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    The Call of Cthulhu
    The Call of Cthulhu
    The Call of Cthulhu
    Ebook46 pages55 minutes

    The Call of Cthulhu

    By H. P. Lovecraft

    3.5/5

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    H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writer of the macabre. This is one of those stories.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStart Publishing LLC
    Release dateFeb 3, 2014
    ISBN9781609772697
    Author

    H. P. Lovecraft

    Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

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    Reviews for The Call of Cthulhu

    3.5/5

    33 ratings31 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Somehow I have lived 30 years without reading a word of Lovecraft. That changed this year when I picked up the beautiful Penguin Orange copy of Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Most stories were so brilliant and creepy that the feeling stayed with me for hours after. Some were just okay, but just okay Lovecraft is better than most. His quintessential stories are here in this collection and recommended by a first reader like me.
    • 4/5
      Love H.P. Lovecraft and this is a pretty good collection. My Lovecraft review- interesting writing, even though he has stylistic problems. Very creative and creates fascinating and deeply detailed worlds.
    • 5/5
      A collection of short suspense horror stories, could have done without the reference notes though interesting, not necessary.
    • 4/5
      The fact that I can spell Cthulhu without having to look it up says something about how much I like Lovecraft. His style is... out of style, but he created a masterful mythos. These are the stories I read by candle or gaslight on stormy nights with a cup of tea and bag of popcorn. His monsters aren't threateningly real, so I can happily set aside rationality and just enjoy the fantasy.
    • 3/5
      I struggled with this one - in fact, no other book has taken me longer to read. I first took a look at it in 2005, and slowly worked my way through the first half dozen stories. Then, sadly, I shelved it as a project I couldn't finish. I didn't take to Lovecraft's style of writing at all. I found it to be too idiosyncratic and somehow distant, and definitely too pensive. I can understand the cult that's grown up around his work, and I did get a real kick out of reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," but I think this is where my horror adventure ends.
    • 3/5
      HP Lovecraft is a fantastic writer. His tales have a wonderful Gothic feel to them. Whether it is the sci-fi wonder of Call of Cthulu or the classic horror of Arthur Germyn. He is the worthy heir to Poe. If that was it, then I would recommend Lovecraft to all, he is everything I love, dark, creepy, and intelligent. But unfortunately he is also a virulent racist. His hatred of all non Anglo people is palpable. Take one such story at a time and you can shrug it off, but when you read several in a row, it just drives home that it is not a part of the story, it's just Lovecraft's hatred shining through. Lovecraft is without a doubt one of the preeminent horror writers of all time. But his racism makes it quite difficult to celebrate or appreciate that.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book, as a classic. As an inspiration for tons of D&D/RPG 'horror,' however, I just don't get it.
    • 4/5
      A selection of weird tales from the master of weird fiction. The epononymous work, Colour out of Space, The Whisperer in Darkness, and the Haunter of the Dark are the standouts.
    • 5/5
      Some stray thoughts... Lovecraft has some similarities with Borges. Old books. Stories more about idea than character. "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" could be a HPL story like "The Call of Cthulhu" with its main character going into the archives and finding that the world is really not what he thought....First time reading "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," which now may be my new favorite HPL. Not many people give him credit for being a fine regionalist in depicting New England towns and landscapes. The scene in which the protagonist has to escape from his hotel room was much more clearly blocked out than many Hollywood action sequences.....This Penguin Classic has some interesting notes in which I learned the surprising fact that I have actually been to the "real-life" setting of "The Colour Out of Space." It's the Quabbin Reservoir near Amherst, Mass. In the 1930s, a valley containing several towns was flooded to provide water for Boston. It is truly a strange place, with no people for miles around, dense forest, here and there a ruined foundation sticking out of the grass, and at its center, a giant white sphere containing a radio telescope.
    • 5/5
      Cindy, you're my favorite!

      Lovecraft can be silly, racist, and extremely purple, but he has this terrifically unique imagination: his stories feel like nothing else. And they're very enticing. There's a certain feel to his stories - a pallid green glow - a whole collection of words like "eldritch" - that feel forcefully Lovecraftian. He's a true individual. I dig him.

