Judging from the extensive notes, Thurston surmises that poets and artists were most sensitive to the kinds of dream imagery Angell was interested in pursuing. Thurston also finds some addenda to the first part of Angell's manuscript, which reveal nightly dream reports of other participants Angell recruited in his studies. On April 2nd, Angell reports that Wilcox returned to full health, having no knowledge of any events that had transpired since the night of March 22nd. Wilcox's mild fever, and absence of any other signs of mental disorder, cause the men to conclude that the sculpture was merely a fancy of his fevered mind. Tobey, and received reports that Wilcox was muttering strangely about a gigantic monster, "miles high." Angell deduces that this creature must be the same one inscribed on the clay bas-relief. Angell's uncle called Wilcox's family doctor, Dr. On March 23rd, Angell remembers, Wilcox became feverish and delirious. Wilcox reports being "keenly affected" by the tremor, and dreaming that night of "great Cyclopean cities" and "sky-flung monoliths." Wilcox remembers hearing a voice in the dream that he attempts to transcribe with the letters "Cthulhu fhtagn." After inquiring about Wilcox's affiliations with any cult or religious body, Angell then proceeded to record details about the content and imagery of Wilcox's dreams, noting that the two most common words he reported hearing were "Cthulhu" and "R'lyeh." When asked to describe the relief, Wilcox replies with cryptic references to Babylon, Tyre, and the Sphinx that strike Angell (and also Thurston) as fantastic and bizarre.Īngell then recalls listening to a "rambling tale" that Wilcox told in his office, which began in New England on the night of a minor earthquake. Angell describes the boy, named Henry Anthony Wilcox, as a "precocious youth of known genius," who had fallen out of social favor as a result of his queer and erratic behavior. Thurston calls the tale, told from Professor Angell's perspective, "peculiar." In the document, Angell remembers how on March 1st, a "thin, dark young man," studying sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design, originally brought him the clay bas-relief. Thurston then launches into a detailed account of the first section of the "CTHULHU CULT" document, entitled, "1925-Dreams and Dream Work of H.A. He also finds writings on "secret societies and hidden cults," and references to an outbreak of group mania in 1925. Other papers in the manuscript include written memories of dreams, and clippings from fantasy and occult magazines. In a cache of papers next to the curio, Thurston also finds a manuscript entitled "CTHULHU CULT" split into two sections. In the course of going through Angell’s papers, Thurston recollects finding a locked box containing a "five by six inch" clay bas-relief, featuring hieroglyphics and the outline of a creature described as a combination of an octopus, a dragon, and a human. Thurston explains that as Angell’s heir and executor, he had been tasked with dealing with his grand-uncle's estate. The circumstances of Angell’s death had caused a local controversy- although authorities claimed that his heart gave out after being jostled by a passer-by, Thurston has lately doubted this testimony. In the winter of 1926, Thurston writes, his grand-uncle George Gammel Angell, a retired professor of Semitic languages at Brown University, passed away at the age of 92. He describes happening upon a “dread glimpse” of such cosmological truth after having pieced together various accounts secondhand, drawn from reading an old newspaper and consulting the notes of a deceased professor to whom he is related. After a quotation from British writer Algernon Blackwood, the title of the story indicates that what is to follow has been, “found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston of Boston.” The speaker of the story, Francis Wayland Thurston himself, contemplates the vast and incomprehensible nature of the things in the universe still unknown to mankind, in spite of our many scientific and technological advancements.
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