[adapted]

by
H. P. Lovecraft

Some very old and powerful things might still be alive. They may come from a time long ago, when minds and beings were very different. These strange shapes have left our world. Now, only old poems and stories remember them. People once called them gods or monsters.

—Algernon Blackwood.

Chapter I
The Horror in Clay

I think the kindest thing in the world is that our minds can’t understand everything. We live on a small, quiet island of not-knowing. Around us is a huge, dark sea that goes on forever. We are not supposed to go too far into it. Science has not hurt us much so far. But one day, if people connect too many pieces of knowledge, they may see a scary truth. Then, they might go crazy or want to hide in the dark again, just to feel safe.

Some people called Theosophists talked about strange, huge things in the universe. They said our world and people are just small parts of a big cycle. They also said that some very old things might still be around. Their words were scary, but they tried to sound hopeful. Still, my own scary moment did not come from them. It came when I put two things together by accident—an old newspaper and some notes from a dead professor. That moment showed me something terrible. I hope no one else will ever do the same. I know I will never help anyone find out more. I believe the professor also wanted to keep it secret. Maybe he would have destroyed his notes, but he died too suddenly.

I learned about this thing in the winter of 1926–1927, after my grand-uncle, George Gammell Angell, died. He was a retired professor at Brown University. He studied old writings and was well-known. Many big museums asked him for help. People might still remember when he died at age ninety-two. In our town, people were very interested because no one really knew how he died. They said he fell after bumping into a sailor-looking Black man. This man had come from a dark alley on a steep hill near the professor’s house. Doctors couldn’t find anything clearly wrong. They guessed that his heart stopped because he had walked up a hard hill. At that time, I believed them. But now, I’m not so sure.

I was his heir, because he had no children and his wife had died. I had to look through all his papers. I moved everything to my place in Boston. Most of his things were normal, and I plan to share them with the American Archeological Society. But one box was very strange. I didn’t want to show it to anyone else. It was locked, and I didn’t find the key until I checked the key ring he kept in his pocket. When I opened the box, I found something even more puzzling. Inside was a weird clay carving, some messy notes, and old newspaper pieces. I didn’t understand what it all meant. I started to wonder—had my uncle started to believe in silly lies in his old age? I decided to find the strange artist who made the clay piece. I needed to know why my uncle cared so much about it.

The clay carving was a flat rectangle. It was thin and small, about five by six inches. It looked like something made in modern times. But the designs on it didn’t feel modern at all. Even though modern art can be strange, it usually doesn’t look like ancient writing. This carving did. Most of the designs looked like some kind of writing. But I had seen many old papers and collections from my uncle, and I still didn’t know what kind of writing this was. I couldn’t even guess where it came from.

Above the strange writing was a picture. It was clearly meant to show something, but it was hard to tell what. It looked like a monster—or maybe a symbol of a monster—something that only a sick mind could imagine. My wild thoughts saw it as a mix of an octopus, a dragon, and a twisted person. It had a soft, round head with long arms like tentacles. Its body was weird and scaly, and it had small wings. But it was the shape of the whole thing that made it really scary. Behind it, there seemed to be huge, ancient buildings in the background.

The writing with this strange carving was in Professor Angell’s own handwriting. It didn’t try to sound nice or stylish. The main paper was titled “CTHULHU CULT”, written clearly so no one would read the strange word the wrong way. This paper had two main parts. The first part was called: “1925—Dream and Dream Work of H. A. Wilcox, 7 Thomas St., Providence, R. I.” The second part was: “Story of Inspector John R. Legrasse, 121 Bienville St., New Orleans, La., at 198 A. A. S. Meeting—Notes on It, & Prof. Webb’s Account.”

The other papers were all short. Some were about strange dreams people had. Some came from books and magazines about theosophy (especially Atlantis and The Lost Lemuria by W. Scott-Elliott). The rest were notes about secret groups and hidden cults. There were also quotes from books about old myths and human customs, like The Golden Bough by Frazer and The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Miss Murray. The newspaper clippings talked about strange mental illnesses and people acting crazy in groups in the spring of 1925.

The first part of the main paper told a very strange story. It said that on March 1st, 1925, a thin, dark young man came to visit Professor Angell. He looked nervous and full of energy. He brought the strange clay carving with him. It was still very wet and soft.

His name was Henry Anthony Wilcox, as shown on his card. My uncle remembered him as the youngest son of a good family. He had been studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and lived alone in the Fleur-de-Lys Building nearby. Wilcox was very smart but also very odd. Since he was a child, he told strange stories and dreams that made people notice him. He called himself “psychically hypersensitive.” But most people in the old city just thought he was “weird.” He didn’t spend much time with others and slowly disappeared from social life. Now, only a small group of artists from other places knew him. Even the Providence Art Club thought he was too unusual to accept.

In his notes, Professor Angell wrote that during the visit, Wilcox suddenly asked for help understanding the writing on the clay carving. He spoke in a dreamy and fancy way that made it hard to like him. My uncle answered a bit sharply, because the carving looked too fresh to be anything ancient.

