Harry Horse, The Ogopogo Author & Atlantis Rising Cartoonist Dies
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 11th, 2007
The author of The Opopogo – My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster, Harry Horse, 46 (real name: Richard Horne), his dog Roo, other pets, and his ill wife Mandy, 39, have all died in an apparent mass suicide.
The Scotsman is reporting on January 11, 2007, that Horne, his wife (multiple sclerosis saw her confined to a wheelchair at 39), and their pets were found Papil, on Burra, Scotland, on January 9, victims of an apparent assisted suicide and suicide pact.
Richard Horne, better known as Harry Horse, a famed children’s book illustrator, author, and cartoonist of the bizarre Atlantis Rising cartoon series.
His first book as an author and artist, The Opopogo – My Journey with the Loch Ness Monster, was published in 1983. They were illustrated with his black and white drawings, two of which you can see on this blog.
In an interview at Game Spot, Harry Horse gave a hint of the context in which he wrote his first children’s volume:
I’ve done a few things to get by. I started out at seventeen as an illustrator in Edinburgh, Scotland. I wrote my first book, The Ogopogo, in 1983 about the Canadian version of the Loch Ness Monster. I began a career as a forger about the same time to try to make ends meet. It was ironic that the year after I began the forgery I was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Writer of the Year for the above book, the first time that a children’s book had won the award….
In short, I forged a manuscript dated 1846, about a forger who makes prophecies through a false medium. The book is sold and the experts agree that the book is genuine, because it bears the name of a rare English poet, Richard Horne (which is also my real name), who lived and worked in 1846, had written an epic poem, Orion, and had an interest in the legend of the Sons of God. This was all unknown to me, but it was exactly the subject of my forgery. I was a political cartoonist for Scotland on Sunday for six years, worked for the Independent and Observer as a cartoonist. I formed the band Swamptrash (“the world’s only gothic bluegrass band”) in 1987, which was another grand hoax. Currently I make a living writing and directing games, but I still work as a caricaturist for the New Yorker, and still write books for children.
In his last Atlantis Rising cartoon/commentary on January 6, 2007, in the Sunday Herald/Salon, illustrated with the Minotaur above, he wrote in part:
These Things had wing, feather, claw, bird head, crocodile jaw, a sort of ancient plastic surgery gone manimal. Bull headed men, bird women and dog blokes were but a few of the variants made in the quest for a new beauty.
One only has to refer to the Egyptian and the Greek legends to see that Blavatsky’s Things were possible refugees from the stricken Atlantis. Minotaur, centaur and damn harpies, the world was once full of the critters.
Of course now such ideas are rightly consigned to the dustbin of history.
Gone now is the Harry Horse of cartoons and of the Ogopogo that began his journey making wakes in the illustrated waters. I hope he, his wife, and pets are at peace, finally.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
So sad. Suicide is an end, but it is never a solution.
I fail to see why these people found it necessary to kill their pets. If Horse and his wife choose to end their own lives, that’s their own decision, but to end the lives of their pets, too, seems like a selfish decision.
God grant them peace.
They probably thought that the pets would grieve for them and be miserable. Or maybe there was no one that they felt they could trust to care for the pets.
If I knew I was going to die, and I did not know that someone would take my pets and love them and care for them, I would humanely euthanize them rather than take the chance that they would be abused or neglected.
Thankfully I do not have to make that tragic choice. I have a large network of family and friends who would take my pets in the event of my death, just as I have taken many pets for others who have passed on. But maybe these poor people did not have that kind of support. Or maybe they were so caught up in their own misery that they could envision nothing but misery for their pets’ future.
I cannot think of a situation that would cause me to commit suicide. Life is precious and we don’t get nearly enough of it. I’ve been through awful things in my life too, losing a brother in childhood, losing other beloved relatives, losing my fiance to pancreatic cancer last year and enduring many hardships and reverses of fortune. But life is a gift and life is good and despite all those losses I have gained so many wonderful memories.
No matter what happens in my life, I always want to see what comes next. After all, when you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.
I will not judge another one’s pain, but look forward to when “Every tear will be wiped away.”
Your wit and mirth will be missed.
It’s a tragedy that you hope never happens to anybody especially when it’s someone close to heart. I lost my beloved step-father and two good friends to suicide a few years ago. The trauma of the loss is always there but you go on with life and keep the cherished memories of them. My heart-felt condolences go out to their relatives and friends at this most difficult of times.
I feel so terribly sorry for anyone who feels that they have no other relief from pain except for suicide, and also for the family and friends they leave behind.
It’s not my intention to belittle those people or minimize their all-encomcompassing pain. There but for the grace of God could go any of us. It’s just so terribly sad that a person would reach a point when existence is so painful that they choose not to exist, because their pain then becomes a burden for those they left behind.