Dreams from the Elders

As I watched the sea of people teeming before the Victory Column in Berlin, I knew that Barack Obama was doing things that few politicians were able to do. To rally his supporters in America is one thing, though the support for Obama has been especially fervent. Some have even gone so far as to call it cult-like. Two months ago, I would have dismissed the fervor as merely an outpouring of support for a skilled and charismatic politician. Or possibly the masses clamoring for a leader in troubled times. But now I've seen the writings of Barack Obama in the Necronomicon. And I know the power of the darker cult, the Cult of Cthulhu, the members of which he commands while being led by an even darker and more sinister power. Now I fear that fouler things are at work, and that the audacity of hope is a mask for a terrible plan that will lead to the destruction of mankind.

I spent much of last week at the Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill, NC. I'm following my policy of keeping this blog well behind my actual activities, so rest assured that I'm now long gone. The Necronomicon gives clues as to when the time will be right for Cthulhu and the other Old Ones to awaken and for the sunken necropolis of R'yleh to rise from the ocean depths. These clues are based on astrology, on the locations of the stars and the planets from which the Old Ones came eons and eons ago. I was able to use the resources of the planetarium to confirm what I had suspected after reading the accounts of Professors Thurston and Angell: the time is again right for Cthulhu to rise. The Cult is preparing for his return within the next two years. The Necronomicon is not specific enough for me to pin down an exact date, nor are the movements of the relevant bodies well understood by the astronomical community, but I am failry certain the day of reckoning will occur in the waning months of 2009.

Angell's account dictates that the Elders started reaching out to the minds of humans well before the earthquake that lifted R'yleh out of the sea. It's also said that the rituals and practices of the cult stir something deep within the hearts of men, something older and more primal than mankind itself. The Obama campaign is using this inside track into our reptilian psyches to inspire his supporters to their manic levels of support, while the Old Ones sing out to the minds of men, whispering thoughts to us in our sleep. The foul and ancient secrets of the Earth conspire to elect their Manchurian candidate, so that they will have an agent to see that their plans come to fruition.

And what are those plans? What is the movivation for this gargantuan effort? It is to succeed in successfully raising Cthulhu where fate intervened on behalf of mankind before. Johansen and his crew, heavily armed interlopers on the island of R'yleh, were able to intercede in the ritual before Cthulhu had achieved his full strength. Though those men lost their lives and sanity, the rest of us were spared the same fate. In this age of modern armies spanning the globe and satellite imagery covering every square mile of land and sea, it is almost assured that the same thing would happen again, this time on a grander scale. American technology watches from the skies, and American power polices the world and responds to emergencies. As the commander in chief, Obama would be positioned to make sure that the risen city is not disturbed by any modern power. He could even order it protected by American ships while the horrible ancient power basks in the sunlight for the first time in nearly a century, gathering strength for the conquest of the Earth.

I am certian that the time is nearingfor R'yleh to rise again. The confluence of that with Obama's rise, now that I know what I do about him point with near certainty to his plan for America and give clear motivation for his designs on the highest office in the land. I think of the 200,000 in Berlin, the 70,000 in Portland, and the untold thousands that will gather in the Broncos Stadium in Denver, and I shudder to think that Obama would invite these foul, ancient beings into our hearts and minds. That he would make us complicit in their terrible plans. While the candidates criss-cross the country campaigning for votes, I'll continue my campaign for knowledge and evidence to use against the Cult and its leader. Now that I--and now you--know their plans, there is a prayer of exposing them and keeping them from fruition. That is, if our prayers are heard by anyone except Them.

Face time

The Cultist entered the special collections area after I had finished reading, as I was absorbing all I had read in Thurston's account. The room had been as silent as a tomb; at the slight creaking of the door's hinge, my neck snapped towards the entrance. The man did not have the look of any academic I had ever seen. He was decidedly burly, and his bearing caused me to believe we has as comfortable on the deck of a ship as on dry land, possibly more so. I was already in a terrified state, and my mind immediately went to the strange circumstances under which Thurston, Angell, and Johansen had all died.

The sailor (as I assume him to be) fixed his gaze on me, and I immediately knew my fears about his intentions were justified. I started gathering the papers I had been reading into my bag (yes, the originals--in my haste to escape, I stole Thurston's papers. I copied them at the earliest opportunity and mailed the originals back). He approached me from behind and to the right, being seated on the aisle side of the table I'd chosen. As I closed my bag and stood up, he grabbed a table and flung it on his side, blocking my escape.

"I believe you have something that's not yours in that bag. You ought to give it me so I can return it to its rightful owner." He spoke in an accent I didn't recognize, but didn't believe to be native to Boston, but maybe further north in New England.

