The call of Cthulhu

Michael S. Hart

Also known as Professor Michael S. Hart

Originator of the Project Gutenberg concept of a freely shared electronic library. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with volunteer support.

Algernon Blackwood

Author of the epigraph quoted at the beginning; mentioned but does not appear in the story.

George Gammell Angell

Also known as Professor Angell

The narrator’s grand-uncle, a Brown University professor of Semitic languages and an authority on ancient inscriptions. His papers reveal the Cthulhu cult and his investigation of Henry Anthony Wilcox; he dies under suspicious circumstances.

Nautical-looking sailor

An unnamed Black sailor who jostles Professor Angell on a hill in Providence shortly before Angell’s death. The narrator later suspects the encounter may have been deliberate.

Henry Anthony Wilcox

Also known as H. A. Wilcox · young Wilcox

A young sculptor from Providence whose dreams of Cthulhu and the sunken city of R’lyeh lead him to make a clay bas-relief. His visions coincide with a worldwide period of disturbing dreams and illness.

Dr. Tobey

The physician who treats Wilcox during his fever and reports the young sculptor’s delirious descriptions to Professor Angell.

Unnamed architect

A widely known architect with interests in theosophy and occultism. He goes violently insane during Wilcox’s illness and later dies while screaming about a being escaped from hell.

Ardois-Bonnot

A painter mentioned as the creator of a blasphemous painting called Dream Landscape, exhibited in Paris in 1926.

John Raymond Legrasse

Also known as Inspector Legrasse

A New Orleans police inspector who brings an ancient Cthulhu idol to an archaeological meeting and recounts his raid on a swamp cult. The narrator later interviews him and investigates the cult with him.

William Channing Webb

Also known as Professor Webb

A Princeton anthropology professor and explorer who recognizes similarities between Legrasse’s idol and a stone image he encountered among a Greenlandic cult. He has since died.

Aged angekok

Also known as wizard-priest

An unnamed elderly Greenlandic shaman from whom Professor Webb records the sounds of a ritual.

Squatter guide

An unnamed resident of the Louisiana swamp settlement who summons the police and guides them toward the cult gathering, but refuses to go farther.

Joseph D. Galvez

An excitable Spanish member of Legrasse’s police party who imagines hearing responses to the cult chant and seeing a vast white shape and shining eyes in the woods.

Mestizo prisoner

Also known as Old Castro · Castro

An immensely aged prisoner from Legrasse’s raid who tells the police what he knows of the cult, its history, and the Great Old Ones. He claims to have sailed to strange ports and spoken with the cult’s undying leaders in China; he is dead by the time the narrator investigates.

Abdul Alhazred

Also known as the mad Arab

A writer whose Necronomicon is said by Castro to contain meanings understood by the initiated; he is mentioned but does not appear.

Gustaf Johansen

Also known as Mate Johansen · Second Mate Johansen

A Norwegian sailor and second mate of the Emma who survives the voyage to R’lyeh, encounters Cthulhu, and escapes aboard the Alert. He leaves a manuscript describing the voyage and later dies in Oslo.

Capt. Collins

Captain of the Emma, killed when the Alert attacks the schooner.

First Mate Green

First mate of the Emma, killed during the fight with the Alert’s crew.

William Briden

Also known as Briden

A sailor aboard the Emma who survives the initial fighting and joins Johansen on the Alert. After escaping R’lyeh, he goes mad and dies aboard the yacht.

Unnamed Emma sailor

One of the Emma’s crew who dies during the voyage to the unknown island; the newspaper account does not give his name.

Widow of Gustaf Johansen

Also known as Johansen’s wife

Johansen’s unnamed wife, who gives the narrator her late husband’s manuscript. She knows little of his experiences at sea.

Rodriguez

A Portuguese sailor in Johansen’s party who climbs the monolith and discovers the enormous carved door in R’lyeh.

Donovan

One of Johansen’s sailors, killed by Cthulhu after the great door opens.

Guerrera

One of Johansen’s sailors, killed by Cthulhu after the great door opens.

Angstrom

One of Johansen’s sailors, killed by Cthulhu after the great door opens.

Parker

A sailor in Johansen’s party who slips while fleeing Cthulhu and is swallowed by an impossible angle in the masonry.

Hawkins

A sailor in Johansen’s party who hears a slopping sound inside the opened doorway shortly before Cthulhu emerges.

Cthulhu

Also known as Great Cthulhu · the Thing

An ancient, star-born being worshiped as the great priest of the Old Ones. After Johansen’s party opens his tomb in the sunken city of R’lyeh, he pursues them at sea; the city later sinks again, trapping him beneath the water.

Vigilant crewman

Also known as unnamed rescuer

An unnamed crewman of the freighter Vigilant who boards the derelict Alert and finds Johansen alive and another man dead.

William Briden’s corpse

Briden is found dead aboard the Alert after Johansen is rescued; the contemporary account does not know the cause of death.