~ EL HEAD ~
THE EL HEAD FAQ
2. So, these are just stories, right?
3. What are these so-called historical accounts?
4.Okay, if El Head was a real person, who was he?
5. So there are records for this Poul Ichabod?
7. I have to ask, what is the Curie Factor.
9. So if he was so bad and evil and powerful, how come he didn't conquer the world?
13.When did all this take place?
14. So Where is all the information about El Head?
15.What if I don't want to slog through a bunch of scholarly double talk minuscule interpretations?
16. What else is going to be put on this site?
1. El Head simply put is a Western Myth. There are legends and stories about him from various cultures in the American Southwest: Native American, Hispanic, Cowboy and Mormon. The most common image of El Head is that of a disembodied head wearing a US Calvary hat riding in the saddle of a golden palomino surrounded by a strange blue glow. Strapped to either side of the saddle are two arms, the hands of which carry six shooters. Tied to the rear of the horse is a headless and armless body. (Back)
2. Like most myths there is some historical factual basis for the various tales about El Head. There are enough genuine historical accounts to account fo r El Head's historicity. That does not mean that every or even most stories about him are true. (Back)
3. There are the Diary of Jacob Waltz (the owner of the Lost Dutchman mine describes his long association with El Head), Memoirs of Brigham Young (Gives a scant account of his encounter with El Head in the Summer of 1874) Collected Letters of Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer (in a few private letters of his wife and to his Brother Thomas, General Custer mentions a few brush ins with El Head) Geronimo in his own Words (The Apache War Chieftain tells of his lengthy, if spotty, friendship with El Head) Autobiography of Reverend John W. Hardin (in the section of his autobiography where he discusses his lengthy delirium when he lay in a coma during the Summer of 1874, he describes in detail events also described by Brigham Young. (Back)
4. That was a question that had puzzled scholars of western lore for decades, until 1994, when a researcher discovered a cache of paper stored inside an old safe in Stout, Colorado. Upon these were written the supposed memoirs of Poul Ichabod, the man known as El Head, dictated to his Manservant, Dio Fuerte. (Back)
5. Actually, no. Poul Ichabod seems to be an alias. Poul=Poll which is Latin for head. Ichabod is an obvious reference to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow which is about the Headless Horseman. From internal evidence we do know that the man who called himself El Head went to West Point and received an Engineering Degree. During the Civil War he served in the Confederate Army. He was captured by the North and accepted a position in the Union Army to fight Indians out west as a Galvanized Yankee. He never mentions having fought during the Mexican War so we can assume that he graduated West Point after that point. Most of the West Point Graduate from 1848 to 1859 are accounted for in the war record. We can only surmise that Poul Ichabod was listed as dead under his true name or else lied about his war experiences. (Back)
6. After leaving the Union service, Ichabod wandered the west for a few years, working as a prospector and selling his services as a mining engineer.
In one such venture he wandered into the town of Cairn, Nevada and was persuaded to join a search party looking for prospector lost in the Almargosa desert.
The search party was attacked by Comanches and Ichabod and four others rode into a cleft in a mountain. The Comanche did not follow.
The cleft lead to a valley inside the mountain which had a small lake in the center. That night they noticed that the valley glowed with a faint bluish
tint and the air or something in it made their skin itchy. They probably would have left the valley after a day if one of the number had not found gold.
The other four members of the group were going to kill Ichabod until he convinced them to use his mining skills to extract as much gold as possible.
They vowed to share and share alike, even to the point of become blood brothers.
After a month the mine was played out. On the night before they were to leave the valley Ichabod's four partners tied him to a cross sparred stake.
Blaming him for the small amount of gold that they had gotten from the valley, they tortured him to death. First they blew off his arms with shotgun
blasts, they broke his legs and knees with a baseball bat, they scalped his chin and finally blew his head off with a shotgun blast and left him for dead.
Incredibly he did not die lived on as a disembodied head. Recently in April of 1995, a test was run on a skin sample believed to have belong to El Head,
found stuck in the leaves of one of his memoirs. DNA analysis provided evidence that whose ever skin it was suffered from the Curie Factor.
(Back)
7. The Curie Factor is what causes the bizarre effects of radiation from the creation of atomic vampires, giants ants, tarantulas, scorpions, grasshoppers to
the dead being reanimated from a fallen radioactive satellite to the revival of a hitherto unknown prehistoric reptile with radioactive vision and breath. It was first
discovered in Paris of 1923 when the world famous Scientist Marie Curie was discovered to have been transformed into a Vampire by radioactivity.
Approximately 56 people fell victim to the Vampire Queen of Paris before she was finally guillotined and her body incinerated.
The Curie Factor is an odd genetic marker found in certain blood types 0, AB and RH positive that appears to be virological in nature yet is for the most part
benign. It is still not certain whether the Curie Factor is simply an indicator of high mutability in an individual or the cause. Genetic experiments conducted
by the Nazis during World War Two attempted to eradicate the Curie Factor from the subjects blood make up. The results were without exception fatal.
