Interview with Douglas Henslowe
INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS HENSLOWE:
Mr Henslowe was brought into the room clean shaven, with good posture, if in the need of a good haircut. He is an older man and a bit out of shape, which is unsurprising.
He was a bit fuzzy on some details (probably a result of the continual medication, and therapies which encourage him to both discourage and deny the occurrences), beginning with that there were 4 or 5 of them total, who travelled the country on the trail of a cult they had discovered. He quite proudly described their merry band as true investigators, questioning people and gathering evidence, even taking pictures “like detectives”.
Mr Henslowe described the group as “armed” with secret knowledge of the occult, and found it a terribly exciting time. Mr Winston, he describes, as a businessman, who made good money, and acted as their leader. It was Walter who gathered them together, to battle the perversity of this cult. Mr Henslowe repeatedly referred to Walter Winston as “a good man”, whilst also expressing his disappointment that Mr Winston had abandoned him, left him here, and cut off all communication.
He said their group “followed the drugs” (their method for tracking the cult) all the way to Los Angeles, where they conducted the bulk of their investigation. He said LA was also “where everything terrible happened” (i.e., the location of the incident), where it “all went wrong”.
In addition to Mr Winston, they were also accompanied by one Vincent Stack aka “the fixer”, who came in gun first and liked to drink. Mr Stack was the one who waded in with a shotgun and “brought Hell” to some of those cultists. They were also accompanied by a Katherine Clark, a “sharp girl” and archivist – the camerawoman who took most of their notes. She hated the idea that something like that cult could exist, in the underbelly of America. She got close enough to take photographs – and it was she who figured out what would be happening that night “at that barn”. According to Mr Henslowe, she died that night.
The fifth member (now we know) was an F.C. Kullman, known far and wide as an occult expert, an American who did a lot of his own digging. He was the man we’d heard referred to as in a wheelchair, and – according to Mr Henslowe – also died that night. Douglas described F.C. Kullman as being stuck in a wheelchair, but with a real can-do attitude; and unfortunately a sitting duck during the incident.
Walter, he said, was the brains; he and Kullman did the research about what they were planning (“the summoning”), and figured they were using the drug money to fund their operation. They determined that the cult was planning to summon some dreadful thing with a thousand mouths (or some incarnation of it) in the barn that night. Walter had also said something about “the stars being right” that night.
When they rushed in, they were surprised at just how many cultists were there. But they were “prepared” (with bombs and guns) to save the world. Then came the horrific fire, the shootout, and “that thing” began tearing people apart. He confessed to shooting some people that night, that in the heat of a moment like that you forget they’re still people.
And then “the thing came for us”. Walter panicked, he saw it in his face. And so Douglas ran.
Mr Henslowe confirmed he’d written it all down in a journal, and hidden it away with a secret key. He gave us permission to retrieve it, and a letter for Frank Hickering (of whom Dr Keaton had never heard) whom he said we should contact at his mother’s estate. He remembers spending some time there (the timing does correspond with letters and references to the journal), and seems to recall some unpleasant memories of that time. His mother, he said, would not have fond memories of his last visit.
The last bit we got from Mr Henslowe was a reference to symbols of protection. He said to check the walls, that you have to know how to put the symbols there.
Might this explain the strange symbols in Walter Winston’s office? I’m certainly intrigued to investigate these symbols further.
