Curio Number One: The Tempest Shell

Happened upon in a shallow, fetid tide pool on a small, nameless island off of the western coast of Iceland, the Tempest Shell is an incredible natural wonder, unique to this collection and absolutely priceless.

It was discovered in 1891 by a Captain Arnar Fjalarson, an Icelandic privateer and ex-missionary who used the nameless island as a supply hold for his ship, the Sigur. Captain Fjalarson routinely walked the beaches of his tiny island, amassing quite a large personal collection of shells, starfish and other marine curiosities. (Amongst the other items in his possession were the now lost Twin Trumpeter Oysters and Arnold Richter's famed Black Glass Sand Dollar.) Fjalarson originally housed the pieces in a small shanty museum in the tiny seaside of community of Reykhólar. After reportedly running afoul of a mysterious Norwegian expatriate, Fjalarson sold the Sigur and the bulk of his collection to an American collector named Harold Regis Price. Fjalarson took that money and relocated his family (his wife and two mute sons) to Oxford, England, where they all tragically perished in a nighttime house fire some months later. The Tempest Shell, the crown jewel of Fjalarson's museum was not one of the items the Captain had sold to Price, although Price did manage to acquire it through an agent that had purchased it at the Fjalarson estate sale.

Although Fjalarson's thoughts on the Shell are lost, Price's notes upon its acquisition are still intact. In 1899 he wrote of it, "This object, above all else, is what I had longed for in the Icelander's possessions. My disappointment in noting its absence, a fault of translation (but mostly my own ignorance) was nothing short of devastation. Still, in the demise of the good Captain and his family, a beacon of luck has shone upon me. And while I feel obliged to mourn his loss, and never wished the man a whit of ill fortune, I cannot help but take note of what blessing has been bestowed upon me. This item is of rare beauty, to be sure, but the quality of it rests not in that glorious, glassy pink and blue variegation of the conch, but instead in the power that resides in this nautical wonder. I have seen it work, time and time again, and there is no doubt that, however imbued with the power, it does in fact operate like a damned magical device."

Sadly, Price was never again able to write further about the Shell, and it is never further mentioned in his journals. Whatever magical properties the Shell seemed to be possessed of, Price never got around to articulate them. He suffered a severe stroke shortly after acquiring the Tempest Shell. He lingered for years as a virtual vegetable, although his nurse, Miss Cloris Ostram reported that he seemed to "perk up, or be agitated, in the presence of his beloved and overly expensive seashell." Miss Ostram inherited the Shell when Price passed away in 1906 but quickly sold it to Herschel Hart's Traveling Museum of Wonders based in Ohio.

The Tempest Shell, an iridescent pink and electric blue nautilus shell, emits a faint hum, only audible when its protective bell jar casing is removed. Many viewers have complained of muscle aches, blurred vision and migraines after seeing the Shell. Nearly everyone who encounters the Tempest Shell relates having a vague memory of a sort of music box chiming melody for weeks afterward. There is undoubtedly a strange aura surrounding the thing, but its particular powers are only visited upon a portion of those who come across it.

Herschel Hart and his wife, Eliza, were two of the unlucky ones affected by the Tempest Shell. Upon the Traveling Museum of Wonders' acquisition of the Shell, Eliza Hart was overtaken with waking dreams and hallucinations of horrible storms of thunder and lightning, especially when near her husband. Herschel had similar visions of tsunamis and hurricanes of increasing intensity when around his wife. These visions, initially recognizable to the Harts as fabrications, slowly began to seem more real to the couple. Herschel Hart, in a frantic, scratched handwriting says (in a letter postmarked December 3, 1906, approximately six weeks after he acquired the Shell), "I can't begin to decipher the truth of these damned storms. It continues, with the forest now fallen to the winds and the whole of the town ripped to its anchors... but I'm assured by my kin and my friends that the losses are all in my mind. But what are they trusting but their eyes? Are my eyes somehow more easily deceived? How can any of us be sure that it isn't I seeing the truth while the others turn blindly away from the deadly grip of blasted nature?" Eliza expresses similar frustrations in a letter to her mother sent that very same week. It was quite brief. "Mother, this lightning shall kill me," was all it said.

The constant howl of these hallucinatory winds and the ever-present threat of imaginary lightning was, understandably, very maddening. Herschel, eventually realizing that the storms were worse in the presence of his wife, sequestered himself in a small toolshed on the back of his property. Still, even diminished, the storms seemed to continue. He took to writing his thoughts in black paint on the walls of his new quarters. The toolshed, on the Harts' old property in Brook Park Ohio, is owned, now, by a young man named Edward Morris. Mister Morris took photographs of the black painted scrawl on the walls of the shed, but painted over the writing because it made him uneasy. The words in the Polaroid snapshots are not always clear, but much of it can be deciphered.

"Even moved I still am afraid the howl Far away has been [?] better but still afraid I must go but to [indecipherable] This worry anguish and loss of Eliza She worries and we just [unsure of word, but usually transcribed as "need" or "know"] time IS crawled... to KILL us. Where I must go but to hide cowards!!! to hide In it OH ELIZA, love, you knew all along."

Eliza Hart eventually starved to death in her own home. She ceased writing in her diary weeks before she passed away, but the indication is clear. She was so terrified of the "storms" outside that she was afraid to leave her home. When she was found, every scrap of food, every can, every jar had been consumed. Herschel Hart disappeared without a trace. The property and his Museum were both considered abandoned. Hart's items, including the Tempest Shell, was assumed by Hart's cousin, Glenn Myers, who sold it, piece by piece at a Chicago auction house, where it was purchased, for a large sum, for this collection.

Further research into the Tempest Shell's history revealed that the Harts were not alone in their hallucinated storms or their growing terror. A trip to Reykhólar revealed, through the kindness of the villagers, several near identical tales, involving, over the course of seven years, seven distinct couples falling under the spell of the same malady. The locals understandably assumed something in their environs had driven the couples insane, but nobody could pinpoint a cause. The names of all seven couples were, however, found in the guest book of Arnar Fjalarson's museum.

Nurse Ostram, too, makes passing references in her diaries to a Mister and Missus Ebenezer Dolan, who, after visiting Harold Regis Price (while in the possession of the Tempest Shell), complained of similar frightening visions. Records show that Ebenezer Dolan took his own life approximately a year after his encounter with the Tempest Shell. His wife, Clarissa Dolan, was admitted to the Whispering Woods Asylum in New York State in 1902, her complaints matching those of the Harts and the Icelandic couples' perfectly.

There may be more unrevealed victims of the Shell, and it is, in fact, recommended that couples do not view the piece. The specifics of how the Tempest Shell works are under investigation, but the circumstantial evidence is too voluminous to deny. The Shell obviously has a power to it, some sort of radiation that affects only particular people. Still, in that aspect, it is a much coveted curio, and a valued piece of the collection.