      Full (if growing) list of things to make sure not to miss:
      PARODIES?
      Herbert West - Reanimator (Ha, this was a ton of fun)
      The Hound (also great)

      RACISM!
      Horror at Red Hook (Whee!)
      He (Loved this one. Watch out for those Chinamen, I guess.)

      CTHULHU
      Dunwich Horror
      At the Mountains of Madness (Fun stuff, I wrote a review elsewhere)
      Shadow out of Time (Kinda too long)
      Call of Cthulhu

      THE REST OF IT
      The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
      The Dreams In The Witch House
      Colour out of Space (Great...sortof like a parable about radioactivity?)
      Whisperer in the Dark
      Shadow over Innsmouth

      While this Penguin edition is lovely, I'm supplementing it with a cheapo Collected Works on my Kindle, for the stories I want to read that aren't in this collection.
    • 2/5
      The first couple of stories were pretty interesting, but after a while the stories tend to get repetitive and predictable with nearly identical plots and themes. Nonetheless, it was worth it just to read the original story of the Cthulhu Mythos.
    • 3/5
      The short stories of Lovecraft, at least the ones in this anthology, all seem to take place in the same universe. The stories have a lot in common with another. For one thing, they all focus on some sort of mythical monster/god/evil creation of a mad scientist / reader of the Necronomicon. Also, if one were narrating them, it would be really difficult to resist the urge to end the telling of each with DUN-DUN-DUN.

      At first, I really was not feeling this at all. Lovecraft's writing is very flowery and ornate, which I felt did not lend itself particularly well to tales of horror. All of the extra information and verbiage lessened any sense of urgency that the stories were trying to convey. As I became more familiar with his narrative style and realized the connections underlying each story, I found myself coming to enjoy the stories.

      These tales are often hugely unsurprising in their final twists. The plot lines herein will be familiar to most people who have ever watched a horror film or read a horror story. At first, this irritated me, but this too turned to some amount of fascination when I considered that they were probably fairly original plot lines then. He may have originated some of these ideas, which is pretty cool.

      While this will not be for everyone, I definitely think that anyone who really liked Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will adore this, as it was clearly a huge influence upon him. Plus, the cover on this edition is completely gorgeous, even if I doubt Cthulhu would actually look like that.
    • 5/5
      Fast, fast pace. He doesn't let you breathe. Excellent story.
    • 4/5
      Lovecraft has had a tremendous influence on the modern fantasy, especially urban and comic fantasy. Terry Pratchett, Charles Stross, Jim Butcher, and several other major authors utilize Lovecraftian critters from the dungeon dimensions and the deepest depths as primary antagonists in their mythologies. I don't know if it's because I read the stories when I was too young, or if perhaps I encountered spoofs of his creatures before I read the real thing, but somehow, half-and-half fish/octopus men just aren't a terror trigger for me. Even in his more psychological works, I tend to find Lovecraft's writing a bit overblown, so much so that it tends to invoke laughter rather than horror. Granted, only a few of the antagonists of his stories are amphibious, but they almost always invoke an external influence. My classic horror stories of choice are the more internal/psychological ones-- The Yellow Wallpaper, The Turn of the Screw, etc.

      For all that, I have a great appreciation for Lovecraft's ideas and influence. I believe Lovecraft is one of the first authors to consider abstruse topological mathematics as a dangerous art that could cause collisions with extra-dimensional horrors ("Dreams in the Witch-House"). He tends to invoke a theme that knowledge is dangerous ("Call of Cthulhu", "The Festival", "The Silver Key", etc). Lovecraft also has a tendency to write stories about ordinary people put into extraordinary situations, and while the people are changed by the horrors they encounter, they basically always lose against their inexorable opponents. This sense of depression, the belief that fate is written in stone, tends to add a very unique flavour to his stories. As someone who finds fish-faced fiends funny rather than frightening, I also have him to thank for the ability to read quite a few horror stories without any subsequent terrors or nightmares.