"I don't think you're here to collect items for the library," I retorted as I looked for an escape. I saw that he had one hand in the pocket of his coat, adjusting his grip on something therein.

"I said I would return them to their rightful owner. There are some things that don't belong in the houses of human knowledge--some things man was not meant to know." On the other side of the overturned table, he seemed to be waiting for me to make my move. I knew I couldn't overpower him, and did not want to get within arms' reach of him, lest I find out what was in his pocket. The cases of Angell and Johansen's death both involved being jostled or handled by suspected Cultists, so I felt that I'd likely be safe as long as I kept my distance.

However, I still had the problem that there was only one way out of the special collections room, and there was a table and a murderous Cultist between myself and the exit. We were alone in the room, and my shouts of fear when the table had been overturned had not attracted any help. Searching frantically for an exit, ran into the small stacks in the special collections area. I realized immediately the strategic error I had made, as my movements were even more restricted in the stacks than they were in the study area.

I stood at one end of the aisle I was on, and saw the Cultist enter my aisle. I ran up the intersecting aisle, and heard his footsteps quicken behind me. I saw a book cart full of old volumes (which I pray I didn't damage), ran behind it, grabbed the handles and run full-force towards the aisle my pursuer was emerging from. I took him straight on and after the horrifying crash that resulted I ran out without looking back. I ran straight out of the library, despite the shouts and protests of the staff, ran straight back to my car (still carrying the originals of Thurston's work in my bag), got in, and drove until I needed gas two hours later.

Thus I completed my quest for knowledge about the Cult. What little knowledge mainstream scholarly work had produced about the Cult of Cthulhu, I now had on my person. I knew as anxiously waited for my tank to fill that I must now conduct my own field work and research, searching out the Cult and gathering evidence about the machinations, about their ambitions, and about the threat that their leader presented to the American public. Barack Obama has a plan, a plan to see Cthulhu risen from where he sleeps beneath the waves. I did not understand all the details, or what other threats he and the Cult might pose to America and mankind, but I knew he had to be exposed. This is a blog of my travels, my quest, and the repository of everything I learn.

May heaven protect us all.

The Call of Cthulhu, Part III

The papers pertaining to Professors Thurston and Angell study of the strange events of 1925 are the best background on the Cult of Cthulhu and its activities I've yet found. Indeed, they are the only ones that seem to be based on actual events and eyewitness accounts. As is often the case with the occult, so much of what happens is shrouded in secrecy and shadow. The sober work of these two academics is the best material I have to work with to build my understanding of the Cult and its goals.

Their stories also help me understand the severity of the threat that I've now exposed myself to. Angell though quite aged, died under circumstances that his grand-nephew viewed as suspicious. In his last days, he was seen being jostled by a man who fits the profile I've now come to associate with a cultist. Shortly after leaving his own work on the matter to the library at Tufts, Thurston died under more suspicious circumstances, at only fifty three years old. Thurston wrote that he believed that his granduncle had been murdered and that he might meet the same fate. After my visit to Boston I know that I too am similarly marked for death.

My visit to Tufts University started much like my visit to Brown. I arrived up early, and wandered the stacks for a while, then at the appointed time I met with a librarian who took me to the special collections area of the library. He left me with the folio containing Professor Thurston's work and papers. I quickly separated out the ones that pertained to the Cthulhu cult. All of the materials from Angell's account were duplicated here, but just as I suspected, his grandnephew had picked up the trail and conducted an investigation of his own. Eager to continue the narrative, I did not immediately go to make photocopies of the materials like a good researcher, but started reading the originals instead.

The new materials dealt with a story originally found in the Sydney (Australia) Bulletin dated April of 1925. It told of a derelict ship picked up off of New Zealand whose sole surviving crew member, the second mate of another vessel which had been lost, told story that was strange enough to make international news. The survivor, name Johansen, told that his schooner had been attacked by a heavily armed yacht manned by unsavory characters from Dunedin(N.Z.). Though his ship was lost in the battle, the crew managed to board the yacht, killing the crew in the ensuing melee. Disoriented by a storm, the crew landed the strange ship on an even stranger island, at a latitude and longitude where there was supposed to be only open water. The rest of the crew died on the island, save Johansen and another man, whose dead body had been found on the captured yacht. What befell the other crew members, Johansen could never be brought to speak of. Those who saw him afterwards described him as horribly affected by his ordeal. Attempts to locate the island the crew had landed in proved fruitless.