Although the Curie Factor appears to be genetic in origin, once irradiated it can be transmitted easily by blood serum exchange to an individual in the high
risk blood types. Since the high risk blood types are also the most common blood types, there is a high probability of mutagenic change once blood is
exchanged. (Back)
8. The most common form of mutagenic change that takes place upon irradiation of the Curie Factor is physical deformation. For example a person may
become a vampire, a werewolf or even a giant. One of the more subtle physical changes to the brain. This can cause drastic personality changes,
increase or decrease intelligence and stimulate unknown portions of the brain thereby giving the subject psionic abilities. In rare cases, an ordinary
joe accidently irradiated becomes an evil genius gifted with psionic abilties. Gein the Necromancer was one of these as was Dahmer, the King
of Cannibal Zombies. El Head was also one of these. Despite being a bodiless head, El Head had formidable mental powers such as telekinesis,
clairvoyance, telepathy, animal communication and control. This coupled with an mechanical genius that was far advanced of the science of his time.
Also you must know that he was not totally immobilized several inches of vertebrae, trachea and larynx trailed below his neck stump.
He could operate these much like an octopus or squid moves its tentacles.
Then there were the arms, despite being severed from his body, his hands and arms remained viable and mobile. He could move them about by
remote control and use them to operate simple machinery such as firearms. (Back)
9. Despite his powers he had some severe limitations on them. He was unable to travel more than 200 feet from his body before falling into a coma
so he had to carry his decaying corpse wherever he went. He was severely limited in his range of telepathy, someone had to be in direct facial view
before he could even scan their minds. He was never able to really achieve any sort of finesse with his telekinesis, he could erect force shields and
move objects but fine manipulation was beyond his powers. Plus use of his psionic abilities gave him headache so severe that he was blinded by the pain.
Although he had the ability to make people his puppets and to communicate and control certain animals there was also a hitch in this.
The people had to eat of his flesh, so he often had to use subterfuge or force to get them to swallow a bit of his flesh. Also not every one was
subject to his control even if they ate of his flesh. This leads to speculation that it was related to the Curie Factor and that his psionic abilities
could to a certain extent control the Curie Factor.
As for animal communication it was confined to birds of the corvidae family which consist of Crow, Raven, Jackdaw, Magpies, jays and the like.
The only other animal that he is known to have controlled his horse Brimstone but that maybe because the horse had undergone a mutagenic
change at the same time as he. (Back)
10. Fortunately for the West of the time, El Head seemed to be monomaniac. He concentrated on one thing at a time. First of all he spend several years
tracking down and destroying the four men who mutilated and left him for dead. Three of them died in insidious mechanical devices of his design.
After which he wanted to be a gentleman farmer and inventor. So he used all of his efforts to wrest control of the Circle K Ranch from a family and defended
it against all takers. During this period he also spent much of his time exacting revenge on people who had thwarted him as he searched for his blood
enemies or who had betrayed him in any way. (Back)
11. El Head's four blood brothers and betrayers were Donegal Ryan, Uri Davidovich, Ross Irving and Bear Marks. Of these three achieved some sort of
fame on their own. Donegal Ryan became well known in the Utah, Nevada area as the proprietor of Doc Ryan's Medicine Show, a combination of circus
and religious revival. Ryan preached his belief that he was the Last Prophet of the End Times It is said that he had stigmata on his hands, feet and forehead.
He even penned a book called the Newest Testament. He was destroyed by El Head in 1874.
Uri Davidovich was a former member of the Tzar's secret police living in exile in America.
He was an actor and a gambler by inclination after leaving El Head he took his share of gold and traveled to San Francisco.
Eventually he became a leader in the San Francisco underworld but this was only a means to and end. His true vocation in
life was to have Alaska secede from the United States with him installed as its Tzar. Oddly enough, he nearly succeeded until El Head
came to San Francisco.
Ross Irving was a former slave from the Indian territory who was also part Cherokee. He was instrumental in bringing baseball to prominence
in Minnesota and might have been one of the few black players to reach the majors in the 1880's had El Head not stepped up to the plate.
Bear Marks was a half White, half Choctaw with a penchant for reading dime novels. He is the one of the two members who underwent drastic mutagenic
changes. He also is the only one that turned over a new leaf. He changed his name to Marco Deloso and moved near El Paso. He became a crime fighter and avenger of wrongs known as El Murceilago. El Head still destroyed him. For a more complete explanation you can go to the new
Bear Marks page
Some of the other people that El Head disliked were Bill Hickock, The Custer brothers, Sitting Bull and Boss Tweed of New York. (Back)
12. Well the Newest Testament was all that remained when El Head destroyed Ryan. The book itself has a strange history. In 1875
The Newest Testament was found by Mormon settlers who had come to reclaim the town. They sent it to Salt Lake City for examination.
