by Donald Tyson
Obed Marsh was a Yankee trader in the South Seas who prospered for many years. While among the Kanaky islanders he learned of a tribe on one island that always had fish, no matter how difficult the fishing was on nearby islands. The tribe was shunned by the other islanders. Marsh approached them and learned their secret-they traded with the Deep Ones, who inhabit the deep places of the oceans all around the globe. They were ensured prosperity by the occasional sacrifice of young men and women, and by an agreement to intermarry with Deep Ones and have children by them. Marsh learned how to summon the Deep Ones, and what they demanded of their human confederates.
Years later, when hard times fell upon the New England town of Innsmouth, Marsh put his knowledge to use, persuading the townspeople to give their worship and their children to Dagon. In 1840 he founded a new religion, the Esoteric Order of Dagon. He rowed out to Devil Reef at the mouth of the harbor of Innsmouth and called the Deep Ones up from the depths of an abyss that lay just off the reef. Arrangements were finalized, and sacrifices offered. The transformation in Innsmouth was immediate. The fishermen of the town could not haul their nets up, so heavy were they with the fish driven into them by the Deep Ones. The woman of the town appeared wearing strange but beautifully wrought gold jewelry not made to fit the shape of the human form.
It was only later that the unfortunate aspects of the pact made with the Deep Ones began to reveal themselves to the inhabitants of surrounding towns. Strange foreign women who always went veiled appeared in Innsmouth, and their children by their husbands in the town, although normal in appearance at birth, began to change as they grew older, acquiring what came to be known as the "Innsmouth look"-a strange form of degenerate appearance unlike any other that afflicted the isolated, inbred communities of New England. The hybrid offspring of human and Deep One marriages began to acquire the physical attributes of amphibians. Their eyes bulged, their mouths became broad and their noses flat, their skin took on a bluish cast and grew perpetually moist, their fingers and toes acquired webbing, and eventually gills developed in their necks.
But these were only the early signs of the transformation. At it progressed, they were forced to hide themselves away from view in the attics of the houses of the town. Visitors to Innsmouth who happened to glimpse their faces at attic windows recoiled in horror and swore never to set foot in Innsmouth again. As a result, in spite of its wealth the town of Innsmouth began to decay. At a certain point in their transformation, the hybrids stripped off their clothing, entered the sea, and spent most of their time beneath the waves. The population of the town declined, leading to more boarded-up and neglected houses and businesses.
This was the state of affairs when Lovecraft wrote about Innsmouth. The name itself first appears in his story Celephais in reference to a fictional town in England, but there is no direct connection between the English town and the one in Massachusetts, founded in 1643. As was often the case, the people of Lovecraft's New England took the name of the English town for one of their own villages. By so doing, they made it a name that would forever be associated with human degradation and horror. Lovecraft would later claim that Innsmouth was a "twisted version of Newburyport." Innsmouth is located in Essex County, Massachusetts, not far from Ipswich and Rowley.
The protagonist of The Shadow Over Innsmouth describes the town as an extensive and densely packed expanse of buildings, but almost devoid of visible inhabitants. The population was estimated for him by a railway ticket agent at Newburyport as being around three to four hundred, and most maps do not even show the town. There is a branch railway line to Rowley, but it has been unused for decades. The only public transportation in or out of the town is by means of an old bus, operated by an innsmouth native, that runs to Arkham and Newburyport. Those foolish enough to take this bus can, if they wish, spend the night as the single remaining operational hotel in Innsmouth, the Gilman House.
A few lonely wisps of smoke trail up from the countless chimney pots on the sagging gambrel roofs. There are three tall steeples in the town, but all show advanced decay, their clocks ripped out to leave gaping holes. The rot and neglect is worse near the silted-up harbor, which is sheltered by an ancient stone breakwater. A few of the Georgian houses further back from the water seem in somewhat better repair, suggesting that they are still tenanted. The town sprawls on both sides of the Manuxet River, and several bridges cross the river inside the town. The sole active industry is the Marsh Refinery, where the gold of the Deep Ones is smelted down to shapes that are apt to attract less attention when offered for sale.
