It is unknown who among the family, if anyone, was aware of John Fordham's interests in the occult.
John Fordham was a worshiper of what the fiction writer and Rhode Island documentarist H.P. Lovecraft called "the Old Ones." John Fordham believed that other worlds existed not adjacent to but on top of and within our own, and that we needed only to squint a bit, so to speak, to see them clearly. Though he, himself, was aware of these other worlds via divine providence or devout works and prayer, he made it his holy mission to allow others this sight as well. He spent his entire professional life seeking out just the correct degree of "off" humans required in their eyeglasses so as to warp the eye, work the brain, and imbue an ability to see the unsightly.
Did it work?
Reports vary.
Carl C. Young is perhaps the more interesting case, if only for his novelty: not every grumpy teenager with dyed-black hair and literary aspirations has has yet poured over and over his history in an edition bought at their local mall.
Carl C. Young could not be accused of being an innocent, impressionable, or particularly creative young thing, making up fantasies or creating fictions for fun. Young was a Providence physician - an OB/GYN - respected and still practicing at the time of his first visit to John Fordham. Young had worn glasses previously, and visited John Fordham for an update of his prescription in the fall of 1960. Young and John Fordham must have known each other through medical and professional organizations about town. It is not known who Young's previous optometrist was, but according to Ford and Sons records, Young received his new glasses on January 2, 1960. He returned to John Fordham on January 15 and 29, and again on February 14. On February 16, he saw his own physician, Dr. Howard Ackland.
According to Ackland, Young complained of blurred vision, headaches, and periods of blackouts that Ackland diagnosed as narcoleptic. During these blackouts, he had, according to Ackland's notes (no published copies - firsthand reading done while sitting in the filthy kitchen of the current owner - hereafter noted "Ackland"), "vivid dreams, violent delusions, and thoughts of an anti-Christian nature." Ackland perscribed Veronal. As far as we know, he was still wearing the glasses at this time.
On February 20, 1960, Young murdered his wife. He was initially sent to the Rhode Island State Penitentiary in Cranston. There he pounded his own head against his prison bars until transferred to the infirmary, where he was given, according, again, to Ackland's notes "all the dope to kill a pig" (probably Paraldehyde - his visiting brother later complained that his breath smelled like "the sea") (Ackland). Despite the pig-sized dose, Young managed somehow to bite the neck of a prison orderly hard enough to nearly sever the jugular; Jacob Kelly died on February 27, 1960. From there, Young was transferred to a high-security wing of the Arbour Mental Health Hospital in Boston. Ackland met with him only four more times. His notes on that first meeting were as technical and detailed as they would have been for any patient for whom he might expect to be called to trial. By the second meeting, he knew that Young was never leaving the hospital, and they became much more casual: notes, impressions, doodles, a letter. The letter was, if it was to anyone, to Young himself. It was full of "I'm sorry" and "I don't know what to do to help." The drawings were of wet round pustules like bloated wounds or cysts. Some had mouths. It would be an irresponsible assumption to claim that these had been described to him by Young.
Young did narrate visions to Ackland; these are written in a clear hand and cannot be misconstrued. It would, however, still be reckless to quote from them. They are blatantly Lovecraftian. Only a few have come true, anyway (the swallowing of his son, the 1982 earthquake, the rising of Shub-Niggurath from the Narragansett Bay, Jeffrey Mailhot).
Young died old and fat and cheerfully gibbering in his locked room in Cranston, a frequent correspondent and close friend of John Fordham Ford, who himself had been convinced by his sons as of the mid-60s to give up his position in the family business. Ford's sons and granddaughter continue the business today. Their customer satisfaction ratings have risen considerably.
John Fordham's reputation as an optometrist was certainly not the best in town, as first-person sources clearly recall. Glasses from Ford and Sons were known to tend to cause headaches, blurred vision, dizziness. There are a very few records that could indicate something more. Among the most reliable are the well-known diaries of Emily Banks, and the far lesser-known medical records of Carl C. Young.
Emily Banks was eight years old in 1958, when her teachers suggested that her reading difficulties and recent lack of concentration in school may simply have been due to poor eyesight. Her parents took her to John Fordham (he was cheap) where she was examined and fitted for her first (of course: also last) pair of glasses. Her schoolwork continued to suffer nonetheless. Additionally, she began to get headaches and stomachaches, eventually to a degree that caused her parents to remove her from school. Some months later she was checked into the hospital where, two days later, she died. The cause listed was heart failure.