None would have thought to connect this newspaper article with the strange events happening in America that year except for Thurston, and only he by chance. For the picture accompanying the story was of an idol found on the captured yacht, a replica of the one that Inspector Legrasse had recovered from the swamp ritual nearly twenty years before. He recognized it immediately, and set off to the South Pacific to continue his granduncles investigation and hopefully bring it to a conclusion. Arriving eventually in Australia, and speaking with the Admiralty about the episode and the personages involved, he discovered that Johansen had left after the incident for Oslo, Norway (for he was originally Norwegian).

Steeled by his resolve to see the investigation concluded, Professor Thurston set out for Norway. He went to visit Johansen at his some, but Johansen had not survived long after the events of 1925. His widow had a manuscript written by her late husband concerning those events, of which Thurston was able to convince her he was the intended recipient. In the manuscript, Johansen revealed the account he had refused to give to the Australian authorities. He tells of the unprovoked attack on his schooner blown off course by a storm, the boarding of the yacht, and finally the strange island.

Landing on the island where none was supposed to exist, the crew found an ancient city that was unlike anything they had ever seen. Built around and up a hill at the center of the island, the structures and layout of the city seemed to defy all human architectural tradition, and even basic earthly Geometry. Thurston surmised, and I agree, that this must have been the sunken city of R'yleh, where Cthulhu sleeps until he can rise and claim the Earth once again. Thurston connects the presence of the previously unknown island to an earthquake recorded a few days before in Chile and Australia.

The crew recognized how ancient and unusual the city on this island was, and though the place terrified them, it was quite plainly deserted. They hoped to find some valuable souvenirs to bring back with them after the loss of their ship. One of the crew eventually discovered a giant monolith with a heavy stone door. On the door, Johansen describes a likeness of Cthulhu that seems very similar to Wilcox's bas-relief. He told of an ancient city in his visions, and it now seems that he dreamed of the place Johansen and his crew visited, and carved this massive door upon awakening.

The crew managed to discern the door's operation, and it very slowly slid open. The men gathered anxiously, hoping for a chance to take from the tomb the riches of some ancient king. Instead, the door opened upon a stench and a visible blackness that obscured the sun as it poured from the portal. The keen-eared among the crew reported a nasty, sloppy sound coming from within, but they were still not prepared for what would come out of that doorway. A gelatinous, green creature bearing the squid-dragon likeness that could only have been Cthulhu himself squeezed through the portal after the men. Two of the men are said to have died of fright at that moment. The thing grabbed three more up in its claws. Another fell to his death off a cliff over the see trying to escape. Only Johansen and Briden, whose body was the corpse found with Johansen made it to their vessel. They built steam up and got the boat underway, hoping to escape from the ancient city and the evil they had awakened.

Cthulhu was having none of it. He slid into the water and gave chase, his giant form quickly closing the gap between himself and the ship. Johansen, knowing that the thing would overtake them, quickly gave the ship full steam and turned the wheel abruptly, drawing the ship into a head-on collision course with the unearthly terror pursuing it. In the moment before impact, Johansen was able to get his best look at the terrifying visage, which was so enormous that it came up nearly to be bow of the ship. Then there was a bursting like a gelatinous bladder, and a terrible stench and sound that the author lacked words to describe. Thinking he had slain the beast, Johansen looked towards the stern, only to find that the scattered bits of Cthulhu were slowly coalescing into their original form. He pushed onwards, widening the distance between himself and Cthulhu with the urgency of a man whose survival is at stake.

The death of his now completely mad companion and his rescue at sea follow just as they are described in the account from the Sydney Bulletin. The story now concluded, Thurston reflects in writing upon his investigation. He clearly takes Johansen's story for fact, and the madness of artists like Wilcox halfway around the world as corroborating evidence of the terrifying reality of this evil from the stars. I find that it beggars belief, but yet the story stirs something deep and primitive in me as well. Ever since I learned of Cthulhu and the Elder ones, I have been uneasy and afraid at all times. This would prove to be an advantageous state of mind that afternoon in Boston, for while I was considering Thurston's account and processing all I had learned, another patron entered the special collections area. It would be my first face-to-face encounter with a Cultist.

Call of Cthulhu, Part II

When I departed Michigan for Rhode Island, it was with the hope that I could view the work and papers of one Professor George Gammell Angell, a professor at Brown University until his death in 1926. He was the person I alluded to in my previous post, the one who studied the visions and dreams people had about Cthulhu and other Elder ones in 1925. His nephew, a fellow academic and the executor of his estate, had collected an made available his uncles' work in a collection entitled "The Call of Cthulhu." The collection includes a clay tablet with a haunting likeness of Cthulhu himself and some terrifying hieroglyphs that I hope to be able to examine closely and compare to my Necronomicon.

