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920s Investigator Name Harry PattersonOccupationJournalist Sex M Age 36Colleges, Degrees Miskatonic University, BABirthplace Salem, MAMental Disorders Monomania (Cult conspiracies)
Born in Salem, MA, in 1886, Henry Patterson only ever wanted to write. At 16, he managed
to start working as a cub reporter for the Salem Gazette until, at 25, he took a job on the
City desk at the Boston Herald . By 1917, Patterson - Harry to his many friends - was fully
expected to win a Pulitzer Prize, but then the Herald was bought by Randolph Hearst, a man many serious journalists - Patterson included – despised, and so he quit.
With the USA now drawn into the Great War, Patterson signed up and won a commission
as a captain with Pershing's Expeditionary Force and saw action against the Austrian Army
at Meuse-Argonne; over this time Patterson wrote a small collection of poems which, upon
his return to Salem in 1919, had a limited publishing run in the Miskatonic Press; the
poems were noted for their stark descriptions of victims of the battlefield and the elements
of supernatural brutality. Some critics interpreted them to indicate that Patterson had had
some sort of supernatural experience during the fighting, but he has always refused to
comment.
Discharged from the Army in March 1919 with the rank of major, Patterson returned a
much gloomier man. Nevertheless, his reputation soon landed him another job, this time
with the Boston Globe , reporting on cases such as The Lady in the Ashes in 1920 and, later
that year, the Murder of Robert Suydam and his new wife in Red Hook, New Jersey. The
facts of both these crimes convinced Patterson that darker elements, possibly occult, lay
behind the killings. He began investigating occult societies in Boston, Rhode Island and
New York. His emerging monomania, particularly focussed on cults such as The Church of
Starry Wisdom and a group he refers to as the Esoteric Order of Dagon, began to affect his
work. He missed deadlines, convinced he was about to uncover a massive occult conspiracy
permeating the North East. His stated intention is to write a book exposing it, but actually
the obsession itself has become more important than exposing. His bedroom wall is a mass
of clippings, cuttings and scribbled notes.
The case of the Beast of Ross's Corner fitted in with this theory. Patterson set off to
Arkham, filing one or two stories back to the Globe as the "normal" investigation unfolded,
but his real focus was on the supernatural facets. He interviewed witnesses, including Petra
Evans and Dr. Robinson, looking for evidence of occult activity and, having found it, took
the decision to move back to Salem full time. He is currently unemployed, living off his
savings, his Army pension and sales of his book of poetry to bored students of American
literature.
The experiences of the war and the past few years, including the increasing ridicule at the
hands of his colleagues, have left him a somewhat acerbic, taciturn, short-tempered person. While he maintains the friendly persona needed to do his job, it evaporates fairly quickly
when not required. Most people who get to know him - and there aren't many - consider