Wilcox’s answer made my uncle take notice. It was very poetic, just like how Wilcox often spoke. He said: “It is new, indeed, for I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled Babylon.”

Then, he began a strange story. It made my uncle remember something deep inside and quickly got his full attention. There had been a small earthquake the night before, the biggest one in New England in years. Wilcox had felt it deeply in his imagination. That night, he dreamed of huge cities made of giant blocks and tall stone towers. Everything was wet and covered in green slime. The place felt evil and scary. There were strange letters on the walls. From somewhere below, he heard a voice—but it wasn’t really a voice. It was more like a feeling turned into sound. He tried to say it using strange words: “Cthulhu fhtagn.”

This strange phrase made Professor Angell remember something that frightened and shocked him. He asked Wilcox many careful questions. He studied the clay carving like a man obsessed. Wilcox later said the professor was slow to notice the letters and picture, maybe because he was old. Some of the professor’s questions were very odd. He kept trying to find out if Wilcox was part of a secret group or religion. Wilcox didn’t understand why the professor kept promising to stay quiet—if only Wilcox would admit he was in some strange cult.

When the professor became sure that Wilcox didn’t know anything about a secret group or old beliefs, he asked him to keep sharing his dreams. This worked. After the first meeting, Wilcox came back every day. He told the professor more and more about his strange dreams. They were always about huge, dark cities made of wet stone. And there was always some voice or strange mind calling out in weird, unclear sounds. The two sounds he said the most were: “Cthulhu” and “R’lyeh.”

On March 23rd, the paper said, Wilcox didn’t come to visit. When someone checked his room, they found out he had gotten sick with a strange fever. He had been taken to his family’s home on Waterman Street. That night, he had cried out in his sleep, waking up several other artists in the building. Since then, he had been either unconscious or talking nonsense.

My uncle quickly called his family and stayed very interested in the case. He often visited Dr. Tobey, who was the doctor taking care of Wilcox. The doctor said that Wilcox’s sick mind kept thinking about strange things. Sometimes, the doctor even shivered while talking about them. Wilcox kept dreaming the same things as before—but now the dreams also spoke of a huge creature, “miles high,” that walked around heavily. He never explained clearly what this thing looked like. But the few wild words he said were enough to convince the professor that it was the same monster Wilcox had made in his clay sculpture.

The doctor added that every time Wilcox talked about the creature, he would soon fall into a deep sleep again. Oddly, his body temperature wasn’t very high, even though the sickness looked like a real fever. It didn’t seem like just a mental problem.

On April 2nd, around 3 p.m., Wilcox suddenly got better. He sat up in bed, surprised to find he was home. He didn’t remember anything that had happened—either in dreams or in real life—since the night of March 22nd. His doctor said he was healthy again. Three days later, he went back to his room. But to Professor Angell, Wilcox was no longer helpful. His strange dreams had ended when he got better. My uncle stopped writing down Wilcox’s dream reports after a week because they were now just normal, boring dreams.

That’s where the first part of the paper ended. But when I looked at other notes, I found more to think about—so much, in fact, that only my deep disbelief in strange things kept me from fully trusting Wilcox’s story.

The notes I found talked about the dreams of other people during the same time Wilcox had his strange dreams. It seemed my uncle had quickly started asking lots of people about their dreams. He contacted almost everyone he knew well enough to ask, and he asked them to report any strange dreams they had and when they happened. Some people gave helpful answers, and he must have received a lot of replies—more than one person could handle without help.

The original letters weren’t saved, but the notes my uncle made from them were clear and important. Regular people—workers, businesspeople, and others from everyday life—mostly said they had no dreams or just regular ones. But a few did report feeling uneasy in their sleep between March 23rd and April 2nd—the same time Wilcox was sick.

Even scientists were not much affected. But in four cases, people said they saw odd dream scenes with strange landscapes. One person said they felt a fear of something not normal.

The useful answers came from the artists and poets. I believe people would have panicked if they had been able to share and compare their dreams. Because my uncle didn’t keep their letters, I sometimes wondered if he had asked leading questions or changed their answers to match what he wanted to find. That’s why I kept thinking that Wilcox, somehow knowing what my uncle already had, was tricking the old professor.

But these reports from the artists told a creepy story. From February 28th to April 2nd, many of them had very strange dreams. The dreams got stronger during the time when Wilcox was sick. More than a fourth of them said their dreams looked and sounded like the things Wilcox had described. Some said they felt strong fear. They saw a huge, nameless creature near the end of the dream.

One case stood out. It was very sad. A famous architect, who liked theosophy and occultism, went mad on the same day Wilcox got sick. He died months later after screaming again and again to be saved from some creature he believed had escaped from hell.

If my uncle had listed names instead of just numbers, I would have tried to check some of these stories myself. Still, I was able to track down a few of the people. What they said matched my uncle’s notes perfectly. I’ve often wondered if the people he questioned felt as confused as these few did. It’s probably best they never learned the full story.

The newspaper clippings also told of strange events. As I mentioned before, they talked about panic, madness, and weird behavior during this time. My uncle must have hired a company to collect them, because there were so many from all over the world.