The Prophet Brigham Young read certain passages of the Newest Testament and ordered that it be burned but the book would not burn.
Young ordered that it be weighted and dropped into the ocean, entrusting a loyal young man to carry out the mission.
The young man disappeared enroute to San Francisco and his ultimate fate is unknown, however the Newest Testament turned up in
1896 at the house of H.H. Holmes. Holmes was a serial killer of women who had turned his basement into a den of horrors.
The book was sent by Chicago authorities to the Vatican where the current Pope, Leo XIII had it sealed in a special vault holding books available to
theological scholars but not for the general public, due to the disturbing nature of their contents.
The book remained in the Vatican vaults until 1936 when Pope Pius lent the book the German Reich to aid in their war against Russia.
After the fall of Germany, the book ended up in the hands of Lavrenti Beria, the crony of Stalin. After Stalin's fall, the book was locked away
as a religious artifact.
Some how, probably through bribes and information exchange, a young expatriate American, Lee Oswald, working as a double agent for the KGB
and CIA acquired the Newest Testament. When he returned to the United States in 1960, he had the book in his possession. It was found among
his possessions after his arrest for the assassination of the President of the United States.
His wife sold the Newest Testament to an actor interested in the Occult. This same actor was a homosexual, interested in rough trade,
two of the actor's pick ups, brutally murdered him in 1968 and stole many of his objects d'art, the Newest Testament among them.
According to testimony given by members of the Family, Charles Manson supposedly had possession of the Newest Testament, although this has
never been conclusively proven.
In 1977, a copy of the Newest Testament was found in among the possessions of David Berkowitz in New York City. Berkowitz, was the Son
of Don killer who shot couples in their cars at various lover's lanes in New York City. Berkowitz claimed that the voice of the Last Prophet arose out the
body of his landlord's dog. He also said that during such possessions the dog was often transformed into a hyena or a jackal.
Rumors abounded later that Berkowitz had been the member of a Satanic cult. His copy of the Newest testament had a section made of leather pages.
Berkowitz claimed that the original book had been cut into thirteen sections and added to thirteen copies of the book.
As of 1990 all but three of these copies have been recovered and placed in the Vatican vault. Their former owners were all murderers, religious fanatics
or occultists, a sampling of the names are as follows Ed Gem the supervillian known as the Necromancer, Mullin the Earthquake Maker, Kemperer the
Mad Headsman, Bundy the New Age Thugee, Dahmer the Zombie King of Milwaukee and Koresh the New Christ. (Back)
13. See the El Head Chronology (Back)
14.If you are searching for scholarly or folkloric sources
Andrew Sinclair's HOPI FOLKTALES AND CREATION MYTHS (Houghton-Mifflin, 1954) contains the El Head tales "Head Man Breaks the Iron Horse",
"Black Rain" and "Broken Arrow Head Man"
Robert Grierson's famed APACHE GHOST STORIES (Oxford University Press, 1901) contains three El Head tales, "Medicine Head Man",
"Head Man Tames the Crows" and "Body Thief Revenge"
The. most complete collection of El Head stories I have ever seen is in T.R. Famiglia's very underrated BORDER MYTHS (Arizona Free Press, 1964)
which contains five El Head stores: "El Jefe and the Cabelllo Diablo", Vengeance of El Diablo Cabeza, "El Muerte dello Murceilago", "Fuego Lagarto y El Jefe"
and "Cabelleros de la Cabeza"
Also this site is publishing portions of the translated Memoirs of Poul Ichabod, the Notorious El Head (Back)
15. Well all three of the publications are quite easy to read, even for they layman and only Sinclair really analyzes any of the stories in depth for historicity and ethnic interpretations. But all three are quite hard to find as are all El Head resources. If you can find them there is a series of novels by Grant Faust written during the forties. See the El Head Checklist for a complete listing. (Back)
16. There is a chronology of the events of El Head's Life, an El Head Checklist of his appearances in the Media, The Legend of El Head and some of the shorter Stories. Also there will be a few stories about Bear Marks adventures as El Murcielago. There will also be a movie synopsis and reviews of the films about El Head. If you never heard of them, look at the El Head Checklist. (Back)
17. Still working on it. (Back)
All the material on these web pages or any other material relating to the character of El Head are copyrighted by Dennis E. Power
©1996-2009 Dennis E. Power. All Rights Reserved.
Concept of El Head ©1996 created by David Rush. All Rights Reserved.
All of the persons, places and items on the El Head pages are imaginary. Any resemblance to any existing place or product is done only for purposes
of fictional verisimilitude and should not be taken as an endorsement of said product or place.
Any resemblence to any person living, dead or somewhere in between is merely coincidental,
and unfortunate.
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