      Overall, even if you don't find Dagon and the Deep Ones particularly dreadful or disquieting, Lovecraft is well worth reading for anyone interested in modern fantasy, horror, and fantastical comedy, if only to pick up on the Cthulhu jokes.
    • 3/5
      Lovecraft has his own strange mythology and style of storytelling. It is a bit droll and tedious but pays huge dividends in creepy atmosphere. Great stuff for the Poe fan, but skip it if you enjoy the more sensational and less cerebral horror fiction.
    • 4/5
      I finally got around to reading Lovecraft. And, now I get the obsession nerds have with him. The "Shadow at Innsmouth" really quite a scary story - between the town itself, and the ending.A few of the stories were predictable, such as - but it might be that this was first in of a type - and other authors copied him. For example "The Picture in the House".A few stories are science fiction, although a science fiction written in before an understanding of what is in space. Over all - I found the language to be a bit difficult, but after a few stories, the language gets easier to read.
    • 5/5
      Dagon: Excellent, but way too short. The Sci-Fi Channel movie "Dagon" was NOT based on this story.
      The Statement of Randolph Carter: Also excellent. HP can create more terror in 7 pages than most people in 700 pages.
      Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: Very good. I expected the ending to incorporate the Dagon/Cthulhu mythos (it didn't) but I was still pleasantly surprised.
      Celephais: Okay. His "dream"-type stories aren't the best. I'm wondering if the galley in the story is the same from "The White Ship".
      Nyarlathotep: Sucked. Uh, did anything even happen in this story?
      The Picture in the House:Awesome story. Like all of his best, it builds and builds until you're totally freaked out at the end.
      The Outsider: Thought I had read this before and I was correct. Very good, even if predictable at the end.
      Herbert West - Reanimator: Awesome, even if reading the series together tends to get repetitive.
      The Hound: Hm. I put in another HP review that I didn't care for The Hound. But upon re-reading it, I do find it quite enjoyable. Not his best, but not one of his clunkers either.
      The Rats in the Walls: Excellent! Very creepy, even though you can figure out what's coming. Tough to read in this day and age cause of the cat's name.
      The Festival: Had read this before, but reread it and it was still awesome. You feel as unsettled as the narrator as things progress.
      He:
      Cool Air: One of my favorite Lovecraft stories. Creepy and terrifying set up with an awesome/gross payoff.
      The Call of Cthulhu: What can I say? THE ultimate Lovecraft story of all time. With the most awesomest, bad-assed creature ever. Everyone must read this once.
      The Colour out of Space: A tad longish. Could have used some editing. But overall, VERY creepy and the ending payoff hits perfectly.
      The Whisperer in Darkness: At 60 pages, probably the longest Lovecraft story that I have made it through, although it DID slow in pace and get boring in the middle there. He could have cut down on the correspondence section between the 2 main characters a bit. But good overall, and part (kind of) of the Cthulhu mythos. I would recommend reading it, and not skipping over it.
      The Shadow Over Innsmouth: Spoke too quickly about Whisperer there. Innsmouth is also 60 pages and this is the second time that I've read this terribly awesome story. Ranks up there with Cthulhu as a must-read for Lovecraft fans. Fantastic!
      The Haunter of the Dark: Very creepy! Fits perfectly with the tone of the other works. And a nice way to end an EXCELLENT collection of Lovecraft stories.

