"The Call of Cthulhu" by HP Lovecraft was published in 1928. The story follows a man who examines the notes of his crazed late great-uncle. The notes unfold as the story of his great uncle discovering the grand old man Cthulhu and the cult that worships him. Although the story centers on the alien god, his existence in the book is relegated to only a few mentions in the notes and an encounter near the end. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The story begins with the nephew who has just lost his great uncle George Gamel Angil. The nephew who is now in charge of his aunt and uncle comes across several artifacts among his belongings. Among these objects 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 discovered that he was seeing visions in his dreams of a mythical creature that was part monster, octopus, and dragon with a scaly body and wings. Wilcox made a sculpture of what he had seen. His uncle visited him every day and reported that this monster Wilcox called Cthulhu and walked or Lumbard. The manuscript concluded that Wilcox fell ill with a high fever, as determined by his doctor. His doctor had declared that he was not crazy. Wilcox recovered but they were no longer dreams and his uncle decided there was no longer any value in continuing the visits. The next half of the manuscript concerned a New Orleans policeman, one John Raymond Legrasse. Legrasse was summoned one evening by some squatters because his wife and children were missing. While Legrasse was investigating reports of missing women and children in the swamps of New Orleans, where a voodoo encounter had taken place, a dark cult was taking place, hidden deep in the swamp. When they found the meeting place, they discovered the missing children and women and an unknown thing. There appeared to be a whitish glow and bat-like creatures were said to have flown up from the ground to worship a greenish stone 7 to 8 inches high in which appeared to be a monster with an octopus head and long narrow scaly wings and crouched on a block. Legrasse described it as a voodoo orgy they were singing Cthulhu Ryeal. An exchange of gunfire resulted in the deaths of five people and the arrest of 47. The prisoners stated, when questioned, that they worshiped the great ancients and awaited the return of a monster called Cthulhu. The prisoners also confirmed that the sculpture was the great Cthulhu. There were other notes by Professor William Channing Webb describing a group of Eskimos who had the same cult practices as the swamp voodoo priests. The prisoners, however, insisted that it was a cult that would always exist in the darkest places, only to reveal itself upon the return of the great Cthulhu in which they waited for him to be freed. Most of the prisoners were placed in a mental institution while only two were sane enough to be hanged. The nephew found an Australian newspaper with a story about a Direlect boat in which there was only one survivor. Survivor Gustav Johansson was found holding a hideous stone idol about a foot tall when he was found. He said he found the statue hidden in the ship's cabin. Johansson reported that the ship had been attacked by a heavily armed boat called the Alert and after killing most of the Alert's men they had found an uncharted island. However, the crew died when they fell into a rocky chasm on the island, as Johansson said. The nephew had travelled.
tags