I came to Brown seeking answers on the history of the Cthulhu cult, the genesis of these strange visions (which seemed to affect mostly artists, none of whom claimed to know anything about Cthulhu or the Elder Ones before or even after they had dreams in which they provided terrifying descriptions of the same), and why Barack Obama, the keeper of the Necronomicon and as much a leader of the Cult and its associated orders can be said to have, would care to become President -- how would it forward his goals or those of the Cult?

On the first two topics, I learned much. I arrived an hour before my appointment at the John Hay Library, and wandered the stacks collecting my thoughts. At the agreed-upon time, I proceeded to the special collections area, and was led to the collected works of Professor Angell. His experience working with a local artist afflicted by the visions, one H.A. Wilcox. It was he who sculpted the clay tablet (currently stored in the Haffenreffer museum of Anthropology on Brown's Campus) and brought it to professor Angell. Wilcox was fortunate to have brought it to Professor Angell. While any other sensible man would have discounted the bas-relief as the work of a slightly brilliant but deeply troubled artist, Angell knew there was some seriousness to what Wilcox had brought him -- he recognized immediately the likeness of Cthulhu, for he had seen it before.

Professor Legrasse of New Orleans, whose case I mentioned in my last post, appears in the notes of Professor Angell as well. Apparently, and this story is repeated in the 1908 proceedings of the American Archaeological Society, Legrasse brought an artifact for his investigation to the assembled archaeologists for their inspection and help in determining its origins. The artifact in question was as small carving or sculpture of Cthulhu made of an unidentified mineral. Those who say the thing describe it as both strange and terrifying. All assembled agreed that it was ancient, both by nature of its innate character and because the school of design that had created it was plainly lost to the Ages. None could place it in time, nor could the material be traced to any known place on Earth.

Though it could not be traced back to its origin, one of the scientists in attendance had seen the like before. A Professor Channing attested to having seen a crude carving, worshipped by a secluded Eskimo tribe in Western Greenland, that bore a semblance in all important regards to the creature represented by Lagrasse's idol. He could had learned and could tell little more about the Eskimos or their strange form of worship, save that it too involved terrifying rituals and human sacrifice. Eventually, all those assembled admitted that they could not provide information to forward Legrasse's investigation.

Angell's narrative continues with regard to the artist Wilcox. His nightmares like the one that gave birth to the tablet continued for some weeks. Eventually, he took ill in a severe way. He was bedridden for days, though he would eventually make a full and rather miraculous recovery. The professor notes that another artist, similarly afflicted over the same period, died of the mysterious malady. After Wilcox recovered, this was the end of the visions, and the end of Angell's account as well.

After wrapping up in the library, I visited the museum on campus where the tablet was housed, along with some of Wilcox's other works. The tablet was definitely a likeness of Cthulhu, which I had gathered from pictures online. The hieroglyphs were nothing new to me, as they were mostly symbols associated with the common rituals of the cult. I bet it is similar to the Greenland bas-reflief described in the 1908 proceedings, but I will probably never know. Wilcox's other work, all created after the vision of Cthulhu that led him to sculpt his own bas-relief, is both good and terrifying. Clearly, he never recovered from his terrifying dreams. The vistas and geometry he creates are all at the same time inspired, unnatural, and inhuman. Contemplating them, I wondered if the other artists that survived the malady that afflicted him and others created similar work. I also wondered how they had all been (sometimes fatally) afflicted with the same visions of beings that I did not at the time believe to be real.

I did not stay the night in Providence. I resolved to get out of town quickly, since getting access to the special collections required me to be indiscreet about my studies. The annotations of Professor Angell's paper indicated that his nephew had continued his work on the Cthulhu cult after his relatively sudden death, and I hoped to find more about him at the last institution he worked at, Tufts University in Boston. I did not know why at the time, but I still felt like I was in terrible danger because of my studies. Tufts would prove me correct.

The Call of Cthulhu, Pt. I

I started this blogging endeavor as a way to collect and gather my thoughts as I undertake this terrifying odyssey. I deliberately decided not to make it private, to put it out on the Internet at large so that it may outlive me should the unthinkable happen to me. God forbid, I hope that the information I provide may be of use in my lateness.

And when it comes to information, I've provided precious little of it to you my readers in terms of background--either regarding my own travails, or regarding the history of Cthulhu and the cult that worships him and bears his name. I've learned much about the latter during the course of the former. I started this blog after I realized that I was being watched and pursued and started running. I have limited time and ability to write blog entries, so the information I publish here lags reality by about two weeks. This is the reason I feel comfortable describing my travels, because by the time I write that I've been to a place, I have long since taken my leave of it.