Emily Banks was eight years old in 1958, when her teachers suggested that her reading difficulties and recent lack of concentration in school may simply have been due to poor eyesight. Her parents took her to John Fordham (he was cheap) where she was examined and fitted for her first (of course: also last) pair of glasses. Her schoolwork continued to suffer nonetheless. Additionally, she began to get headaches and stomachaches, eventually to a degree that caused her parents to remove her from school. Some months later she was checked into the hospital where, two days later, she died. The cause listed was heart failure.
That's all we know without reading her diaries. Her father had read them. He placed them in a safe deposit box which was opened by his brother after his death. The brother, recognizing names from Lovecraft novels but not realizing what the book was (but assuming they must be rare or valuable, given where he'd found them), sold them to a Lovecraft dealer, thinking that they were perhaps notes for a new story written by the author when he was young. The dealer, Richard Silverstein of Boston, eventually published the edited diaries as Visions of Lovecraft: The Diaries of Emily Banks. The book is, of course, still very much in print and readily available via your local bookseller or teen goth supply emporium. Its content has been and continues to be debated, but Silverstein has produced the originals for examination (by handwriting analysts, historians, daters of book-bindings, etc) on more than one occasion, and both he and Emily's uncle have submitted to lie detector tests (whatever that's worth): the texts themselves, at least, are not fakes. It is easy enough to be one's own judge of these readily-available writings; we will not dwell on them here.
Carl C. Young is perhaps the more interesting case, if only for his novelty: not every grumpy teenager with dyed-black hair and literary aspirations has has yet poured over and over his history in an edition bought at their local mall.
Carl C. Young could not be accused of being an innocent, impressionable, or particularly creative young thing, making up fantasies or creating fictions for fun. Young was a Providence physician - an OB/GYN - respected and still practicing at the time of his first visit to John Fordham. Young had worn glasses previously, and visited John Fordham for an update of his prescription in the fall of 1960. Young and John Fordham must have known each other through medical and professional organizations about town. It is not known who Young's previous optometrist was, but according to Ford and Sons records, Young received his new glasses on January 2, 1960. He returned to John Fordham on January 15 and 29, and again on February 14. On February 16, he saw his own physician, Dr. Howard Ackland.
According to Ackland, Young complained of blurred vision, headaches, and periods of blackouts that Ackland diagnosed as narcoleptic. During these blackouts, he had, according to Ackland's notes (no published copies - firsthand reading done while sitting in the filthy kitchen of the current owner - hereafter noted "Ackland"), "vivid dreams, violent delusions, and thoughts of an anti-Christian nature." Ackland perscribed Veronal. As far as we know, he was still wearing the glasses at this time.
On February 20, 1960, Young murdered his wife. He was initially sent to the Rhode Island State Penitentiary in Cranston. There he pounded his own head against his prison bars until transferred to the infirmary, where he was given, according, again, to Ackland's notes "all the dope to kill a pig" (probably Paraldehyde - his visiting brother later complained that his breath smelled like "the sea") (Ackland). Despite the pig-sized dose, Young managed somehow to bite the neck of a prison orderly hard enough to nearly sever the jugular; Jacob Kelly died on February 27, 1960. From there, Young was transferred to a high-security wing of the Arbour Mental Health Hospital in Boston. Ackland met with him only four more times. His notes on that first meeting were as technical and detailed as they would have been for any patient for whom he might expect to be called to trial. By the second meeting, he knew that Young was never leaving the hospital, and they became much more casual: notes, impressions, doodles, a letter. The letter was, if it was to anyone, to Young himself. It was full of "I'm sorry" and "I don't know what to do to help." The drawings were of wet round pustules like bloated wounds or cysts. Some had mouths. It would be an irresponsible assumption to claim that these had been described to him by Young.
Young did narrate visions to Ackland; these are written in a clear hand and cannot be misconstrued. It would, however, still be reckless to quote from them. They are blatantly Lovecraftian. Only a few have come true, anyway (the swallowing of his son, the 1982 earthquake, the rising of Shub-Niggurath from the Narragansett Bay, Jeffrey Mailhot).
Young died old and fat and cheerfully gibbering in his locked room in Cranston, a frequent correspondent and close friend of John Fordham Ford, who himself had been convinced by his sons as of the mid-60s to give up his position in the family business. Ford's sons and granddaughter continue the business today. Their customer satisfaction ratings have risen considerably.
Every year for Halloween, a few local teenagers dress up as a boogeyman known locally as "the Optometrist," in white coats with tentacles in the sleeves, though very few relate that local legend to the dusty old optometrist storefront downcity.
