In the seemingly quiet town of Derry, which
sits beside the Penobscot River that winds
through Central Maine, historians have noticed
a pattern of horrible things happening every
27 years.
One such historian, Michael Hanlon, hoped
that the darkness would not reawaken on schedule
in 1984, so he was most disappointed to learn
of the fate of Adrian Mellon in July of that year.
Mike hoped that the Adrian Mellon incident
was an isolated one, but it would soon become
clear that Adrian had been just the first victim
of what has become known as “The Derry Cycle”,
a cycle that Mike had seen begin once before
in his lifetime with the untimely demise of
six year old George Denbrough.
To learn how Adrian’s case was linked to
Georgie, Henry Bowers, and ultimately, IT,
stick around to the end of this video.
Welcome to Horror History.
There are probably thousands of characters
in Stephen King’s 1986 novel, IT, so even
with multiple long film adaptations, it’s
difficult to do them all justice.
In the case of Mellon…
that is Adrian Mellon,
he didn’t even make an appearance in the
1990 mini-series IT, despite having an entire
chapter dedicated to him in the book.
He would show up for the 2019 movie, IT Chapter
2.
The character was inspired by a real victim
named Charlie Howard, who was thrown over
a bridge while walking with his male partner
after being harassed by three teenagers about
his sexuality.
This took place in Bangor, Maine which the
fictional town of Derry, Maine is heavily
based on.
The real life case and the fictional case
are almost exactly alike in every detail
except for the end.
Charlie Howard ended up drowning in the Kenduskeag
Stream, but Adrian Mellon would face a darker
fate.
To understand his story, I’m gonna take
it all the way back to his birth, but before
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Adrian Mellon was born in October of 1951.
Like another IT victim, Eddie Kaspbrak, he
had a bad case of asthma.
But unlike Eddie, he wasn’t always
very careful to protect himself from danger,
and he would one day be described as “one
of those fools who think things really are
going to turn out all right.”
The fact that Adrian was only 5’5” 135
in adulthood didn’t exactly make up for
his lack of protective coloration.
Adrian was, like so many Stephen King characters,
“a writer”.
He graduated from college in 1972 and went
on to write articles for all different types
of magazines and newspaper Sunday editions.
In his 3rd year of college, he began work
on a novel, but only worked on it on and off
for the 12 years that would follow.
A work ethic slower than even NakeyJakey.
In 1984, he was on an assignment from New
England Byways Magazine to go to Derry and
write a piece about the Derry Canal that was
responsible putting the town on the map in
the late 1800s.
In the Muschietti movies, Derry is known as
a Beaver Trap community rather than a logging
town.
"Derry started as a beaver trapping camp."
"Still is, am I right boys?"
So Adrian asked the magazine for 3 weeks of
expense money, and he planned to gather information
on the Derry canal in 5 days and just use the other
two weeks to gather material for 4 other regional
pieces, all while living it up in the Derry
Town House Hotel, the same hotel that The
Losers Club would eventually lodge at when
they came back to battle Pennywise the following
year.
It was during this 3 week stay that he met
Don Hagarty.
Don was living out the end of a 3-year lease
he had in Derry, while commuting up the road
to his engineering firm in Bangor.
Yes, the town that Derry is based on also
still exists in the world of Stephen King;
they’re two separate places that are very
similar.
By April of 1984, Adrian and Don were in a
steady relationship, and would often go together
to drink at Derry’s gay bar, the Falcon.
When Adrian’s stay at the hotel was up he
rented out a small apartment rather than returning
to Portland, and he ended up living there
just 6 weeks before moving in with Don.
That summer would be the happiest of their
lives, and for Don, everything was great,
other than the fact that his partner was really
taking a liking to the town of Derry.
He was planning on moving out of Derry once
his lease expired, but Adrian wanted them
to stay until October, because the new environment
was inspiring him to be more productive than
ever on his novel, and he felt for the first
time in 12 years that he could finish it.
