Once Snodrog's logic traps enslave someone, if they had "unusually strong wills, or...were not entirely convinced by his arguments," they become Flimsies, usually taking "the shape of old linen napkins, stained with gravy and cranberry juice" that flap around as servants of the nasty pedant [14-5]. The creatures apparently lack any physical strength and have little worth, making flimsy a most appropriate name.

The fact that Flimsies "slip into open windows at night and try to smother sleeping people" reminded blogger comrade_cat of M.R. James’ famous story Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad. James’ story is of Professor Parkins who discovers an ancient whistle at the site of a ruined chapel. Parkins blows it out of curiosity and summons up both a wind and a revenant that invades the spare bed of his hotel room and, at the climax, fashions itself a body out of the sheets:

Parkins...did once describe something of it in my hearing, and I gathered that what he chiefly remembers about it is a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen. What expression he read upon it he could not or would not tell, but that the fear of it went nigh to maddening him is certain.

But he was not at leisure to watch it for long. With formidable quickness it moved into the middle of the room, and, as it groped and waved, one corner of its draperies swept across Parkins's face. He could not--though he knew how perilous a sound was--he could not keep back a cry of disgust, and this gave the searcher an instant clue. It leapt towards him upon the instant, and the next moment he was half-way through the window backwards, uttering cry upon cry at the utmost pitch of his voice, and the linen face was thrust close into his own.

Anyway...once he was defeated, "all the people that Snodrog had transformed [into flimsies] found themselves standing in the road outside his house the next morning. By a curious coincidence, they were the very people whose bed slats he had stolen, so they tore down the house...[76-7]."

This parade of former flimsies contains a number of familiar faces to both Bellairs and the Fitschens. Marilyn says Bellairs never suggested putting people they knew in the parade and was "pleased at his own cameo appearance" which he never saw until the book was published.

• Romy Fitschen, daughter of Dale and Marilyn, perched upon her father's shoulders.
• Hidden behind one of the bed slats is Bob Byrne, the best man at Dale and Marilyn's wedding.
• Next to Byrne is Bernie Markwell, Bellairs’ friend from Chicago.
• Marilyn Fitschen.
• John Bellairs.
• John Morriarty, Dale and Bellairs’ roommate at the University of Chicago.
• Joe and Jill Somoza, a poet and painter, respectively, who were friends of Fitschen's.
• W.C. Fields, whom Marilyn describes as “John’s idol.”
• Saint Fidgeta.
• Joe, best described by Marilyn as “someone everyone knew but not very well.”
• Dr. Dwight Ingle, Marilyn's boss at the University of Chicago Department of Physiology.
• The Cookie Cutter, Snodrog's first victim from the story.
• Marilyn says between Ingle and the Cookie Cutter were two women that were friends of hers but did not know John.

The characters continue to march onward onto page 78, though most of those names and faces are now forgotten - probably faculty at the University of Chicago, Marilyn guesses. "The only memory I have is the woman pulling the kids is Carole Morriarty, John Morriarty's ex-wife, and his twin sons."

For the record, the bar that Sir Bertram and the Shuffly visit was probably the Woodlawn Tap, the unofficial University of Chicago hangout. In fact, of all the eating and drinking establishments Bellairs visited during his years in Chicago this was probably the most frequented and revered.

As the closest bar within walking distance of the university, Jimmy's (as regulars fondly call it) attracted a large student crowd during the academic year. Its diverse clientele included artists, business people, students from the University of Chicago, construction workers, Nobel Prize winners, and writers such as Saul Bellow and Dylan Thomas. Brian Kenny, one of Bellairs' acquaintances from the mid-1960s, says that if one visited Jimmy's today, "you could listen to apocryphal stories from people there that are probably still working toward their Ph.D. having started in the 1960s." In a review on metromix.com, it is said alongside the bottles of scotch and gin are encyclopedias and the complete works of William Shakespeare - "used to settle friendly intellectual disputes," explained owner Jimmy Wilson in 1996, when at age 84 he was still tending bar four hours a day, seven days a week, despite poor hearing and vision. The beloved Wilson died February 22, 1999 of heart failure.