The Call of Cthulhu

"The Call of Cthulhu" is one of H. P. Lovecraft's best known short stories. It is the only story penned by Lovecraft in which Cthulhu himself makes an appearance. It is a story composed of two major narratives linked by a third, the voice of the "author." Only the author pieces together the whole truth and significance of the information he has in his possession, and he recounts it to the audience in the way that he discovered it.

Related Topics:
H. P. Lovecraft - Short stories - Cthulhu

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Set around 1925, it begins with Francis Wayland Thurston's account of the death his great-uncle, Professor Angell, a prominent professor at Brown University and a study of his papers. These papers include the account of a raid on a supposed cult. In this tale, "sensitive individuals" around the world are afflicted by horrid nightmares. Forbidden lore tells that the nightmares are the telepathically transmitted dreams of Great Cthulhu, an extra-dimensional creature who "cannot live" because "the stars are not right". Driven insane, they perform despicable, unholy rites and chant Cthulhu Fhtagn - "Cthulhu Dreams!" A study of the cultists brings to light clues about the hideous creature that they worship, Cthulhu.

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The Cthulhu creature, said to have come with his alien followers from the stars millions of years before the dawn of Man, now rests in a death-like sleep in their sunken city of R'lyeh.

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The second part of the story picks up here with the recounting of the log of Gustaf Johansen, first mate on the Alert, a yacht that discovers the sunken city, now risen to the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The city has resurfaced because "the stars are right" and the time for the awakening of Cthulhu and his spawn is at hand. Cthulhu emerges from his tomb and almost all of the crewmen are slain. But the stars are not quite right, after all, and Cthulhu and R'lyeh return to the deep after the first mate makes a harrowing escape. The story concludes with the death of the first mate under mysterious circumstances, and the author's fear that he, too, will perish by the hands of the Cthulhu cultists.

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