Gorgon apes and potter's wheels in the House of Danger

In my last post, "Perseus with the gorilla's head," I discussed the cover of an Encyclopedia Brown book and said I assumed the Mexican-looking boy on the cover was a race-swapped Encyclopedia Brown (which is fair enough, I suppose; they didn't call him Encyclopedia White). Wanting to check this, I started to type encyclopedia brown race into the search bar, but Google suggested that I might want to search for encyclopedia brown racist instead, and I thought, sure, why not. This led me to a 2012 blog post called "Goodbye Encyclopedia Brown: Thank you Donald J. Sobol," where one of the commenters on the very positive original post opined that the stories were "problematic," "racist," "sexist," and as if that weren't enough "may possibly [have] been a bit transphobic."

It was two of the other comments that got my attention, though. One person wrote:

I still remember the one where the squirrel backed down the tree – for some reason that memory gets triggered every weeks when I watch the little grey beasts.

Apparently, in one of the stories Brown determined that someone was lying because he said he saw a squirrel back down a tree, whereas real squirrels always descend trees head first. This interested me because when William Wright wrote a post connecting St. Peter with Alvin and the Chipmunks, I left this comment:

The word chipmunk comes from an Indian word referring to how the animal descends trees "upside down," or head first. Perhaps a tie-in with the tradition that Peter was crucified upside down.

Another commenter on "Goodbye Encyclopedia Brown" wrote:

*Sigh*, yet another memory of childhood comes to an end. Sobol’s books, along with others like “Choose Your Own Adventure” books were great. I and many kids I went to school with began reading regularly because of such books.

I, too, read lots of Encyclopedia Brown and Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid. My clearest memory of the latter series is of a book that had some yellowish-brown apes on the cover. Early in the story, a man is menaced by these apes and is literally scared to death. This made a deep impression on me, as I spent quite a lot of my early childhood in a state of terror, often with "monkeys" as the focus, and so I was horrified by this discovery that, apparently, it was possible to be so scared of monkeys that you would just drop dead.

In my "Perseus" post, I connected a gorilla suit on the Encyclopedia Brown cover with the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Medusa was so hideous that anyone who looked at her would turn to stone -- that is, they would die by being petrified, a word which is also used to describe extreme fear. Clearly, the Choose Your Own Adventure book, with the man who dies of terror after looking at some menacing apes, fits right in with this theme.

After a bit of googling, I managed to find the book I was thinking of. It's called House of Danger, and this is the cover of the edition I read as a child:

In the background, you can see the scene I remembered: a man lying dead on the ground, having been literally scared to death by the apes. I found the book on archive,org. Here are the relevant pages:

Here, for the sake of searchability, is the relevant text:

"Help! Help!They're after me," the man cries. Halfway to the gate, he drops to the ground as if he had been hit by an invisible hammer. You dash through the gate and run toward the fallen figure. But something stops you in your tracks. Three snarling animals materialize in front of the house.

What are they? you wonder. Can they be huge chimpanzees? They look mean and angry. For a moment, you are frozen to the spot.

Then, if you try to help the fallen man:

One hand of the fallen man is covered with a brown leather glove. This hand is grasping a small, triangular piece of paper. You bend down and take the paper from his fingers, and examine it for a message. It is blank on both sides. Just then the man gives one terrible gasp and lies still. Your knees are weak. This man has been frightened to death!

Browsing a bit in the book, I was surprised to discover this:

"Now is the time to learn how to use your new powers -- and quickly. First, imagine a disc spinning in your brain. I know that sounds a bit vague, but try it and you'll see."

"I can see it," you say, "a brilliant white disc. It's almost blinding, even though I know it's not real."

"That's good," says the professor. "You are starting off well. The disc acts like an electrical generator, but it generates mental energy instead of electrical energy. Now let the energy build up -- then aim it at the force field the chimps are creating around us. Steady now. Ease in the power. Careful! Concentrate even more."

If you turn to page 55, it continues thus:

There is a grinding sound, followed by a deep rumble that makes the entire structure around you tremble. Then there is a tremendous pop -- like the one you hear when the filament in a light bulb breaks, but much louder.

So this is a spinning disc which can be used as a weapon and is therefore dangerous. It's located in a person's brain and so could be destroyed by decapitating that person. And it produced "a tremendous pop." Obviously, this makes me think of "Joseph and the Dangerous Potter's Wheel." A potter's wheel is a spinning disc, and Joseph "kills" it by "cutting off its head." In this he is assisted by the Pop-in-the-Jack, and in fact the word pop (as in "Stop! You must not hop on Pop!") is what brought the Potter's Wheel story to mind and prompted me to post it. Actually, it was this Barney video Debbie linked, in which a jack-in-the-box is associated with the word pop.

The description of the pop -- "like the one you hear when the filament in a light bulb breaks" -- also reminds me of one of the stranger experiences from my missionary days. When I was stationed in Moab, Utah, I made the acquaintance of a young man (I remember his full name but probably shouldn't post it) who seemed to have the ability to burn out incandescent light bulbs by concentrating on them. I don't know if it was some kind of trick or genuinely paranormal, but he would concentrate on a lit light bulb, and it would grow brighter and brighter until it made a loud pop and went dead.

Perhaps he, too, had a Dangerous Potter's Wheel in his brain.