AIR Update #7: The End
I believe we have reached the end of Cyrus’ and Niklaus’ documented story in the form of 2 short letters and a telegram. While I’ve transcribed them all and posted them here, there’s not much to say about the content itself. Cyrus responds to Niklaus’ cheeky love letter, clearly before receiving Niklaus’ note about the creature. He then sends another message to Niklaus asking where he is and clarifying if he should come down or if Niklaus is going through with his plan to leave Cincinnati. The telegram simply reads:
N, I am coming for you. I will see you by tonight. I am hurrying.
-Anchor
Acquisition #0831-1275, a telegraph presumably from Cyrus to Niklaus
The most confusing thing to me about Cyrus’ initial reply is referencing Rookwood Pottery. The final piece of this exchange gives us a date – 1875. Cyrus mentions finding Niklaus’ hidden letter in his luggage next to a pair of Rookwood vases he just bought, but Rookwood wasn’t founded until 1880. We know Maria Longworth was making pottery well before its official founding, so perhaps she was using the moniker before then, but it seems unlikely as Rookwood would probably have that published somewhere in their history.
Mount Lookout is a fun nod to astronomical history, as it’s the oldest observatory in the United States. “Uranians” was an obscure term for gay men in the 19th century, though given what we know about these men, it may not necessarily be accurate – Uranians tended to be more focused on classical Greco-Roman practices, which does not seem to be the case for these men.
Digging through what is currently on premises, this seems to be the end of their story. I’m hoping this means that they reunited and never needed to write letters ever again. So many stories like this in history end this way – without a single trace of their actual endings. This is why preserving diaries and letters, even from seemingly inconsequential people like these two, is so important. I think I now understand why the historical society has held onto these letters so closely since their founding.
Upon digitizing and transcribing the final letters, I’ve been graciously given a break from those duties to pursue my creative practice surrounding this narrative. I started by working a bit more into the previous renderings of the creature through collage and drawing to get a better sense of what this thing may have looked like. I will be doing some more digging in the coming months to see if I can find any other sightings of the creature in the area – perhaps this is a lesser known cryptid that has been seen throughout the years? Most likely, Niklaus had a nervous breakdown, saw a spiritualist that made things worse, then left to rejoin his lover elsewhere.
For the next update, I’ll have a final version of the sound and animation as well as an exciting announcement on behalf of the historical society, so keep an eye out for that update in two weeks.
Neil Daigle Orians • Archivist-in-Residence
this is not the end, professor, but we all know that.