      Best Lovecraft collection that I've read so far.
    • 2/5
      I guess I was expecting something different, or maybe something more, from this. The prose is a bit purple, horror a little staid, and the stories telegraph their endings so clearly that it's hard to remain in suspense. That being said, it's impressive how many horror movie genre conventions and tropes are on display here. Lovecraft truly was a pioneer and deserves to be remembered for that alone. Lovecraft's own personality comes through in ways that can be both interesting (his obsession w/ New England's social and architectural history) and unpleasant (the racism). Oh yeah, this edition is crammed with way, way, way too many footnotes.
    • 2/5
      I read Lovecraft as a teen in the late Seventies and early Eighties, and even then I noticed his racism. So although it was worse than I recalled when I picked this book up at a sale for old times sake, I wasn't surprised. The reader of Lovecraft may feel compensated for his racism by the depth of imagination, but, given the frequency and virulence of the racism, this second read of some of his "greatest works" has convinced me the compensation is not quite enough. Still, what really turned me off was the failure of this edition's editor to address it forthrightly. Why use a footnote when the offensive name of the pet cat in the story "The Rats in the Walls" is dropped like a turd in the middle of a (frankly not very good) short story, just to say Lovecraft burdened his own cat with the same name, and not even discuss the N-word in the room? Why doesn't the introduction or the notes address the obvious racist undertones in "The Call of Cthullhu" with its constant reference to "degenerate half castes," or the treatment of Hispanics in "Cool Air" or the straight up racism and fear of miscegenation in "Arthur Jermyn"? And this editor is not some Lovecraftian tourist, S.T. Joshi has written a biography of the man which he modestly refers to as "definitive" in the notes. If that definitive biography is as studious in ignoring the blatant racism of its subject as the notes and introduction in this volume is, I would have to say there is great room for more definition here. In the end, the notes were rendered useless to me by this failure - if Joshi tiptoes around racism as plain as the nose on Lovecraft's face, I had to assume (and in fact felt) that his additions to the work was merest persiflage. In the end, I was able to get a nostalgic kick from retracing my teen self's steps, although my more mature reader self has to wonder why I was so into this stuff, and how I even then could excuse the nasty racism. But that may just the failure of callow youth. What Joshi's excuse is, I have no clue, and his notes and introduction shed no light.
    • 5/5
      Not everyone likes reading this as much as I do. Many like minded people have told me they enjoy Anne Rice or Poe more. These weird little tales by HP Lovecraft are by far my favorites. Darker than other horror stories, the good and evil in these stories are well defined. No blurred lines.
    • 2/5
      I guess I missed my prime-Lovecraft years. I should have read him as an adolescent, back when I read and loved Poe. Reading him as an adult, I was was too often annoyed by his writing style to really enjoy the stories. This from someone who usually enjoys the wordier styles of the 19th and early 20th centuries. But I felt that Lovecraft's approach to creating an atmosphere of horror was usually to pile on a surfeit of foul, loathsome, hideous, grotesque, nauseous, and detestable adjectives. That said, I found his mythology fascinating; and I did enjoy uncovering it little by little as I made my way through the stories.
    • 5/5
      S. T. told me, in one of our live YouTube videos, that he considers this book, his first of three volumes for Penguin Classics, to be his single best, most important selection of Lovecraft's tales. I've reviewed the book below, but I want here to emphasize that I return to this single edition again and again, to reread the excellent Introduction or to study the Notes at the end of the book, which not only explain obscure words and such, but give wee details concerning Lovecraft's writing of these wonderful tales. I especially love the cover that Penguin gave this book.
    • 5/5
      Filling in the gaps in my geek cannon, the "Call of the Cthulhu" has been on my list for awhile. What I liked most about the story was the Jules Verne style and level of descriptive detail. I also liked that it was told from the perspective of a rational mind confronting (in an almost fatalistic way) a series of irrational events. The ability of the Cthulhu to horrify its victims in dream as well as in the waking hours puts it on a higher rung than other famous monsters.
    • 4/5
      This collection includes some of the best short stories written by H.P. Lovecraft. The stories themselves have been recollated and proofed against the original sources and are the definitive texts. Good introduction to Lovecraft for novices.
    • 4/5
      Loathesome. Cyclopean.Lovecraft likes those words and others that communicate both the repulsion and the otherworldly alienness that his human protagonists experience when encountering the otherworldly terrors of his mythos. In this case, you have an investigator who is running down a trail of clues and encounters various academics, police officials and others are having with a series of seemingly unrelated cults. But among these cults, whatever the language otherwise, phrases in an unknown language, the same one, keep recurring. Also, an image of a humanoid giant with dragon wings and the head of an octopus. All these signs point to the perception that an ancient race of entities called the Great Old Ones and their leader, Cthulhu, are hidden away in an underwater city someplace. The time is coming, soon, the Stars Will Be Right, and dreaming Cthulhu will return. His followers believe they will share the power and the glory of their god as Great Cthulhu rampages across the world.It helps to remember that the followers of Cthulhu are seemingly insane, and even physicaly degenerate.Cthulhu lies dreaming, and his dreams are touching and affecting people the world over.Creepy stuff. Don't read it at three in the morning while on guard duty.
    • 3/5
      Review: The Call of Cthulu and other Weird StoriesBy H.P. Lovecraft360 pagesShort Story CollectionStory Diversity: standard; most of the stories are medium length, there are one or two long ones; protagonists are virtually the same; character diversity suffersVocabulary: standard; Lovecraft favors several words (like ‘hideous’) which he uses quite often; other than that, vocab is fineTwists: some of his twists are great, none are terribly subtle, however, he recycles some twists.Strengths: imaginative supernatural creatures and settings; characters, although recycled, come across as believable and genuine; Lovecraft utilizes interesting ideas—horror, from his perspective, doesn’t mean blood. His generators of horror are original and include rituals, disease, and even otherworldly colors. Weaknesses: recycled twists and characters; some stories are a bit melodramatic and are far too long to justify their content; his stories generate little tensionBottom line: I was not impressed by H.P. Lovecraft’s work. Lots of people reference his work and say he was one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th century, but I can’t see why. A lot of his work was inspired by others’ writing, and his writing (his sentence fluidity and dialogue) is not remarkable either. The Necronomicon and Cthulu are amongst his most famous creations, and yes, they’re original and frightening to think of, but these creations are not employed to the greatest effect.
