Bryan Moore is, within a pretty small niche of horror fans and occultism fans, a fairly well-known sculptor and filmmaker. In particular, he directed a version of “Cool Air” which was screened at the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society film festival; additionally, he claims to run a business called “Arkham Studios”, which sells reproductions of his sculptures.
Or at least it purports to.
Last November, I ordered a rather handsome statuette of Cthulhu from Arkham Studios, and paid $136 via PayPal for it. I got a message from Mr. Moore shortly afterwards telling me that it would take four weeks for my statue to be “hand crafted”. Fine.
Six weeks went by, and no statue, nor any further word. After several further emails, I got a reply from Mr. Moore telling me that they were moving their studio, and it would be just a little while longer before they could ship anything out. This was the last I actually heard from Mr. Moore or Arkham Studios.
When I decided that a pretty unreasonable amount of time to move had passed, and still no statue, nor any further word, I again attempted to contact Mr. Moore, to no avail. I’ve sent him, and his partner Heather Saenz, more than a dozen emails over the past seven months but have never received another response from them.
Since they managed to fob me off with their fantasy stories for more than 45 days—I was foolish enough to believe them to be honest adults—I can’t dispute the transaction with PayPal at this point. So they’ve got my money, and I’ve got nothing at all.
I’ve posted a scathing review of their enterprise on Yelp, but I’d caution you not to buy anything at all from Arkham Studios and not to do business with Bryan Moore or Heather Saenz: they’re thieves.
(Well, my rants elsewhere managed to capture Bryan’s attention. His tale of woe, involving break-ups, lack of access to accounts, and various other travails is ongoing, so he reports in the email I just recieved from him. He tells me that it’s not been his intention to take money from people and provide nothing whatsoever in return, and he hopes to be correcting that situation at some unspecified point in the future. I’ll hope for the best, but I’m not planning on holding my breath here. In any case, I would still not recommend ordering anything whatsoever from Arkham Studios at this time…)
