Tania Radcliffe

**Tania Radcliffe** (d. 2019) was a resident of Dunwich, Suffolk and a former member of the Suffolk Coven in Rendlesham. She ended her life in 2019 by walking off the cliffs at Dunwich.

## Early Occult Interests

It's unclear when Radcliffe first developed an interest in the occult but by the late 1970s, she had joined Amelia Fenner's Suffolk Coven. Their activities included reading from magical texts but mostly involved taking a large amount mind-altering drugs. This was obviously something that Fenner had learned from her time in Joseph Curwen's New Forest Coven.

On Christmas Day in 1980, Fenner convinced her followers, including Radcliffe to attempt the Babalon Working - the same ritual unsuccessfully attempted by Jack Parsons in 1946. This ritual resulted in the widely publicised Rendlesham Forest Incident and it was this event that ultimately drove the coven apart. The group struggled to agree on what they had seen and it later emerged that the ritual had been successful enough to summon Nyarlathotep even for a few moments, which was enough for both Tommy Marston and Henry Akeley to have their minds touched by the cosmic diety - something that would have tragic consequences over the coming years.

## Moving to Dunwich

After the Rendlesham Forest Incident, Fenner left Suffolk and without her as a leading force, the rest of the group quickly dispersed. Of all the members of the coven, it appears to have been Radcliffe who was most influenced by Fenner's own obsessions with the *Necronomicon*. Following a few leads in her research, Radcliffe moved to nearby Dunwich believing that local legends such as the Wild Man of Orford and the Green Children of Woolpit pointed to Dunwich being the place at which the Necronomicon entered the British Isles many centuries earlier.

Radcliffe stayed in touch with Henry Akeley and in around 1987, she and Akeley befriended a fellow occultist in the form of the American, Barbara Sayers. It's likely that Radcliffe and Sayers bonded over their mutual interest in the Necronomicon and while neither of them managed to ever find the book, they remained friends.

## Death

In her later years, Radcliffe worked in the local, one-room museum in Dunwich. Her investigation into the history of the Necronomicon in the local area had made her an expert in the broader history of the local area and one of her roles in the town's museum was to conduct tours for visitors. When Kennedy Fisher began asking her questions about Amelia Fenner and Henry Akeley, Radcliffe's guard was immediately up and she shut down any conversation by saying she was too busy. Undeterred, Fisher waited for Radcliffe to take her lunch break but while doing further research, with the help of Slide to hack into Radcliffe's phone, Fisher found Barbara Sayers' contact details. Fisher, having been kidnapped by Sayers only a few months earlier, was keen to chase down this connection. She followed Sayers up to the cliffs at Dunwich. Sayers began to open up to Fisher about Dunwich's connection to the Necronomicon and about Babalon (although Fisher misunderstood this to mean Babylon at the time). However, when Fisher asked Radcliffe directly about Barbara Sayers, the woman went pale and without saying another word she walked off the cliff to her death.

In a cruel irony, Radcliffe's theory about Dunwich being the current home of the Necronomicon was proven correct some four years later when Fisher and Victoria Ness, investigating a breach in the town which led to the Church of Starry Wisdom, found what was likely the original copy of the Necronomicon.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 TWiD: "Episode 3"
2. ↑ TWiD: "Episode 2"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 TWiD: "Episode 4"
4. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 4"
5. ↑ TSoI: "Apartment 6"
6. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 9"
7. ↑ THoTD: "Episode 10"