Dr. Allen

**Dr. Allen** is an American occultist and murderer who was a member of the cult of Ipqu-Aya. Little it known about Allen including his first name and whether his credentials are legitimate. The surname of an obvious relative of his, Zadok Allen, suggests Allen's surname is genuine but apart from this one piece of identifying information, everything else has been hidden behind aliases and subterfuge.

## Identity

Virtually nothing is known of Allen's early life and the first mention of him in records is in a recording of a therapy session between Dr. Jonathan Willett and Charles Dexter Ward in the early 2010s. Willett asked Ward about this man, Allen, who had been associating with Ward and working on certain experiments with the young man. According to Ward, Allen had also worked with his grandfather, Joseph Curwen. As Curwen died in 1980, it is reasonable to assume that Allen would have been at least in his late teens when working with Curwen - if Ward's assertions were correct - which would place Allen in his early-to-mid 50s when, in 2018, the Mystery Machine podcasters, Kennedy Fisher and Matthew Heawood started to investigate Ward's disappearance.

With regard to his qualifications, neither Dr. Willett nor his associate, Dr. Mark Lyman, were able to find anyone in Rhode Island registered as a psychiatrist under the name of Allen, but Ward explained that Allen's background was as a scientist. Nonetheless, despite Ward's father's initial concerns about Allen, he was convinced by his son to fire Willett and instead trust his care to Allen.

## Working with Charles Dexter Ward

Allen and Ward are known to have conducted gruesome experiments connected to necromancy. They did this in an underground facility in the Devil's Reef Trailer Park, making use of old smugglers' tunnels that had been used as escape tunnels by the Soldiers of Ipqu-Aya during the Puwtuxet siege in 1980. During this time, Charles Dexter Ward was fighting a losing battle in his own mind as his body became more and more controlled as a vessel for Ipqu-Aya. After having inserted himself as Ward's doctor, Allen started to control who Ward spoke to and, after Howard Ward's death in 2013, Allen appears to have almost completely cut Charles Ward off from the outside world.

Between 2013 and 2016, Allen and Ward are believed to have continued their experiments. However, something in the relationship changed which prompted Ward to reach out to his old psychiatrist, Dr. Willett. He wrote a letter explaining that his experiments had been misguided and had to be destroyed. He also now viewed Dr. Allen as such a threat that he warned Willett to shoot Allen on sight and dissolve the body in acid. This letter and a follow up phone call were enough to allow Willett to wrest control of Ward from Allen and commit the young man to his care in a secure psychiatric hospital. When Willett murdered Ward a year later and Ward's cousin, Lucy Hawthorne, a year after that, Allen started to look for another viable vessel for Ipqu-Aya.

The disappearance of Ward and the very public murder of Hawthorne prompted Kennedy Fisher and Matthew Heawood to start investigating. Allen seized this opportunity to get the podcasters to help him in finding another child of Joseph Curwen. He conspired with a fellow Soldier of Ipqu-Aya, Barbara Sayers, to guide the podcast's investigation by feeding them information that would push them in the direction of investigating Ward's connection with Curwen in more detail. Allen even arranged an anonymous donation to keep the Mystery Machine investigation going via Boston law firm, Hutchinson and Orne.

## As George Shepley

Knowing his name would be quickly uncovered in the investigation, Allen adopted an alias, **George Shepley**, when he met Fisher and pretended to the a school librarian. Allen was immediately charming in front of Fisher and quickly started to flirt with her. He provided her with a lot of information about Ward's schooling and positioned himself as at odds with Barbara Sayers, seemingly disapproving of her methods when she was Charles Dexter Ward's librarian and later his tutor.

Fisher was receptive to Shepley's charm and quickly grew to trust him. After Fisher discovered Allen and Ward's underground laboratory, she was determined to go back and document what she'd discovered. However, by keeping Shepley apprised of her plans, that gave Allen enough advanced notice to clear out Ward's trailer and the laboratory. By the time Fisher and Weeden returned to the trailer park, not only had everything been cleared out, but the laboratory had been doused in gasoline. Al Treggore, the manager of the park, was found murdered shortly before an explosion caused the total destruction of the Ward's trailer and the tunnels. It's unclear whether Treggore's murder and this act of arson was committed by Shepley, by Sayers or by an associate of theirs, but Fisher and Weeden were lucky to escape unscathed.