There was a suicide in London, where a man screamed and jumped out a window during the night. A strange letter was sent to a newspaper in South America, where someone predicted a terrible future based on their dreams. In California, a group of theosophists all wore white robes, waiting for a big event that never happened. Reports from India mentioned secret unrest toward the end of March. In Haiti, voodoo ceremonies increased, and in Africa, there were scary rumors.

American soldiers in the Philippines said some local tribes were causing problems. In New York, police were attacked by a group of panicked Levantines on the night of March 22nd–23rd. Ireland had wild rumors going around. In Paris, a strange artist named Ardois-Bonnot showed a painting called Dream Landscape in the spring art show of 1926. It looked like something evil.

So many people were sent to mental hospitals that it’s amazing doctors didn’t notice how similar the cases were. If they had, they might have come to some very strange and scary ideas.

All these newspaper clippings were very odd. Looking back now, I can’t believe how cold and logical I was when I first read them. But at the time, I was sure that young Wilcox had somehow learned about the older stories my uncle had written down.

Chapter II
The Tale of Inspector Legrasse

The old things that made Wilcox’s dream and sculpture so important to my uncle were explained in the second part of his long paper. It turns out that Professor Angell had once seen something very similar before. He had seen the awful shape of the same unknown monster. He had looked at the strange writing. He had even heard the scary word that can only be written as “Cthulhu.” That earlier event had been so terrifying that it made perfect sense why he questioned Wilcox so much.

This happened earlier—in 1908, seventeen years before Wilcox’s visit. That year, the American Archeological Society had its big yearly meeting in St. Louis. Professor Angell was a very respected expert, so he had an important role in the event. He was one of the first people to be approached by guests who came with questions and mysteries.

One guest stood out from the rest. He became the center of attention. He was an ordinary-looking man, middle-aged, who had come all the way from New Orleans. His name was John Raymond Legrasse, and he was a police inspector. He wasn’t interested in history or ancient things. He came for help on a police matter.

He brought with him a small stone statue. It looked disgusting, strange, and very old. He had no idea where it came from.

Inspector Legrasse wasn’t curious about history for fun. He came because of his work. The statue had been found months before in the swamps south of New Orleans. The police had raided a voodoo gathering, and the statue had been part of it. The things they saw at the meeting were so disturbing that the police realized they had found a cult more evil than anything they had ever heard of—even worse than the darkest voodoo stories.

The people in the cult gave wild, confusing stories when caught. The police could learn almost nothing real. That’s why Inspector Legrasse came to the meeting. He hoped someone could tell him where the statue came from. If he could understand it, maybe he could learn more about the cult behind it.

Legrasse didn’t expect how shocked the scientists would be. As soon as they saw the statue, they became deeply interested. Everyone crowded around to look. The figure was very small but looked incredibly old and mysterious. No known art style could explain it, but it seemed to be thousands of years old. Its surface was greenish and worn, and no one could say what kind of stone it was made from.

The statue was about seven or eight inches tall and made with amazing skill. It showed a monster that looked sort of like a person, but with many differences. Its head looked like an octopus, with a face full of tentacles. Its body was bumpy, scaly, and rubbery. It had huge claws on its hands and feet, and long, thin wings on its back.

The monster looked big and bloated and was crouching on a square block. The block had strange letters carved into it—no one could read them. The statue’s wings touched the back of the block. Its bottom sat in the middle. Its strong back legs were pulled in close, and the claws reached down the front of the block. The creature’s head bent forward so the ends of its tentacles touched its big front paws, which rested on its knees.

The whole statue looked creepily alive. What made it worse was that nobody had any idea where it came from. It was clearly ancient—very, very old—but it didn’t match any known art from the early days of human history, or from any other time at all.

The material of the statue was also a mystery. It looked like greenish-black stone with golden or shiny spots and lines, but it felt soft and smooth like soap. Nothing in science or geology matched it. No one at the meeting had ever seen anything like it before.

The strange symbols on the base of the statue were just as confusing. Even though many of the world’s smartest experts were in the room, no one had any idea what language the writing came from. Like the statue and the material, the writing seemed to come from something very old and completely different from anything human. It felt like a sign of a dark, ancient kind of life—something so old and strange that it didn’t belong in our world.

As the experts shook their heads and admitted they didn’t know what it was, one man said the statue and writing looked slightly familiar. He spoke carefully, unsure of what he remembered. His name was William Channing Webb, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University. He was also a well-known explorer.

Professor Webb told a story from 48 years earlier, when he traveled in Greenland and Iceland. He had been looking for ancient Runic writing, but didn’t find any. While traveling far up the west coast of Greenland, he met a strange group of Eskimos. They had their own religion, which was very violent and scary. It was a kind of devil-worship. Other Eskimos didn’t know much about it, and they were afraid to talk about it. They said it was very, very old—older than the world itself.

This cult did terrible rituals, including human sacrifices. They prayed to a powerful devil called a tornasuk. Professor Webb carefully wrote down the sounds of one of their chants using Roman letters. But the most important thing was the object they worshiped. It was a rough stone carving with a terrible picture and strange writing. It looked a lot like the statue at the meeting.