Innsmouth is mentioned in connection with Asenath Waite, one of the Innsmouth Waites, who married Edward Derby in the Thing on the Doorstep. In the story is it said that "dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people." There is a "strange element not quite human' in the ancient families of the run-down fishing port," an inhuman element that Asenath exhibited in her features.
(Celephais; The Shadow Over Innsmouth; The Thing on the Doorstep)
Termed by Lovecraft the "City of Pillars" because of its many columns and towers, it is an ancient lost city in the depths of the Empty Space, the great desert on the Arabian Peninsula more commonly known in modern times as the Crimson Desert. The legend of Irem is part of the Arab story cycle, The Thousand-and-One Nights. The city was built by jinni at the command of Shaddad, lord of the tribe of Ad. Legend states that it was thrust down into the sand by wrathful God to punish the arrogance of Shaddad, who ignored the warnings of a prophet. Ruins recently found at Shisha have been identified as lost Item. Lovecraft did not know about the existence of these ruins. The actual city upon which the legends are based is conjectured by archaeologists to have been founded around 3000 BC, and to have disappeared around 300 AD.
In The Last Test, Doctor Alfred Clarendon claimed to have spoken while in Yemen with an old man who had seen Irem, and had worshipped at the underground shrines of Nug and Yeb. The implication of the text is that these shrines were located beneath Irem. In Through the Gates of the Silver Key, reference is made to the sultan Shaddad, who "with his terrific genius built and concealed in the sands of Arabia Pettraea the prodigious domes and uncounted minarets of thousand-pillared Irem."
(The Last Test; The Nameless City; Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
In the midst of the Miskatonic River there is an unpopulated island that is associated with strange happenings. In The Dreams in the Witch House, the witch Keziah Mason told Judge Hathorne at her Salem trial for witchcraft about gatherings of witches on this island, which has rows of moss-covered, gray standing stones arranged in strange angles. The island is distantly visible when standing on the bridge on Garrison Street, in Arkham, and gazing upriver. In The Colour Out of Space mention is made of this island where "the devil held court beside a curious 'lone altar older than the Indians." It does not appear to have ever received a name from Lovecraft, but it is undoubtedly one of those places that acts as a gateway between this world and other worlds. It is reasonable to assume that it is connected by ley lines to other significant occult locations in New England.
(The Dreams in the Witch House; The Colour Out of Space)
An onyx-walled city on the river Xari. Soldiers are stationed there.
(The Quest of Iranon)
A city on the river Ai, in the land of Mnar, that is noted for its ancient historical records, which are inscribed on brick cylinders. It was originally founded by shepherds, along with its sister cities Thraa and Ilarnek.
(The Doom That Came to Sarnath; The Quest of Iranon)
A town in New England created by Lovecraft to serve as a background for some of his stories. He based it on Marblehead, Massachusetts. Like his fictional Arkham, it is an ancient place of narrow streets and decaying architecture. Both the Terrible Old Man and Granny Orne live in Kingsport, he on Water Street and she on Ship Street, close to the docks. Granny Orne is regarded as the unofficial historian of the community. Not far north of the t
own is the towering cliff atop which sits the strange high house in the mist. The town itself is dominated by Central Hill, which used to be the location for the old Congregational Church, since torn down to make way for Congregational Hospital. Beside the hospital is the ancient church graveyard, which according to town rumor has beneath it a series of caves or burrows.
In The Thing on the Doorstep, Asenath Waite of the Innsmouth Waites attended the Hall School for girls in Kingsport. In The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, John Merrett, an English resident of Kingsport during the eighteenth century, had heard rumors of "monstrous things" involving "nameless rites" conducted at Kingsport, which in his day was no more than an odd little fishing village. Nyarlathotep mentioned Kingsport with appreciation while speaking to Randolph Carter in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, describing it as "antediluvian Kingsport hoary with stacked chimneys and deserted quays and overhanging gables." In the same work, the lighthouse-keeper of Kingsport is said to be an accomplished dream traveler who had spoken to Randolph Carter about the wondrous cities of the dreamlands.
