The Call of Cthulhu

# "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft

This supernatural horror novella, written summer 1926 and published in Weird Tales February 1928, comprises the narrator's piecing together of his great-uncle's papers following the professor's mysterious death. The narrative unfolds through three sections: the discovery of a strange clay bas-relief carved by Henry Anthony Wilcox, a Providence sculptor plagued by bizarre dreams of cyclopean cities and an entity called "Cthulhu"; Wilcox's subsequent fever delirium (March-April 1925); and the narrator's documentation showing that artists and aesthetes across New England experienced synchronized disturbing dreams during this same period. A notable case involves an architect who descended into violent insanity. The narrator struggles between skepticism and growing conviction that these dreams and phenomena represent something genuinely supernatural. The story establishes cosmic horror themes: incomprehensible alien presences, the fragility of human sanity, and forbidden knowledge pieced together from disparate sources.