ued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognisant of the old data whi | The Call of Cthulhu (Found Among the Papers of the Late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston) by H

ued to feel that Wilcox, somehow cognisant of the old data which my uncle
had possessed, had been imposing on the veteran scientist. These responses
from aesthetes told a disturbing tale. From February 28th to April 2nd a
large proportion of them had dreamed very bizarre things, the intensity of
the dreams being immeasurably the stronger during the period of the sculp-
tor’s delirium. Over a fourth of those who reported anything, reported scenes
and half-sounds not unlike those which Wilcox had described; and some of
the dreamers confessed acute fear of the gigantic nameless thing visible to-
ward the last. One case, which the note describes with emphasis, was very
sad. The subject, a widely known architect with leanings toward theosophy
and occultism, went violently insane on the date of young Wilcox’s seizure,
and expired several months later after incessant screamings to be saved from
some escaped denizen of hell. Had my uncle referred to these cases by name
instead of merely by number, I should have attempted some corroboration
and personal investigation; but as it was, I succeeded in tracing down only a
few. All of these, however, bore out the notes in full. I have often wondered
if all the objects of the professor’s questioning felt as puzzled as did this
fraction. It is well that no explanation shall ever reach them.
The press cuttings, as I have intimated, touched on cases of panic, ma-
nia, and eccentricity during the given period. Professor Angell must have
employed a cutting bureau, for the number of extracts was tremendous and
the sources scattered throughout the globe. Here was a nocturnal suicide
in London, where a lone sleeper had leaped from a window after a shock-
ing cry. Here likewise a rambling letter to the editor of a paper in South
America, where a fanatic deduces a dire future from visions he has seen. A
despatch from California describes a theosophist colony as donning white
robes en masse for some “glorious fulfillment” which never arrives, whilst
items from India speak guardedly of serious native unrest toward the end
of March. Voodoo orgies multiply in Hayti, and African outposts report
ominous mutterings. American officers in the Philippines find certain tribes
bothersome at this time, and New York policemen are mobbed by hysterical
Levantines on the night of March 22-23. The west of Ireland, too, is full
of wild rumour and legendry, and a fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot
hangs a blasphemous “Dream Landscape” in the Paris spring salon of 1926.
And so numerous are the recorded troubles in insane asylums, that only a
miracle can have stopped the medical fraternity from noting strange paral-
lelisms and drawing mystified conclusions. A weird bunch of cuttings, all
told; and I can at this date scarcely envisage the callous rationalism with
which I set them aside. But I was then convinced that young Wilcox had
known of the older matters mentioned by the professor.