(The Terrible Old Man; The Strange High House in the Mist; The Festival; The Silver Key; The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; The Thing on the Doorstep; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
A "kingdom or province" in the ancient land of Mu where early humans discovered ruins left by a race of beings who had dwelt there in the distant past. Lovecraft indicated that they were the ruins of more than one alien race, because he wrote of "vague waves of unknown entities." In the midst of K'naa was a great mountain called Yaddith-Gho that was surmounted by a stone fortress older than mankind built by the race from Yuggoth, the Mi-Go. In the crypt beneath this fortress dwelt the deathless demon Ghatanothoa, left behind after the passing away of the race from Yuggoth in this land. A cult of human beings worshipped the unseen Ghatanothoa, each year sacrificing to it twelve young warriors and twelve young maidens, who were offered to the god in a temple at the base of Yaddith-Gho.
(Out of the Aeons)
A swamp in Vermont at the base of the wooded western slope of Dark Mountain. The swamp has an evil reputation due to strange voices that rise out of it, particularly on May-Eve. These voices are connected with the elusive Mi-Go, who meet there with a human cult that worships them.
(The Whisperer in Darkness)
Nearest village to Tempest Mountain, in the Catskills. In August, 1921, its hotel became the base of operations for those state troopers searching for the missing inhabitants of a small squatter village destroyed during a lightning storm, and for the reporters who covered the story. Of the seventy-five inhabitants of the village, which is never named, fifty were slaughtered and torn apart by what was assumed to be an animal or animals, and the other twenty-five simply vanished without a trace.
(The Lurking Fear)
A lost continent in the South Pacific Ocean that is supposed to have sunk beneath the waves aeons ago. By some accounts it is said to be the same as Mu, but others call it the motherland of Mu. In The Diary of Alonzo Typer, the manuscript book of the wizard Claes van der Heyl mentions the city of Shamballah, which was built by the Lemurians fifty million years ago, and is still in existence behind a "wall of psychic force" in the eastern desert. In The Haunter of the Dark, the diary of Robert Blake refers to Lemuria as one of the places in the distant past where the Shining Trapezohedron was kept and studied. "Myth-whispered Lemuria" is mentioned in passing in Medusa's Coil along with Babylon and Atlantis.
(The Diary of Alonzo Typer; The Haunter of the Dark; Medusa's Coil)
A hill district in Mnar.
(The Doom That Came to Sarnath)
An ancient land that lay near the north pole, in which was located the many-templed marble city of Olathoe, "on the plateau of Sarkia, betwixt the peaks of Noton and Kadiphonek." Lomar was settled by men from Zobna, a land further north, when they were forced to move southward to escape the spread of the glacial ice sheet. They drove out of Lomar a race of hairy, long-armed cannibal humanoids known as Gnophkehs. Around twenty-six thousand years ago a yellow-skinned people called Inutos (which we know today as the Inuit) devastated Lomar. Eventually the Gnophkehs returned to claim the land once again. Within Lomar was kept the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and other texts known collectively as the wisdom of the Zobnarian Fathers.
(At the Mountains of Madness; Polaris; The Horror in the Museum; Through the Gates of the Silver Key)
Home of the generations of the Martense family, it was built in the year 1670 by the New Amsterdam merchant Gerrit Martense on the summit of a rounded, wooded hill in the Catskills known locally as Tempest Mountain, due to the prevalence of thunderstorms above it. Other, smaller rounded hills surrounded Tempest Mountain and seemed to radiate from it. His descendants remained isolated by the wilderness around their family home, and by their stubborn use of the Dutch language instead of English. All in the numerous bloodline were marked by the peculiarity of having one blue eye and one brown eye. They intermarried with their servants, and many descendents of these unions settled in small, squalid villages near Tempest Mountain, but a core of the family line remained in the Martense Mansion, refusing to mingle with the surrounding communities.
