Mysterious Happenings at the Museum

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

As the educator here at the museum, I have the fun responsibility of developing new programs.  It can be challenging to come up with new ideas so our all of our visitors get to have ever-changing, interactive historical experiences at the museum.  In the past year, the staff has been talking a lot about how we can make our family programming less totally kid-centric and more fun for the whole family (parent, grandparents, and guardians want to enjoy themselves in programs, too!).  This conversation has led to the creation of several new family programs, most recently, our Museum Detectives series.

Museum Detectives replaced our Museum Mondays summer programming this year.  Museum Mondays had been running for years and were still great programs, but I felt they were staring to lose their luster and I was determined to create something fresh.  The story of how I came up with Museum Detectives illustrates just how random the programming creation process can be.  One day, I was turning the lights off in our education room and I accidentally left our one overhead spotlight on.  I was struck by how the lighting looked straight out of a 1940s Film Noir detective movie.  I started thinking about how to run with that vibe for a museum program. 

Doesn't that look so dramatically film noir?

Then, I remembered these detective puzzles that my parents bought me when I was a kid (they were Highlights’ Top Secret Adventure packs) and how much fun I had solving those clues.  And it all came together from there.

Visitors began in the education room “detective agency” where the head detective (me) gave them their case books and list of suspects. 

Me as the Carmen Sandiego-esque lead detective

 

The detectives each received their own case book.

I set up 6 stations around the museum, each with their own puzzle that would help eliminate a “suspect.”  The hardest part was coming up with 12 completely different puzzles and games (6 for each program).  At this point, I would like to commend my coworkers for their total willingness to commit to a silly idea- in this case one that involved costumes and characters.  For each of the programs, The Missing Mammoth Mystery and the Chemung County Caper, they dressed up and gave our visitors the information they needed to solve a clue. At the end, the gumshoes would figure out who committed the crimes.

Archivist Rachel as Officer O'DeLaw in the Chemung County Caper

Curator Erin as Cruella DeFurrier in the Missing Mammoth Mystery

Director Bruce as Bruce Baryshnikov in the Missing Mammoth Mystery

 Overall, the programs were a major success.  We’ll be looking to do similarly interactive family programming in the future as well.  And if anyone ever has any ideas of what type of programming they’d like to see at the museum, feel free to tell me about.  You never know where inspiration is going to come from!

A happy gumshoe with his prize for solving the Chemung County Caper.

The Mystery of The Nine Pointed Star

Chris Sherwood, The Elmira Telegram, www.elmiratelegram.com

In September 2014 our boys and I were walking from the Steele Memorial Library to the car I noticed something on the sidewalk I hadn’t seen before. At first I thought it might be a marker of some kind left by the city DPW, perhaps a benchmark used by surveyors, but on closer inspection I found the object to be a metal medallion secured to the sidewalk. It was a couple inches in diameter, with a nine pointed star on it. Across the star were the words, “NinePointedStar.com 2010”. 

I filed that one away and figured I would look it up online when I had a moment, curious to see what the website with such a clever and unique marketing plan was all about. What I was to find was a mystery that still has me stumped. 

The website address took me to the website of an artist in the San Francisco Bay area, Kelly Booth. Most of her website shows her portfolio and background information but it also includes a page where she keeps track of medallions that have been found. Kelly says she has no idea what the medallions mean, didn’t even know they existed until people began e-mailing her about them, saying it was something that was already happening when her site went live in 2012. She says that the first medallion was found in 2010 and they have continued to pop up across the country ever since and on her page includes a list of theories of what they might mean. One theory from a teenager in South Carolina says they could have been placed by aliens marking places deemed worthy of saving should they decide to come back and destroy Earth. Another theory is that they are a musical tribute to heavy metal band, Slipknot, who, prior to the death of their bass player Paul Gray in 2010, came up with a nine pointed star symbol, one for each of their nine band members.  Some say the medallions are a way to pay tribute to him. 

Other theories include the medallions being a part of a role playing game, a tribute to a popular classic video game, “Myst”, a geocaching game, or there’s some connection to the Baha’i faith, which uses the nine pointed star to represent the nine great religious traditions of the world. 

In other words, no one knows for sure. 

I contacted the staff at the Steele Library, and no one knew anything about the medallion, which surprised me. So I e-mailed Kelly at her website and asked her if the medallion in Elmira had been reported to her yet. As it turns out, I was the first to contact her about it and ask her some more about the mystery of the medallions. Kelly swore to me it was the truth: She had no idea what they meant, where they came from, or who was behind it all. She told me she found it kind of funny that everyone thought she was behind it. “I wish I did have the time and money to travel all around gluing stars to sidewalks.” But in the end, she said she is just as curious as everyone else about what they mean. 

