Before attaining maturity, Masterson began conducting experiments in the basement of the house in which he was born. He worked fifteen to twenty hours a day in what turned out to be a lifelong attempt to find a means by which he could experience firsthand the technological promises of ages to come. Late in his career, he apparently made a discovery that enabled him to realize his childhood dream.
In the years to come, as the world gradually pieces together more of Masterson’s remarkable adventure, all human beings may find their lives altered for the better. In the meantime, we must content ourselves with having at least begun to study and, hopefully, learn from this one solitary life.
Wanda Pierce
Editor
EQMM’s reporter began her investigation by visiting the local elementary school, on the road between Machias and Marshville, in the township of Harrington, Maine. Requesting access to school records, she was turned down summarily by school officials. But the reporter followed the school secretary home, explained her mission, and, finally, managed to elicit her aid. Griswold Masterson’s grades turned out to be rather poor, and the only noteworthy entry in school records was that he had been expelled on May 17, 1946, at the age of eleven. Mrs. Martha Tuttle, the principal, wrote the following comments in her report of this incident:
“The student is totally uncooperative. He never raises his hand, never erases the blackboard, never recites in class, never does his homework...His teacher, Maryanne Wilson, reports that all he does is read books on astronomy and destroy school property — scribbling crazy formulas on desk tops... Elsie and Josiah Masterson were called up to school, and they indicated he was the same way at home... ‘Doesn’t seem to hear a thing we say,’ according to Mrs. Masterson... ‘That boy’s head is in the clouds,’ said Mr. Masterson.”
Our reporter visited Washington County High School outside Marshville. There she found one instructor — physics teacher Groden Catlege — who was willing to discuss Griswold. Nearly eighty years old and weighing about the same, Catlege was feisty, fearless, but forgetfuclass="underline"
“Wasn’t he the kid who tried to burn down the post office ’cause he didn’t receive a package of books? Or was he the one who quit school at sixteen to study astrophysics on his own? One of those rascals in my class trapped stray cats for experiments. Could that have been Masterson?” (Editor’s Note: Masterson may have been all three.) “Well, sir, whichever of those things he did, he was no weirdo the way people tried to make out. Hell, it was the town that drove him to shut himself away... Yes, sir, he had a grasp of the physical and theoretical sciences that defied normal capacities for knowledge. Uncanny it was, the way he could join opposing elements in his mind. And his curiosity was insatiable — climbed a tree in a storm to study lightning and sure enough got struck to the ground!.. Yes, sir, I laughed it off at the time, but now, who knows, maybe the feller was right when he said to me, one day after schooclass="underline" ‘Einstein is interesting, but he misses the point.’ ”
If young “Grist,” as the town called him, was advanced mentally beyond most of us, physically he was a poor specimen. The only photograph of him known to exist, snapped by a local, now-deceased shutter-bug, shows Masterson passing the general store, attempting to cover his face with his hands. He was probably in his early twenties and, obviously, had not yet entirely shut himself away. The photo, judging from its faded sepia, was taken with an old box camera — and under far from cooperative conditions. But it did provide a glimpse of his stubby teeth and drastically receding hair, along with the bony slabs that served for shoulders. Accounts of Masterson’s height differ greatly — some say over six feet, others say under five feet. (Judging from the size of his shoe, the latter seems more likely.) Whatever the truth, that disagreement dramatizes the misunderstanding and mythmaking that surrounded him all his life. EQMMs attempt to obtain that photograph to publish with these materials was thwarted by Butch White, who oversees the community’s grange hall. White “accidentally” dropped it into a lighted potbelly stove moments after our reporter — who had discovered it tacked under a wad of announcements on the hall’s bulletin board — asked White who it was. The snapshot must’ve been put up as a joke so long ago that people had stopped seeing it. Our reporter protested, but White told her:
“You better clear outta here if you know what’s good for that pretty neck of yours.”
Why would the people of Marshville want to suppress information about a man who had no contact with (or interest in) them? From the cold shoulders and slammed doors and outright threats aimed at her, our reporter suspected that people in this solemn, oak-locked town were afraid of drawing attention to themselves — of disrupting their simple way of life. But as she found out more about Masterson, she thought it more likely the townspeople were behaving peculiarly out of an irrational terror they felt toward the secret experiments that had been conducted in the sagging house on Cobalt Hill (a name that may come from its steely hue at dusk). They seemed to think that if the reporter stirred up the strange dust of Masterson’s work, it might contaminate them all.
One person who seemed anxious to speak out cast a more specific focus on the nature of the town’s fear. The pastor of the First Presbyterian (and only) Church, Rev. Leopold Ossip, suggested that being mentally ahead and physically less appealing than the “local folks” made it impossible for Grist to make friends or even casual connections. Ossip decided this had led Masterson to seek out and establish an unholy alliance with “dark supernatural forces.” Here is his statement, slightly edited, as taped by our reporter:
“Facts all point in that direction. Grist came into town less and less, barricading himself in the broken-down house left behind by his folks — Josiah and Elsie died more or less simultaneously some years back, you know. (By the way, no one’s been able to figure out how it happened. And I would not entirely discount the talk that Grist’s ma and pa perished in one of his mad experiments.) Living off his folks’ savings, and on vegetables he grew in vats in the house, under heat lamps, using kerosene for heat and power (he’d welded himself a huge tank and had it filled once a year, you know), Grist was more or less self-sufficient. Near as anyone in the congregation can figure, he never did anything but read, perform experiments in that fiendish cellar, and tend his indoor garden. (They say he grew tomatoes the size of cantaloupes!) God knows he didn’t come to church! Queer thing is, you know, people passing near his place some nights could hear him reciting the Bible loud and clear, like he was committing it to memory. That gave me hope there was an ounce of religion left in him, so one afternoon I walked up Cobalt Hill, stepped onto the Masterson porch bold as you please, and knocked — hard. But he wouldn’t open the door. When it comes to saving souls I can be pretty stubborn, though, so I stood there and called out in the name of the Lord: ‘Now Grist,’ I said, ‘you know darn well that business you’re engaged in is contrary to a moral life, contrary to the laws of God.’ And you know what he said to me? With his door still locked, mind you, he said in that scratchy hiss of his: ‘The secret of all that was, all that is, and all that will be lies in my experiments.’ I never tried to save him again, you know, for he’d convinced me I’d been right all along: He was in cahoots with the devil!”
When Rev. Ossip had said all he was going to say, our reporter asked him: “What exactly was the nature of Griswold Masterson’s experiments?” The God-fearing man, “a well-dried pastorly type,” stared at the reporter as if she’d spoken a dead language, then turned on his heel and moved down the aisle, kneeling at the altar to pray.