In 1754 one of the clan, Jan Martense, left to serve in the colonial army. When he returned six years later, he found himself disgusted by the insularity and degeneration of his relatives. In 1763 his own family murdered him by smashing in his skull. When one of his former friends discovered the murder, official charges were laid in Albany, New York, and the Martense clan became ostracized, even though no conviction in a court of law was made due to a lack of evidence. The isolated clan degenerated. The last occupancy of the Martense mansion was observed around the year 1810, after which the house was believed abandoned. When an investigation was made in 1816 it was found to be empty and partially in ruins.
The presumption that the mansion had been deserted was not entirely correct. The degenerate but prolific remnants of the Martense clan had simply left its rooms to dwell beneath it, creating a network of tunnels that radiated from its cellar. They had regressed to the level of animals, losing the use of language, and sustaining themselves on human flesh. Under cover of darkness and storm they made forays into the surrounding countryside in search of pray, a clan of naked, silent, humanoid ghouls numbering in the thousands.
(The Lurking Fear)
A hill outside of Arkham. Beyond it lies a dark and barren valley, sometimes called a ravine, that contains a white stone. The valley was said by Keziah Mason in The Dreams in the Witch House to have been used for witch gatherings, where certain lines and curves were drawn "leading through the walls of space to other spaces beyond." The same was said by Mason of the unnamed island in the Miskatonic River near Arkham.
Herbert West and his accomplice set themselves up in the deserted Chapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill for their experiments in reanimating corpses. It must have been very near Meadow Hill because in one place Lovecraft described it as on Meadow Hill.
In The Unnamable, a "frightful loping, nameless thing" was seen on Meadow Hill sometime around 1710, being pursued by an old man. The thing may have been his grandson, the product of a union between his daughter and a creature from beyond. When the narrator of the story and his friend are knocked unconscious by a flying fiend while sitting and talking in the old burying-ground of Arkham, they are discovered a mile away, in a field beyond Meadow Hill.
(The Dreams in the Witch House; Herbert West-Reanimator; The Unnamable; The Color Out of Space)
A rapidly flowing river that passes through the Miskatonic Valley in Massachusetts. Towns on the river include Arkham, which is built on both banks, and Dunwich near its headwaters, which is hemmed in by the lively stream against the shoulder of Round Mountain. Of the beginnings of the Miskatonic in the upper Miskatonic Valley, Lovecraft wrote in The Dunwich Horror, "The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises." Further down
stream, in the midst of the river is a small island that is visible from Arkham. The island has the reputation as a haunt for witches, and boasts an ancient stone altar of uncertain origins. The island served the same function for witch gatherings as the ravine beyond Meadow Hill, outside Arkham. The mouth of the river lies two miles down the Atlantic coast from Kingsport.
(The Colour Out of Space; The Silver Key; The Dunwich Horror)
Nestled in the heart of Arkham, Massachusetts, a town on the banks of the beautiful Miskatonic River, this institute of higher learning is typical of the small Ivy League universities in New England during Lovecraft's period: conservative, quiet, its student body mostly male, although some women were accepted as students-Asenath Waite, of the Innsmouth Waites, was one such woman, and she majored in medieval metaphysics. Edward Pickman Derby attended the university, majoring in English and French, as did Walter Gilman, who studied mathematics and folklore. Herbert West attended the Miskatonic University Medical School.
The university is noted for its extensive library of rare occult books and manuscripts. In The Thing on the Doorstep, the library is said to be famous for its "subterranean magical lore." Prized among the books is a copy of the dread Necronomicon in the Latin translation of Olaus Wormius, printed in Spain in the seventeenth century. Under the watchful eye of chief-librarian Henry Armitage, the staff is cautious about who is permitted access to this book.
The university specializes in exploring the mysteries of the past, as might be expected from the general nature of its library. Lovecraft mentioned a surprising number of faculty members in his various stories.
In The Dunwich Horror, we learn the names of Henry Armitage, already referred to above, as well as those of Francis Morgan, professor of archaeology, and Warren Rice, professor of languages.
