The Call of Cthulhu characters

Appears from the start

A Boston man who becomes executor of his late granduncle's papers. His attempt to organize notes about a strange sculpture leads him through separate accounts of dreams, cult activity, and a disaster at sea. He presents the assembled evidence while fearing that learning the whole pattern has placed him in danger.

Appears from the start

Thurston's late granduncle, a professor emeritus of Semitic languages at Brown University. At his death he leaves a locked box containing a disturbing clay relief, scattered notes, and testimony he gathered about related events over many years.

Appears from the start

A young sculptor from Providence who brings Professor Angell a newly made relief bearing an unknown creature and unfamiliar symbols. He says the design came from vivid dreams that began after an earthquake and were shared during a period of fever.

First appears in chapter 2

A New Orleans police inspector who consults archaeologists about a small green-black idol seized during a raid in the Louisiana swamps. His careful account gives Angell an earlier, independent record of the same creature and writing seen in Wilcox's sculpture.

First appears in chapter 2

A Princeton anthropologist who examines Legrasse's idol at an academic meeting. He recognizes it as nearly identical to an object associated with a secretive coastal cult he encountered among an Arctic people decades earlier.

First appears in chapter 2

An elderly sailor captured in Legrasse's swamp raid. More informed than the other prisoners, he explains that the cult worships ancient beings from beyond Earth and expects their sunken high priest Cthulhu to rise when the conditions are right.

First appears in chapter 2

A vast extraterrestrial entity represented with a roughly human outline, a tentacled head, wings, and claws. Cult testimony identifies him as the sleeping high priest of older beings, confined with them in the drowned stone city of R'lyeh yet able to trouble receptive minds through dreams.

First appears in chapter 3

A Norwegian sailor and mate of the schooner Emma. He survives a violent encounter in the South Pacific and leaves a private written account with enough detail to connect the voyage to Professor Angell's research.