing the rational part of the human psyche.

I continued reading the Wikipedia entry and another name jumped out at me, but this connection is a personal/local one. The name with a dark Missoula echo comes from the first time this “Mystery Hill” site shows up in print in 1907 as “Jonathan Pattee’s Cave. This is what was printed in 1907:

Jonathan Pattee’s Cave. He had a house in these woods 70 years ago; took town paupers before the town farm was bought. This is a wild but beautiful spot, among rough boulders and soft pines, about which the most weird and fantastic tale might be woven. There are several caves still intact, which the owner used for storage purposes.

And this is what comes after the historical excerpt:

Many believe that Pattee built the site in the nineteenth century, and no unequivocal pre-Columbian European artifacts have been found there.

American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft was an enthusiast for New England megalith sites, and he visited Mystery Hill sometime between 1928 and the 1930s.

Great, now we have Lovecraft entering the picture. That feels appropriate considering the Missoula connection, which is the name of the canyon where the body of Charlie Ann Wyrick was found in 2015–PATTEE Canyon. The personal connection is what I was told about the Sheriff Deputy who found the body, but considering the source, I’ll have to save that story for another day.

Why do these strange Missoula tie-ins keep popping up? I don’t know, but as I hunt my own giant whale, I’ll try to remain cautious of the rough seas ahead!