The Root of Conspiracy Theories

H.P. LOVECRAFT — THE CALL OF CTHULHU — INDEPENDENTLY-PUBLISHED AT AMAZON — 2020

The novella is a three-tier collection of documents on a fantastic entity known as Cthulhu.

The first phase is brought by a clay bas-relief by Henry Anthony Wilcox brought up on March 1, 1925, to a group of archaeologists, a bas-relief he has executed in a trance within or just on the verge of a dream. This clay tablet reproduces a monstrous figure with some glyphs on the edge.

The second phase is a report by police inspector Raymond Legrasse from New Orleans about a police operation to control some voodoo celebrations in New Orleans, or in the swamps close by. The celebration is described as an orgy of violence, rhythmic drum playing, dancing, and sexuality. Less than 100 people. Forty-seven were arrested. They got some tale about Great Old Ones that existed before anything else and who have to be worshiped. They centered their rituals on an idol.

“The statuette, idol, fetish, or whatever it was, had been captured some months before in the wooded swamps south of New Orleans during a raid on a supposed voodoo meeting; and so singular and hideous were the rites connected with it, that the police could not but realize that they had stumbled on a dark cult totally unknown to them, and infinitely more diabolic than even the blackest of the African voodoo circles. […] between seven and eight inches in height, and of exquisitely artistic workmanship. It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopuslike head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet.”

The whole episode ended badly with two men hanged in the name of justice and all the others of the 47 arrested people institutionalized for life. No regeneration, no reformation, nothing but let’s pu them away till death can liberate us from them, or from the fear they inspire in us.

“Only two of the prisoners were found sane enough to be hanged, and the rest were committed to various institutions. All denied a part in the ritual murders and averred that the killing had been done by Black-winged Ones which had come to them from their immemorial meeting place in the haunted wood. What…