    • 2/5
      I think I'm going to have to give up on this book. I really dislike saying such things but I am very underwhelmed by The Call of Cthulhu and other weird stories by H.P. Lovecraft. It could be due to desensitization or the amount of hype and praise that various friends gave H.P. Lovecraft. I am a proud child of the 70’s and 80’s so some of the first media I was ever exposed to was the slasher horror flick. Jason, Michael Myers (Halloween 3 sucked so much I begged my mother to let me watch it and was so mad because it was nothing like 1 or 2, and was really poorly written and made no sense) Freddy Kurger, Chucky, Damien, and Regan Burstyn were all the odd protagonist of my day. Some of my favorite television in my childhood was the twilight zone, the outer limits, tales from the darkside, tales from the crypt, monsters, and one of the ones that really love was Friday the 13th the series.When I allotted time to be properly horrified by the man countless critics called, the father and master of American horror I was very disappointed. His writing style is beautiful he is one of the few writers that transform the written word into experience. There is a point that you do not notice where you stop reading and you are merely following the events of the unfolding epic. The unfortunate part is the epic that unfolds is the archetype of anticlimactic. I wanted to like these stories, and they were good, but from what I had heard, I expected a great deal more.Dagon: seemed to be nothing more than a spooky dream that had not reached full nightmare status at worse, an initial outline for The Call of Cthulhu at bestThe Statement of Randolph Carter: Was an attempt at suspense but the constant reminder of the horrors that we can not see, and would drive a weaker man insane only made the second hand recount of the terrors more interesting and I was hoping at one point he would jump down the well and just help his friend. To me as the reader I thought that was the logical next step but it wasn’t and the ending, Ill be honest, was campy.Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family: This was just silly and a tad bit racists. He protagonist sets himself on fire because he finds out that he is probably the last descendent of a race of white gorillas that happen to breed with people.Celphais: Is really a story about a guy that had a good acid dream and spends the rest of his life trying to get back to it and dies when he does.Nyarlathotep: I believe this was probably what inspired the first two mummy movies. If you have seen them then you have the jist of this short here.And the greatThe Call of Cthulhu: This was such a disappointment. Cthulhu is an ageless squid, octopus dragon god with wings that has been dormant but conscience for ages beyond count or measure. It gives artists and poets nightmares and causes its worshipers to go frantic with frenzy. Anyone that speaks of Cthulhu to anyone that does not know of Cthulhu, dies. One day a sailor stumbles upon Dagon’s island… I mean Cthulhu’s island and sees Dagon’s monolith… I mean Cthulhu’s monolith and the rest of ancient city that housed the old one. “and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight." I mean that line alone just one of the things that angers me. I mean if you have been around trillions of years before the first organisms on earth began to form and shaped the very thoughts of early man in ape form, you could not get one of your worshipers to come jail break you? And how weak are you that a boat can ram you and cause your head to explode. COME ONI read a few other stories but I wont review them because I don’t like to continue in negative. If you like Horror and are a great fan of Poe, stay away from H.P. Lovecraft, save for style and technique alone. The contents of these stories, however beautifully written, are for me a classic case of the dangers of hype.
    • 4/5
      What I like about Lovecraft’s short stories is the way he created a whole mythology that not only links them together but pulls in strands from the stories of other horror writers of the era. A little Internet investigation will confirm this – whole dissertations have been written about it and The Necronomicon, that hideous and blasphemous text, supposedly written by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, but in reality a fiction and construct of Lovecraft’s imagination. I read somewhere that he used to edit and improve the stories of other writers, giving him further opportunity to extend the web of his fiction until one almost begins to wonder where imagination begins. These stories have become modern classics, although sometimes they feel overlong and dated in their formality. There are passages of marvellous writing and glimpses into the mind of the writer himself: somehow one feels the presence of Lovecraft in all his narrators, so it’s almost as though one knows the author (although some darkish mystery remains) by the end of the book. I’m not sure how these stories would compare to the modern equivalent because I haven’t read any to speak of; all I can say is that the horror in Lovecraft’s work doesn’t rely on gore or explicit violence and there’s no sex. It’s more the creeping fear of the unseen, the presence in the darkness, that builds gradually to alien and unspeakable happenings, some of which seem almost to tap into primeval memories. Clever stuff!
    • 3/5
      I’m pretty sure I’ve read Lovecraft in the past – in fact, I have a quite vivid memory of the cover art of a Lovecraft collection which, I think, I borrowed from Coventry City Library back in the early 1990s. It’s hard to be sure, given there’s so many different ways to pick up knowledge of his oeuvre and the Cthulhu mythos – I used to play the Call of Cthulhu RPG when I was at school, for example. Having said that, none of the stories in The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories seemed especially familiar. I’d always thought Lovecraft’s prose of poor quality, and despite a recent discussion on that subject, I suspect I may be revising my opinion. The early stuff is pretty bad – Q: when is a door not a door? A: when it’s a “panelled portal”; and Lovecraft had a bad habit of saying something is indescribable… and then going on to describe it. But by the late 1920s, his writing had improved hugely, and in stories like ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ (1928) and ‘The Shadow of Innsmouth’ (1931), he’d toned down his love of adjectives to great effect; and while he might still recycle his favourite words a few times too often, the less-is-more approach was certainly better at evoking eldritch horror. I have to admit, I enjoyed this collection a lot more than I’d expected. Happily, I bought all three of the Penguin Modern Classic Lovecraft books, so I have The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories and The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, all in nice matching paperback editions.
    • 5/5
      After ploughing through the hard-to-read, truncated, cyber-punk craziness of Neuromancer, I went to the more "simple" and "traditional" The Call of Cthulhu. Ahhh, Lovecraft, isn´t it great to read such well written and immersive fantasy?! Will stay on this book for quite some time enjoying each of the short stories...

