Barbara Sayers

**Barbara Sayers** (c. 1950-2019) was an American occultist who was a follower of Ipqu-Aya. Kennedy Fisher described her in 2018 as tall and willowy and although in her late 60s, could easily have passed for someone over 10 years younger. She was also observed as being a very neat person with a tidy, well-ordered home, that displayed a love of both plants and books.

In the late 1970s, she was an acolyte and intimate associate of cult leader, Joseph Curwen, until his death in the Pawtuxet siege of 1980. For the next three decades, she dedicated her time to nurturing and tutoring Curwen’s descendants, as well as travelling the world searching for Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon. She was murdered in Iraq by Daisy Marsh.

## The Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya

Very little is known about Sayers’ early life. The first solid records uncovered by Mystery Machine podcasters, Matthew Heawood and Kennedy Fisher, pertain to Sayers purchasing a house at 23 Olney St, in Providence, Rhode Island in 1977. Evidence was discovered of intimate correspondence between her and Joseph Curwen, the leader of a cult called the Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya, based in nearby Pawtuxet. When Sayers and Curwen first met is unclear, but by the late 1970s, it appears she had become a devoted acolyte of the cult leader and, quite likely, in a sexual relationship with him.

This came to an end in 1980 when police, ATF and FBI agents raided the Puwtuxet house after weapons fire had been exchanged between the authorities and Ipqu-Aya cult members. During this raid, Curwen was killed in a firefight with a police SWAT team but his body was never recovered and instead, only dust was found in the room he’s barricaded himself in. It’s unclear if Barbara Sayers had been at the Puwtuxet house that day, but regardless she was not apprehended and she left Rhode Island around the same time as the Puwtuxet siege.

## Searching for the Necronomicon

Sayers abandoned her house on Olney St and between 1980 and 1985 she began travelling around the United States, presumably searching for Abdul Alhazred’s book, the Necronomicon, which legend has it details methods of raising the dead from essential salts. She is recorded as having visited New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; Nevada; and Taos, New Mexico.

In 1986, Sayers travelled from New York to Paris, France, apparently expanding her search beyond America, however, it’s unclear how she funded this international hunt for Alhazred’s book. She visited Istanbul, Turkey; then crossed into Northern Africa and continued her search in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Syria and finally Iraq. At this stage, she presumably made the same connections that Dr. Eleanor Peck would make some decades later, discovering that Ipqu-Aya artefacts (and possibly the Necronomicon) had been discovered at the ruins of Nineveh and transported in the 1850s to the British Museum.

## Time in England

In 1987, Sayers' search took her to England where she then remained for the next five years. It is likely that, around this time, Sayers made contact with former members of Amelia Fenner’s Suffolk Coven. Sayers likely bonded with Tania Radcliffe over their shared interest in the Necronomicon. At the same time, she became a trusted confidant of Henry Akeley.

In 1990, Sayers was employed by single mother, Emma Tillinghast to be a nanny for her new-born daughter, Lucy. For the next two years, Sayers worked and lived closely with a daughter and granddaughter of Joseph Curwen, and thus two people in the Ipqu-Aya bloodline. It’s unknown whether Emma was aware of her true parentage, but given that Emma’s subsequent marriage to Robert Hawthorne in 1992 led directly to the termination of Sayers’ contract, it’s likely that Sayers’ true motivation for taking the job was not known to Tillinghast at the time.

## Move back to Providence

Twelve years after the events at Pawtuxet, Sayers returned to America and Providence. In 1992 she enrolled as a mature student of ancient languages at Miskatonic University, continuing to pursue her interests in the Necronomicon.

## Charles Dexter Ward

By 2003, Sayers again managed to find employment that positioned her close to another descendant of Joseph Curwen’s; she became a librarian at the school of Eliza Tillinghast’s grandson, Charles Dexter Ward. It’s likely that she influenced Ward and his friend, Tyler Green, to explore her abandoned house on Olney St and discover the hidden correspondence that Curwen had sent her.

Between 2003 and 2007, Sayers’ influence over the young Charles Ward increased. She encouraged the teenager to read books such as Turba Philosophorum, The Key of Wisdom, The Complete Mystical Records of Dr John Dee, The Book of Thoth and Enochian Magick. She also encouraged Ward to learn about his grandfather and to see him as “a great man”. By 2006, Ward’s behavioural issues spurred on by his contact with Sayers, prompted his mother, Sarah Ward, to employ the services of psychiatrist, Dr Jonathan Willett. Willett was quick to identify Sayers as a damaging influence on Ward but he was unable to convince Charles’s parents of this. Sayers persuaded the young Ward to modify his behaviour around his parents, and she also persuaded Howard and Sarah that their son was a gifted child who was being let down by the school system.

By 2007, Charles Dexter Ward left the school by mutual agreement. In response, Sayers quit her job as the school librarian and took up employment as Charles’s home-schooling tutor. This increased her influence over both child and parents and meant that Sayers was able to get Willett fired, meaning that for the next four years, Ward was under the direct influence of Sayers. Over this time, Ward expanded his interest and understanding of Ipqu-Aya and the occult greatly.

In 2011, Ward’s mother, Sarah, died in a mysterious car accident. As a result, Howard brought Willett back to help treat his son’s increasing psychiatric issues and, at Willett's urging, terminated Sayers’ contract. In reality, these were merely symptoms of the growing possession, aided by Sayers, of Charles Dexter Ward by Ipqu-Aya, the same entity that had inhabited his grandfather, Joseph Curwen. Willett tried once again to treat Charles Ward, but Sayers' influence had become too great by this point, and Willett was again fired, this time by Ward himself, being replaced by Dr. Allen, an associate of Sayers.