With all apologies to Kelly, I spent several hours doing some background searching. On her site she openly discusses her personal connection with the nine pointed star symbol, and that when traveling she would leave one behind made of sticks or other natural materials, so I wasn’t completely convinced she didn’t know more than she was letting on. I did a search of the site domain which was originally registered in July 2002, although whether Kelly was the original owner or not was unclear. I found it strange that the domain wasn’t actually used for ten years after it was registered but long story short I couldn’t put a connection to Kelly or any of the dates. And it didn’t make sense that one person would travel the country placing them, even for a well traveled person like Kelly. In the end, there was no rhyme or reason to it, no matter how hard I tried to find it. There appears to be no connection or pattern to the medallions as plotted out on Kelly’s map. The only connection with the medallions was that the one I found was that it was in a group of three with human names:  Elmira NY, Anthony KS, and Elizabeth NJ.

In the end, I was unable to solve “The Mystery of The Nine Pointed Star”. 

In February 2015 I decided to stop by the library to get a book. As was my habit I checked to make sure the medallion was still there and it wasn't. Thinking perhaps I "mis-remembered" its exact location I went to check under a small pile of snow on the sidewalk and noticed a round thing on the pavement next to the curb. Sure enough, it was the medallion, and judging by the scratches on the surface I figured it had been dislodged by a passing snowblower. At the time no one seemed interested in it so I took it home for safekeeping. ( If, as some have joked, the medallions are a portal to the underworld I could be in deep trouble. )

At the I discovered the nine pointed star medallion in Elmira, there were 70 such medallions across the country with two others in New York, one in Olean and one in Tupper Lake. Since then the number has increased to 91.

 What do they mean ? I haven’t a clue. To read more about the medallions and the theories behind them go to http://www.ninepointedstar.com/medallions/

 

Death in the Arctic

by Erin Doane, Curator

The cold, snowy weather lately has gotten me thinking about Ross Gilmore Marvin who was very well-acquainted with this type of weather.  Ross was only 29 years old when he died on the ice as part of Admiral Robert E. Peary’s 1908-1909 expedition to reach the North Pole.  The circumstances surrounding his death are still a mystery.

Ross Gilmore Marvin

Born in 1880, Ross was the youngest of six.  While he was never an outstanding student in grade school, he did earn a scholarship to Cornell University.  On the day he graduated with his degree in engineering, he received a letter from Admiral Peary inviting him on his 1905-1906 Polar expedition.  The team was not successful in reaching the North Pole that time because they ran out of supplies and had to turn back.  Ross returned home with souvenirs from the voyage and he would let the neighborhood children come over and try on his fur coat and mittens.   

Fur Mittens worn by Ross Marvin

Ross joined Admiral Peary’s next expedition to the North Pole in 1908-1909, this time as chief scientist and Peary’s first assistant.  Admiral Peary successfully reached the pole but on April 10, 1909, about 45 miles north of Cape Columbia near the northern tip of Greenland, Ross went through the ice and died.  A telegram reporting his death reached his family on September 12.  It read: “Marvin drowned eighty-six degrees north latitude, April 10^th.  Party very sad. Notify mother before press dispatches.”  His mother took the news very hard, even denying its truth for many years.  It is said that following Ross’s death that she existed only in the memory of her son.  Her love for Ross, and her worry for him, was expressed in a poem she wrote during his first expedition.

Poem written by Mary Marvin

Seventeen years after Ross Marvin was lost on the ice, one of his Eskimo guides named Kudlooktoo confessed to killing him.  He said that Ross went crazy and tried to abandon another Eskimo named Harrigan on the ice.  Knowing that Harrigan would die if he was left behind, Kudlooktoo shot Ross.  As the Arctic was a sort of no-man’s land with no laws or governance, Kudlooktoo was never tried for the murder.  Some doubt the man’s stories, including Admiral Peary’s daughter who thought the guide’s confession was “induced by religious hysteria and an attempt to please the white man by having a ‘sin’ to confess.”  Whether Ross’s death was an accident or murder will probably never be known for sure.  James Vinton Stowell tells the story of Ross Marvin in A Tragedy in the Arctic.  The booklet includes transcripts of pages of Ross’s journal from the 1908-1909 expedition. 

Available to purchase at the Museum's Gift Shop