In setting down these sketchy notes before the events which they describe have irrevocably burned themselves into insanity within my mind, I do not expect to be believed. At best they will confirm the prejudiced in their bigotry; at worst, if discovered untimely, they will undoubtedly lead to my speedy committal to some secluded asylum where I shall assuredly end my days. That these are numbered I have no doubt; yet even the relief of oblivion is denied me for may I not, beyond the wall of the thin veil that men call life, meet those Others who gyrate and ponderously undulate far out in the utmost reaches of space?

And to be brought face to face with the thing that once was Scarsdale, is a fear too frightful to be contemplated; an eternity in such company and the terror of other beings which are such blasphemies that even I dare not hint at, makes me cling to such poor life as I have. I can still sleep occasionally without dreaming, thank God; this at least is something. And the notes, if they serve the small purpose of warning one sensitive person of the dangers overshadowing the earth, may yet spell great goodness for mankind.

But where to begin? This is indeed the first of my problems, lest my sanity be mocked at the outset. I was born then, Frederick Seddon Plowright; such life as I enjoyed until attaining my majority is no concern of this narrative, still less of interest to the general reader. After graduation I studied various outre subjects on the fringe of my scientific knowledge and eventually drifted into photography. I became an excellent portrayer of scientific and geographic subjects and accompanied a number of important expeditions earlier in the century, notably von Hagenbeck’s penetration of the Quartz Mountains of Outer Mongolia; and of Francis Luttrell’s major earth-boring investigations in the Nevada Desert of 1929, an adventure which almost cost me my life.