So Don took him to The Kissing Bridge, an
area known as a lover's hideaway and destination
for graffiti and carvings, and he showed him
examples of the violently threatening anti-gay
markings, and explains that he doesn’t feel
comfortable in Derry because there seem to
be too many people who have what he calls
the “deep down crazies.”
Hagarty does not fully realize it, but the
reason that Derry seems to be home to so many
deeply hateful people is another phenomenon
caused by IT, known as the The Derry Disease.
In actuality, it’s more of a curse than
a disease, but Derry Disease sounds better
cause of alliteration.
Ever since the creature IT crashed in Derry
millions of years ago, it’s influenced certain
inhabitants to do truly evil and horrible
things.
The victims are often social outcasts.
In the case of the main characters, The Losers
Club, each of them has something about them
that causes the bullying: Stan for his religion,
Bill for his stutter, Ben for his fat...ness,
Eddie for his hypochondria, Richie for his
glasses, Beverly for being the first to hit
puberty and Mike for his race.
Sure, bullying occurs in every town, right? But the
bullying on these seven at the hands of Henry
Bowers and his gang was much more extreme
to the point of being life threatening, and
the Derry Disease is what causes it to go
this next level.
When Adrian Mellon came to Derry, the bullies
that threatened the Loser’s Club were gone
and locked away, but IT infected a new class
of bullies with those same psychopathic tendencies.
They were Steve Dubay, Christopher Unwin and
John “Webby” Garton, who was the craziest
and most evil of the trio, the Henry Bowers
of this group.
Bowers had disdain for all the Losers, but
the one that he went after the most was Mike
Hanlon, and this is because Bowers’s father
raised him with an outlook of racism.
John Garton targeted Adrian and Don because
he had a prejudice of heterosexism, and in
July of 1984, these two groups would have
their first confrontation.
The Derry Canal Days was a week long summer
event made to honor the town’s canal -- the
reason that Adrian came to Derry in the first
place.
On the first day of the festival, July 15th,
Adrian won a Paper Top Hat that said I ♥ Derry
on it, a reference to the era of the town’s
inception.
In the movie, as I mentioned, Derry was originally
a beaver camp, so the hats are little beaver
hats.
I went to the Canal Days Festival in 2019
as a promotion for It: Chapter 2, so I can
attest to how hard it is to win.
Adrian had eaten two fried doughboys smeared
in honey, so he was feeling a little bit of
a sugar high at the carnival.
As he and his boyfriend left, they were being
watched by Unwin, Dubay and Garton, who were
disgusted at their display of affection.
Garton threatened to make him eat the hat,
and Adrian, perhaps due to his lack of awareness
about danger, told him that he could find
something much tastier than the hat, which
infuriated Garton.
He’s talking about his--
But before he could react, he was stopped
by police officer Frank Machen.
“I can run you in, my friend,” Machen
said, “and the way you’re acting, it might
not be such a bad idea.”
“Next time I see you I’m gonna hurt you!”
Garton bellowed after the departing pair,
and heads turned to stare at him.
“And if you’re wearing that hat, I’m
gonna kill you!
This town don’t need no f*ggots like you!”
They don’t run into each other again until
July 21st, the final day of the festival.
Many of the carnival rides at this point are
already being taken down, so Webby, Unwin
and Dubay head over to the games, and Webby
tries to win the I ♥ Derry hat, but is unsuccessful
in many attempts.
I’m telling you, it’s harder than it looks.
So Garton wants to let out his frustration
elsewhere, and suggests they go drive around
looking for trouble.
Adrian and Don come out of the Falcon bar
after having a couple of beers each, and walked
past the bus station and onto the Main Street
Bridge around 10:20PM when they’re spotted
by Steve Dubay; and “Webby” Garton was
especially angry to see Adrian wearing the
I ♥ Derry hat.
He’s the first one to storm up to them and
demand the hat.
On this night, Adrian was not going to mess
around with them, and was willing to hand
over the hat in exchange for them being left alone,
but Garton had no plans to let him off the
hook that easily and socked him in the face.
