Summary of The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu" was published in 1928, The story follows a man going through the notes of his maddened late granduncle. The notes play out as a story about his grand uncle discovering the great old one Cthulhu and the cult that worships him. Although the story is based around the alien god his existence in the book is only relegated to a few mentions from the notes and one encounter towards the end.

The story starts with nephew who has just lost his great uncle George Gamel Angil. The nephew who is now in charge of his uncles will comes across several artifacts in his belongings. In those belongings are several newspaper clippings and two manuscripts as well as the sculpture. The sculpture looked like a mixture of different animals.

One of the manuscripts contained nothing of interest but the second manuscript as he discovered involved a young Henry Anthony Wilcox Wilcox. His uncle found out he had visions in his dreams of a mythical creature part monster, octopus, and dragon with a scaly body and wings. Wilcox made a sculpture of what he had saw.

His uncle visited him daily and reported that this monster Wilcox called Cthulhu and he walked or Lumbard about. The manuscript concluded that Wilcox fell ill with a high fever as determined by his doctor. His doctor had stated that he was not mad. Wilcox did recover but they were no more dreams and his uncle determined there was no more value in continuing the visits.

The next half of the manuscript was regarding a policeman from New Orleans a John Raymond Legrasse. Legrasse was summoned one evening by some squatters that there wife’s and children were missing. As Legrasse was investigating the report of missing women and children in the swamps of New Orleans where of voodoo meeting had taken place a dark cult, hidden deep in the swamp. As they upon found the meeting place they discovered the missing children and women and an unknown thing. There appeared to be a whitish glow and batlike creatures were said to have flown up from the ground to worship a greenish stone 7 to 8 inches high in which it appeared to be a monster with an octopus head and scaly long narrow wings and squatted on a block. Legrasse described it as a voodoo orgy they were chanting Cthulhu Ryeal. An exchange of gunfire resulted in five being killed and 47 arrested. The prisoners stated when questioned that they worshipped the great old ones and waited the return of a monster called Cthulhu. The prisoners also confirmed hat the sculpture was the great Cthulhu. There were other notes by a professor William Channing Webb which describes a group of Eskimos that had the same worshipping practises as the voodoo swamp priests. The prisoners although insisted that this was a cult that would always exist in the deepest darkest places only to reveal itself when the great Cthulhu returned in which they waited for him to be liberated. Most of the prisoners were committed to a mental facilities while only two were sane enough to be hanged.

The nephew found an Australian paper with a story about a Direlect boat in which there was only one survivor. The survivor Gustav Johansson when found held a horrible stone idol about a foot in height. He said he had found the statue hidden in the cabin of the ship. Johansson reported the ship was attacked by heavily armed boat named the Alert and after killing most of the men on the Alert they had found an uncharted island. However, the crew died by falling into a rock chasm on the island as Johansson said.

The nephew had travelled to Australia and viewed the statue that was retrieved from the Alert he found that it was similar to the other ones that have been found in which were known as the great Cthulhu.

After Johansson had died in Norway the nephew received his manuscript from Johanssons wife in which it describes the uncharted island as being a nightmare corpse city called Ryeal.

On the island it was discovered that this was the where the great Cthulhu was buried. The nephew also discovered the landscape and sculpture was very similar to what Wilcox had described he had saw in his dreams. As Johansson describe the day they found the uncharted island that the seamen climbed on the huge sculpture and once it opened the great Cthulhu was released and took the Seaman’s lives.