    Book preview

    The Call of Cthulhu - H. P. Lovecraft

    The Horror In Clay

    The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

    Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things—in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will accomplish this piecing out; certainly, if I live, I shall never knowingly supply a link in so hideous a chain. I think that the professor, too, intended to keep silent regarding the part he knew, and that he would have destroyed his notes had not sudden death seized him.

    My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1926-27 with the death of my great-uncle, George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages in Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Angell was widely known as an authority on ancient inscriptions, and had frequently been resorted to by the heads of prominent museums; so that his passing at the age of ninety-two may be recalled by many. Locally, interest was intensified by the obscurity of the cause of death. The professor had been stricken whilst returning from the Newport boat; falling suddenly; as witnesses said, after having been jostled by a nautical-looking negro who had come from one of the queer dark courts on the precipitous hillside which formed a short cut from the waterfront to the deceased’s home in Williams Street. Physicians were unable to find any visible disorder, but concluded after perplexed debate that some obscure lesion of the heart, induced by the brisk ascent of so steep a hill by so elderly a man, was responsible for the end. At the time I saw no reason to dissent from this dictum, but latterly I am inclined to wonder—and more than wonder.

    As my great-uncle’s heir and executor, for he died a childless widower, I was expected to go over his papers with some thoroughness; and for that purpose moved his entire set of files and boxes to my quarters in Boston. Much of the material which I correlated will be later published by the American Archaeological Society, but there was one box which I found exceedingly puzzling, and which I felt much averse from showing to other eyes. It had been locked and I did not find the key till it occurred to me to examine the personal ring which the professor carried in his pocket. Then, indeed, I succeeded in opening it, but when I did so seemed only to be confronted by a greater and more closely locked barrier.

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