## Searching for the next Ipqu-Aya vessel

In 2016, Charles Dexter Ward had been committed to a psychiatric institution under the care of Dr Willett, and the following year, Willett killed Ward, understanding that the young man was now nothing more than a vessel for the spirit of Ipqu-Aya. Shortly thereafter, Willett travelled to England and murdered Lucy Hawthorne. Having lost both of the Curwen vessels known to them, Sayers and Allen, started to search for another member of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline.

To this end, they funded and manipulated the Mystery Machine podcast team to investigate Ward, Hawthorne and Curwen in the hopes that Heawood and Fisher might uncover what they had not - another Curwen offspring. Sayers allowed herself to be interviewed by Fisher once and was conspicuously defensive around the subject of Joseph Curwen. She also adopted the persona of a fictional sister, Melissa Talbot, whom Heawood interviewed over the phone; again, this was done with the intention of pushing the podcasters to investigate Joseph Curwen more carefully.

Sayers’ home was set alight the day after her interview with Fisher and only reappeared once Fisher had uncovered Allen’s deception, posing as librarian George Shepley. They proceeded to kidnap Fisher but Sayers, keen to kill Fisher immediately, deferred to Allen, who preferred attempting to convert Fisher to their cause. This suggests that, at this point, Sayers was ignorant of the importance of Kennedy Fisher’s ancestry. At Allen’s prompting, both he and Sayers conducted some sort of ritual on Fisher, the aim being to “show her the world as it really is”.

Sayers and Allen began conducting the ritual on Fisher but were apparently interrupted by Ezra Weeden, who claimed to have shot and killed Allen. This was later shown to be incorrect and possibly a deliberate lie on Weeden’s part, but Fisher’s experience of the ritual revealed to her what may have been a glimpse of Azathoth’s Dreamlands and as a result she was catatonic and suffering from memory loss.

Despite having their deception uncovered, Sayers and Allen’s strategy had been successful - Heawood and Fisher had uncovered the connection between Amelia Fenner and Joseph Curwen during the early 1960s in his New Forest Coven. This was enough for Sayers and Allen to track down Fenner’s granddaughter, Melody Cartwright.

## A Change of Heart

Cartwright was kidnapped by people pretending to be Heawood and Fisher (and may have actually been Obed and Daisy Marsh). The young woman was then apparently handed over to Allen, his face now covered in bandages, and Sayers and all three travelled to Baghdad, Iraq. They were followed by Fisher and Weeden but before Fisher could confront the group, she was incapacitated and awoke sometime later, not only having no memory of what had occurred but actually having false memories of being in a traffic accident and having to spend time in an Iraqi hospital.

With Fisher no longer tailing them, Allen, Daisy Marsh and Sayers were at liberty to transfer the Ipqu-Aya consciousness to a restrained Melody Cartwright while in Mosul, Iraq. It was around this time that Sayers appears to have started to question what she and her compatriots were doing. Cartwright was clearly not a willing vessel for Ipqu-Aya but this appeared not to matter to Allen or Marsh. This was clearly counter to what Sayers had understood, having spent years positioning herself to prepare Lucy Hawthorne and later Charles Dexter Ward to become willing hosts of the Mesopotamian spirit.

It’s possible that it was around this time that she agreed to become an operative for the Department of Works and actively sabotage the transfer of Ipqu-Aya into Melody Cartwright. Sayers was only partially successful in preventing the transfer, as Ipqu-Aya, while completely transferred, did not enjoy full control of Cartwright’s body. After this apparently unsuccessful transfer, Sayers release Cartwright in the middle of the night and showed her a route of escape. Despite this change of allegiance, Department operative, John Silence, said that he still found Sayers to be crazy and scary.

## Death

Barbara Sayers’ body was found buried on the west riverbank of the Tigris in a place called Al-Qayyarah about an hour south of Mosul. She had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head, indicating that she’d been murdered. The burial was done in an amateur-like fashion: she was only two feet down and the winds had easily blown the topsoil off her hastily dug grave. Heawood’s contact in military intelligence, 'Jasper', suggested the location was likely chosen as it was out of town, out of sight of the road, and the soil was easy to dig through.

While not confirmed, it is more than likely that Sayers was killed by Daisy Marsh for her betrayal in aiding Melody Cartwright’s escape. Marsh’s strong physical resemblance to a distant cousin, Kennedy Fisher, had initially led some to believe that Fisher, suffering from amnesia, had killed Sayers in retaliation for her torture in Providence. This was because the last time Sayers was seen alive was on the dashcam footage of a nearby taxi when she and Daisy Marsh got into a car parked outside a café in Mosul.

## Appearances

* *The Lovecraft Investigations*
	+ The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
		- “Episode 2”
		- “Episode 3”
		- “Episode 8”
		- “Episode 9”

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 TCoCDW: ”Episode 2”
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 TCoCDW: ”Episode 3”
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 TCoCDW: “Episode 5"
4. ↑ TCoCDW: ”Episode 7”
5. ↑ TWiD: “Episode 4”
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 TWiD: “Episode 5”
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 TSoI: "Apartment 6"
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 TCoCDW: ”Episode 1”
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 TCoCDW: ”Episode 9”
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 TCoCDW: ”Episode 10”
11. ↑ TCoCDW: ”Episode 8”
12. ↑ TWiD: “Episode 1”
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 TSoI: “Harlequin”
14. ↑ TWiD: “Episode 7”
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 TSoI: "Footsteps"