The Ghost Writer Show - The Call of Cthulhu

The Ghost Writer Show!

Welcome to another show! I am the Ghost Writer and this is Maestro Yorick.

Tonight we will talk about "The Call of Cthulhu",

a short story written by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

This name, according to the author,

is unpronounceable by humans and is part of the mystery of the story.

There are those who call him Catulio, Catulo, Quitulo... Well, I call him Cthulhu.

If someone mispronounced my name, I would not answer the call.

Lovecraft is considered the father of cosmic horror.

"The Call of Cthulhu" is one of the author's most famous short stories.

The tale was written in 1926 and published in a magazine in 1928.

And now, back to the story.

Let's go back in time. Please, Nevermore, turn on the Beyond Projector.

The story is told in a first-person point of view from posthumous notes.

Francis Wayland Thurston tells how his life has changed in 1926,

after his grand-uncle, Professor George Angell, died at age 92.

Francis was his only heir and,

while organizing the belongings of his grand-uncle, found a strange box.

What was inside the box, Ghost Writer?

Some notes, press cuttings and a manuscript.

There was also a clay bas-relief depicting a monster with a pulpy, tentacled head,

with a humanoid scaly body, wings on its back and claws on hind and fore feet.

Francis was so impressed with his findings that he decided to look for Wilcox,

the excentric artist who made the bas-relief.

The sculptor had taken his work to Professor Angell,

Francis' grand-uncle, on March 1st, 1925,

to understand the meaning of the hieroglyphics on the bas-relief.

But wasn't Wilcox the one who created it?

He just remembered an earthquake tremor the night before his creation.

The sculptor went to bed and, when he awoke,

he sculpted in clay the monster that he had seen in his dream,

living in a cyclopean city, made with blocks dripping with green ooze.

He had also heard unknown words like: "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh".

But why the Professor was so interested in the bas-relief?

That's what made Francis suspicious, Maestro.

So, he decided to investigate the notes and press cuttings left by his grand-uncle,

piecing together a strange jigsaw of that sinister story.

According to his notes,

Professor Angell had already seen something similar in an archaeology meeting,

seventeen years before the sculptor came to him.

In that occasion, a police inspector called John Legrasse...

...looked for the scholars in order to find something

regarding an ancient stone statuette.

It was grotesque and repulsive and no one could determine its origin.

The object was siezed by the police in a macabre ritual that took place in a forest,

where people where sacrificed...

...by worshippers of the strange figure represented in the statuette.

And the image in the statuette was the same as the one from Wilcox's bas-relief?

Yes! During that meeting, one of the archaeologists,

Professor Webb, told that, when he was young,

forty-eight years before, in a tour to Greenland and Iceland,

he had seen a similar sculpture being worshipped by a tribe of degenerated Eskimo.

It was a ceremony to worship Cthulhu that was passed down for generations.

The Eskimo chanted the mantra:

"In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

Webb believed that it was a religion of devil worshippers.

Because of that, Professor Angell got immediately interested...

...when he saw the bas-relief made by Wilcox.

The sculptor started to report his dreams to the Professor regarding the strange creature.

Them, suddenly, he stopped visiting the Professor.

Wilcox became delusional on March 23rd.

His symptoms persisted until April 2nd.

After that, he had no more dreams with the creature.

In the notes from Professor Angell, there were also records of dreams from different people,

exactly during the time that Wilcox was delusional.

The artists and the poets were the most disturbed ones.

The were also press cuttings with cases of panic, mania, eccentricity and even madness,

all during that given period.

But what was so special about that period?

After an earthquake, on March 1st of that year,

part of a sunken city emerged from the depths of the sea.

A group of sailors had found it by chance.

How does someone finds a lost city by chance?

During his investigation, Francis finds a newspaper article from April 18, 1925.

It was about a vessel that was found adrift in the high seas.

One of the sailors was found holding a stone idol, that Francis deduced was Cthulhu.

The survivor told that he and other ten men were on board of a schooner named Emma that,

on March 1st, was thrown out of course by a storm.