Fisher's trust in Shepley would have further tragic consequences when she asked the 'librarian' to investigate Dr. Lyman - whom she suspected might be the elusive Dr. Allen. Soon after, Shepley/Allen visited Lyman and murdered the doctor and his assistant. The motivation for this is not entirely clear but Lyman's access to Willett's notes on Ward, and thus on Allen, could very well have been considered a threat to Allen and Sayers' plans.

However, these murders prompted Allen's cover as Shepley to be blown when Ezra Weeden discovered that George Shepley was *not* the school librarian he claimed to be - this post was actually held by Marjorie Wild.

## Going into hiding

When Kennedy Fisher revealed she knew Shepley's real identity, she was quickly abducted by Allen and Barbara Sayers from the Courthouse Tavern. Allen and Sayers disagreed over how to deal with Fisher, Sayers wanted to kill her whereas Allen had the far more ambitious goal of getting Fisher to join their cause. He reasoned that after seeing "the seeds of creation" in the tunnels, Fisher would be curious to know more.

In a motel outside of Providence, Allen explained that he and Sayers were just one of a large number of followers of Ipqu-Aya and that the current disordered world around them was a product of their efforts. When Fisher surmised that they had infiltrated the establishment, Allen corrected her saying "We *are* the establishment." In an effort to convince Fisher to join them, Allen and Sayers conducted a ritual to show Fisher "the world as it really is".

Ezra Weeden later claimed that, while searching for Fisher, he heard screaming and forced entry into the motel room. Allen's ritual had left Fisher catatonic with her head tucked between her knees and Fisher would later reflect that she believed that, for a few moments, she experienced total madness. Weeden claimed to have shot Allen dead when Shepley rushed at him with a knife. However, Weeden's own association with Ipqu-Aya was later revealed which casts considerable doubt on his account of this event. Many months later, a Department agent, Parker, confirmed that an unidentified man whom Fisher had been tracking in Iraq, and whose head was covered in bandages, was in fact a very-much alive Dr. Allen.

## Iraq

After having fled Providence, Sayers and Allen travelled to London and kidnapped Melody Cartwright, who they had discovered was a granddaughter of Joseph Curwen's and thus a living continuation of the Ipqu-Aya bloodline. They then took Cartwright to Iraq, hoping to uncover the original teachings of Ipqu-Aya that had been lost over a millennium earlier in Ninevah - modern day Mosul. To this end, Allen started to correspond with Aramis Levesque, the proprietor of the Levesque Institute in Paris. Allen was particularly interested the diary of Edward Landsdale, a previous vessel of Ipqu-Aya in the early 20th century and someone who had had dealings with the immortal Comte de Saint Germain and had participated in a Babalon Working ritual in Melusine in 1914.

Why Allen was keen to track down St. Germain, who he believed might also go by the name of Obed Marsh, is unclear. By the time Allen was corresponding with Levesque, he had been an associate of Daisy Marsh, a daughter of Obed Marsh's, for a number of months in Iraq while they held Melody Cartwright prisoner. In Cartwright's own words the power dynamic between Daisy and Allen was very clear - "She's his boss." So either the truth about Obed Marsh was being deliberately kept from Allen by the Marshes and Dr. Allen decided to do his own personal research, or Allen was not being honest in his correspondence with Levesque about wanting the Landsdale journal for purposes of finding the Comte de St. Germain.

Allen's current whereabouts is unknown after he missed his appointment to speak with Levesque in person in Paris. He appears not to have been implicated in Barbara Sayers' treachery, and thus sharing her fate, as he was corresponding with Levesque some weeks after Sayers' body was found. However, after having been so pivotal in finding Cartwright in the first place, it is odd that he was not in attendance when Obed Marsh, Daisy Marsh and Melody Cartwright (now a vessel for Ipqu-Aya) attempted to summon Azathoth in Pleasant Green in 2020.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 TSoI: "Melusine"
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 TCoCDW: "Episode 4"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 TCoCDW: "Episode 5"
4. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 6"
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 TCoCDW: "Episode 9"
6. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 1"
7. ↑ TCoCDW: "Episode 2"
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 TCoCDW: "Episode 8"
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 TCoCDW: "Episode 10"
10. ↑ TWiD: "Episode 5"
11. ↑ TSoI: "Apartment 6"
12. ↑ TSoI: "Pleasant Green"