Beyond the Veil Magazine

The Sleeping Pharaoh: A Midnight Novelty Mystery

Issue #31: July 1981

The following letter arrived at our offices in April, prompted by our recent coverage of cursed objects. Mrs Whitfield contacted us by telephone shortly afterwards, and we were able to verify certain details of her account through independent enquiry. What she describes aligns disturbingly with other reports we have received concerning a company that operated, briefly and mysteriously, in the early 1960s. Her letter is reproduced here with her permission, followed by the results of our own investigation.

Dear Dr Ashworth,

I have never written to a magazine before, and I am not certain I should be writing to this one now. But I read your recent article on cursed objects, and I found I could no longer keep silent about something that happened to me nineteen years ago. I was nine years old. I have not spoken of it to anyone, not even my husband, until now.

In the spring of 1962, my uncle returned from a business trip to America. He brought back various things for the family, and for me he had a small stack of American comic books. Horror comics, mostly. They were not the sort of thing my parents would have approved of, but my uncle had always been the mischievous one, and he slipped them to me with a wink.

I devoured them. The stories were wonderfully dreadful, full of monsters and walking corpses and things that came in the night. But what fascinated me most were the advertisements in the back pages. Page after page of miraculous items available by post: X-ray spectacles, hypnotic devices, live sea creatures that would grow into underwater kingdoms. To a nine-year-old girl in Bristol, these seemed like genuine magic.

One advertisement was different from the others.

It was smaller, tucked into a corner, and the illustration was not the crude cartoon style of the other adverts. This one showed a detailed drawing of a pendant in the shape of a pharaoh’s head. The text promised that anyone who spoke the sacred words whilst holding the amulet in darkness would witness something impossible. No further explanation. Just that promise, and a post office box address in Connecticut.

I saved my pocket money for three months. I told no one. When I finally had enough, I wrapped the coins carefully, wrote out the order form in my neatest handwriting, and posted it. Then I waited.

The parcel arrived in August. It was smaller than I expected, wrapped in brown paper with American stamps and no return address beyond the post office box number. Inside was the amulet itself, heavy and cold, on a thin cord meant to be worn around the neck. There was also a single sheet of paper with instructions. The words to be spoken. The requirement of absolute darkness. The ritual.

I performed it that night, alone in my bedroom after my parents had gone to sleep.

I do not wish to describe what happened. I am not certain I could describe it even if I wished to. I will say only this: something changed. The amulet changed. And in that moment of change, I understood that I had done something terribly wrong. That I had invited something I did not understand into my life, into my home, into myself.

I tore it from my neck. I do not remember if I screamed or if the scream stayed trapped inside me.

I buried it that same night. My grandmother lived with us then, and her garden backed onto ours. I crept out in the dark, found a spot beneath her roses, and dug a hole with my bare hands. I buried the amulet as deep as I could manage, and I never spoke of it again.

For nearly two decades I convinced myself it had been a dream, a childhood fancy. But reading your article, I knew it was not. Other objects exist that carry the same wrongness. Other children, perhaps, were not as fortunate as I was. Other children may not have had the instinct to stop.

I do not know if writing this letter serves any purpose. The amulet is gone, buried beneath what is now the Hartcliffe housing estate. My grandmother passed away in 1971, and the old house was demolished three years later. Whatever I put in that ground lies under concrete now, beyond anyone’s reach.

Perhaps that is for the best.

I remain,

Margaret Whitfield (née Crawford) Bristol

Following receipt of Mrs Whitfield’s letter, our staff undertook an investigation into the Midnight Novelty Company. What we discovered suggests that Mrs Whitfield’s experience, far from being unique, may be one of several similar accounts.

The company appears to have operated from a Connecticut post office box between approximately 1960 and 1964. Unlike the major novelty outfits that advertised extensively, Midnight Novelty placed only a handful of advertisements across its brief existence. These appeared in obscure publications: short-lived horror magazines, regional comics with limited circulation, underground fanzines that have since vanished from record. The few advertisements that have survived are notable for their unusual specificity.

We located a collector in Leeds who claims to have tracked down three other Midnight Novelty products over the past decade. Each, he reports, came with disturbing accounts attached. We have been unable to independently verify his claims, and he has declined to allow examination of the items themselves.

In 1964, the Midnight Novelty Company ceased all operations. No final advertisements, no forwarding address, no explanation. They had operated so quietly that their disappearance went largely unnoticed.

Our attempts to locate the site of Mrs Whitfield’s grandmother’s garden were unsuccessful. The Hartcliffe estate was constructed in the early 1970s, and the original property boundaries no longer exist. Whatever Mrs Whitfield buried in 1962 now lies somewhere beneath the foundations of the estate.

We do not know what Mrs Whitfield experienced that night in her childhood bedroom. We know only that she has carried it with her for nearly two decades, and that she found the courage to share it with our readers. If any other former customers of the Midnight Novelty Company wish to come forward, we would be most interested to hear from them.