If my assistant high school baseball coach
was there, he would have immediately got up
off one of those buckets and yelled, “in
the FAAAACEE!”
In actuality, there were some people down
by the bus station right next to the bridge,
but they did not respond to Hagarty’s pleas
for help, another symptom of “The Derry
Disease”, just like how Ben, Eddie and Beverly
all tried to call for help from adults when
they were being tortured by Henry Bowers and
his thugs, and each was left to fend for themselves
when their outcries were ignored.
Don also tried getting the attention of a
passing car, but Dubay pushed him to the ground,
while the younger Unwin kicked his stomach.
As the crazy teens laughed and pushed Adrian
around in a triangle, punching and ripping
at him to draw blood as he bounced around,
Don continued to call for help, but the only
response came from a small voice, who repeated
the word “help”, followed by a giggle.
And it happened again, causing him to peer
down over the edge where he saw... a clown.
His initial thought, upon seeing Pennywise,
was that It looked like a cross between Ronald
McDonald and Bozo, which is perhaps a reference
to the fact that Pennywise’s first interaction
with Georgie is inspired by one of the earliest
McDonald’s commercials featuring Ronald
McDonald.
“Well hi, isn’t that McDonalds hamburger
delicious?”
“Mom told me never to talk to strangers.”
“Well your mother’s right as always, but
I’m Ronald McDonald.”
Absolutely spine-chilling.
Pennywise offers Don a balloon, and tells
him, “They float.
Down here we all float; pretty soon your friend
will float, too.”
Meanwhile, Unwin, Dubay and Garton are chanting,
“bum’s rush, over the edge,” in reference
to the term bum’s rush, which is used in
Canada and the Northeastern United States
to refer to when someone is thrown out of
an establishment by the seat of their pants.
“We’re getting kicked out apparently.”
“You gotta go.”
“I just wanted a picture.”
At 10:35PM, the three teens threw Mellon off
of the side of the bridge, down 23 feet into
the canal, before running back to get in the
car.
But before retreating, the youngest of the
perpetrators, Christopher Unwin looked over
the edge and saw the clown dragging Adrian
onto the far bank of the canal, twisting its
head and grinning up at him with shining silver
eyes and great big teeth.
Pennywise shoved one of Adrian’s arms up
over his head and took a huge fleshy bite
into his armpit.
Hagarty heard his lover’s ribs splinter
before thousands of I ♥ Derry balloons appeared
out of nowhere and rose up to hit the bottom
of the overpass.
Hagerty would later describe the strings as
looking like strands of white spider web,
a clue about the monster’s final form.
Don had a moment of understanding, where he
believed that the clown he had seen was a
manifestation of the town, Derry, and in that
moment, he ran.
The three boys would be sentenced for their
actions that night later that year, with Garton
receiving 10-20 years, Dubay 15 years, and
Unwin, who had gone as a juvenile, 6 months,
but no clown was ever mentioned at the trial.
The situation with Adrian Mellon mirrors what
happened to the real life victim Charlie Howard,
who was attacked while walking down the street
with his boyfriend Roy Ogden in Bangor, Maine.
He was thrown into the same stream, The Kenduskeag,
and the ages of the aggressors, 15, 16 and
17 matched the ages of Unwin, Dubay and Garton respectively.
Both the real and fictional incident took
place in July of 1984.
But the incident also mirrors what Henry Bowers
and his gang put Michael Hanlon through back
in the 50s.
In fact, when Henry escaped the sewers from
Pennywise in 1958, he washed up out of a pipe
under the Main Street Bridge.
The ‘57-’58 cycle would end in the exact
same spot that the ‘84-’85 cycle would
begin when Adrian Mellon was taken by Pennywise.
Let me know in the comments if there are any
other IT characters you’d like to see covered
on Horror History, and make sure you check
that playlist on the left for everybody that
I’ve already covered so far.
Remember to subscribe to CZsWorld for new
horrors every week, ring the deathbell for
notifications and I’ll see you in the next
one.
Assuming we stay inside.
