The Immortal Hour: The True Story of Netta Fornario

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A doctor injects himself with morphine in a guest house bedroom on Iona, confessing not to a god, but to the syringe. On such a small island it was down to good luck that she found a room at Traigh Mhor some distance from the village. In fact, after a short spell in her room, she emerged and told Mrs MacRae that she had changed her mind, and that she would be staying indefinitely on the island. We also hear of the peculiar scene where Netta was found, leading to further suspicion around occult practices.

She was described as being of a cheerful, happy disposition, but prone to embarking on mad whims, such as announcing to her housekeeper that she was going to fast for 40 days (she sensibly stopped after a fortnight). Shetland Arts presents The Mysterious Death of Netta Fornario by Mull Theatre and Wildbird in Walls and Lerwick in June.

If Mrs Cameron and her island neighbours believed that Netta had come to Iona for her health, they were mistaken. There seems to have been some delay in reporting her missing, but I guess everybody was used to Netta disappearing for several hours at a stretch, and would not have found it unduly alarming. Trouble is, Crowley was so full of hyperbole, that it’s very hard to separate out fact from fantasy with what he said). Halliday also points to reports of mysterious blue lights seen in the area where she was found, and that letters of “strange character” were found amongst her belongings and passed to the Procurater-Fiscal, never to be seen again. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.

No police investigation was carried out as the presiding physician noted the cause of death as heart failure from exposure. Netta was noticed to be missing on Monday morning and was eventually found the day after close to an ancient village ruined village she had expressed in interest in, but never visited. Suicidally overwhelmed by his experience in the Field Ambulance Service during The Great War, Tyler has come to the Island determined either to make a new beginning or to end his life. But how much of the story is grounded in reality, and how much is the work of overactive imaginations, is perhaps as much of a mystery as the case itself. At some point after her death, Netta Fornario was reproduced along with other members of the Golden Dawn by Coronzon, through the application of Tarot-based grimoires, as part of her anti- Crowley countermeasures.Throughout the action, waves crash on the stony beach, rain batters on the window and creepy sounds create the spine-tingling mood of uncertainty that pervades the play. Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters.

Oddly, she would emerge a short time later in a much calmer state and proclaim that she had decided to stay on the island after all, before going out for one of her walks. She began to wander around the island aimlessly during the day trying to contact the “spirits” she believed to be living there, and by night she would go into deep trances, sometimes for days on end, from which she would come out of claiming that she had received communications from the spirit world. Netta claimed that the statue was cursed but Professor Fornario, a rational man of science told his daughter that she was ridiculous. Emma talks of Netta's fascination with the spiritual and occult and of the odd behaviour she displayed during her time on Iona. The Oban Times article reported that several letters of ‘strange character’ were also taken by the police, who passed them on to the Procurator-Fiscal for ‘consideration’.

This is an admittedly daunting task as there are precious few vestiges of her life to examine and seeking them inspires even more questions.