Lovecraft returned to his home in Providence in 1926, and over the next year he produced some of his most fantastic works, including “The Call of Cthulhu” (first published in Weird Tales in 1928), which was the authoritative basis for the Cthulhu Mythos, so named by a contemporary author by the name of August Derleth.

A recurring theme in Lovecraft’s work is the utter unimportance of us, humankind, when faced with the true horrors that live in the Old Ones’ universe. Lovecraft made many references to these Elder Gods and Great Old Ones, who were described as a race of ancient, powerful deities from the cosmos who once ruled the Earth long before humanity’s oldest ancestors had even crawled from the ooze. These titanic monstrosities are now in a deathlike sleep, hibernating, but still reaching out to us. This reaching out was first spoken of in “The Call of Cthulhu”, in which the humans were sent mad when they even had a glimpse of what exists in this shared universe.

Sadly for H.P. Lovecraft, fame and fortune eluded him and he was never properly able to support himself as an author. Once again he began to withdraw from the world, and as he never promoted his own work, many of his pieces were left unappreciated, unsold, and unread for decades. With his inheritance completely spent, in continuing ill health, and deeply troubled, he died at the age of forty-six. Today, he is regarded as one of the most significant twentieth-century authors in his genre, and a genius well beyond his years.

H.P. Lovecraft’s literary gifts to us remain vibrant to this day, and his influence has been remarked upon by authors such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, Neil Gaiman, F. Paul Wilson, Ramsey Campbell, and Brian Lumley. All have cited Lovecraft as one of their primary influences.

As do I, in this book, Book of the Dead.

Cthulhu (Khlûl’-hloo, or Kə-thoo-loo)

H.P. Lovecraft’s Great Old One and monstrous god from the Below. Lovecraft gave several pronunciations for the name, but his favored version was “Khlûl’-hloo” – the first syllable “Khlûl” is pronounced gutturally and harshly. So try: “Klul-loo’. However, the pronunciation has changed, and today it is more common to hear it pronounced as “Kə-thoo-loo”.

After “The Call of Cthulhu”, Lovecraft’s evil deity went on to be featured in numerous popular culture references, from books and movies to online games.

In “The Call of Cthulhu”, H.P. Lovecraft describes the Cthulhu as follows:

• A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers; a scaly, rubbery-looking body; prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.
• A mix between a giant human, an octopus, and a dragon, depicted as being hundreds of feet tall, with human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back.
• Similar to the entirety of a giant octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth, able to change the shape of its body at will, extending and retracting limbs and tentacles as it sees fit.