When I realized that I could no longer stay in Marquette, the first place I ran to was Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. I felt the need to do more research to find out what I was up against, what I had stumbled upon to. As a student at Northern Michigan, I would have access to the library at U of M, and I knew I would have a place to stay in Ann Arbor. I knew I could not stay in one place long, at least not so close to home, but managed two days of productive research before I had to flee again. What I uncovered during those two days forms the basis everything I now know and believe about the threats to myself and to America.

The Cult of Cthulhu is not powerful or omnipresent like the Masons or the Illuminati are supposed to be. Recorded encounters with confirmed Cult members, while rare, have generally revealed them to be poor people who take their living from the sea. Fishermen, workers in the shipping industry, and to a lesser extent those that serve on naval vessels are the most frequent worshipers. The Cult is widespread, reported to be in America, Europe, and Asia according to my research, and groups in other locations are likely. It is also terrifying, ancient, and somehow yet more terrifying because of how long it has survived.

According to Cult lore, the Elder Ones (among whom Cthulhu is the most powerful priest) came to Earth from space when the planet was young and died eons before Man was born. From their tombs in the sunken city of R'lyeh, their minds whispered their secrets to our earliest ancestors. This sunken city plays a pivotal role in the prophecies the Cult seeks to fulfull. When it resurfaces from the depths of the ocean, that will be when Cthulhu reawakens to devour us all.

This is all written in the Necronomicon and is common knowledge to all those who worship Cthulhu and the other Old Ones. It is the basic mythology of the Cult of Cthulhu. My research at U of M mostly had to do with events during the last hundred years that have to do with the Cult and its practitioners. Though stories about the Cult are few and far between, there have been stories published in newspapers and journals that are unmistakably accounts of Cult rituals. The most detailed account of actual rituals I was able to find was from the early 1900s, and took place in New Orleans. It's largely taken from the reports of one Inspector Legrasse, who led the investigation.

The New Orleans police department was alerted to strange activities which led to kidnappings in the bayous of southern Louisiana. The group engaged in these activities was said to be quite large, ferocious, and guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Taking no chances, Inspector Legrasse led a party of nearly two dozen armed men into the woods where the rituals were said to be taking place. It should be pointed out that the area of the bayou the party entered had a reputation as a place where evil was known to lurk. The newspaper article I read printed matter-of-fact descriptions of creatures bearing a strong resemblance to certain Elder Ones (as well as common descriptions of the Jersey Devil) that were likely fomented by Cult members.

Legrasse's party came upon a horrible scene in the clearing where they found the ritual being practiced. Around a massive bonfire and an altar, up which sat a small carving of Cthulhu himself, men were frantically chanting, dancing, and bellowing in a heathen tongue that none of the assembled officers could understand. This description of the ritual is nearly identical to what was reported from the Hawaiian man my friend treated, a resemblance which to me lends both accounts more credibility. That they happened nearly a century apart and halfway around the world from each other simply goes to show that the Cult has been around for quite some time, and the rituals are largely the same from place to place.

The rituals practiced by the Cult are more terrifying and gruesome than I had imagined. Though the Necronomicon calls for human sacrifice, I was not prepared to read about it in a police officer's sober report in a century-old newspaper article. Though the officers in New Orleans found no bodies, there was blood and clothing from the kidnapped on the altar where Cthulhu's likeness rested. The worshipers told mad tales of the victims being carried off by the Old Ones that haunted the woods. The officers surmised that they had been sacrificed and burned as part of the terrible rituals. In the ensuing raid, the officers took a few prisoners. Most of the Cult members escaped into the woods or were killed in the struggle.

The same paper would later print the account of one cult member, called only Castro, who was willing to speak with the officers who captured him. He filled the officers in on many of the details about the history of the cult that I have told you, and are corroborated by the Necronomicon. This makes me certain that these are indeed the same cult. The stranger accounts of the Cult come from the mid 1920s, when a madness seemed to seize much of New England all at once. Newspaper stories from this time period abound with strange stories of people having terrible dreams and hallucinations. One individual afflicted with particularly vivid hallucinations (who was also a sculptor) made a clay tablet with a likeness of Cthulhu. I know this because it was photographed for the work of a professor at Brown University who studied this unexplainable rash of strange afflictions.

At least, it seemed unexplainable to the professor at the time, and to me when I read it. Truly now, I wonder what the real reasons behind it all might be. I cannot believe in the terrors that I spend my days reading about and my nights dreading as I try to sleep. But this terrible mythology, and the cult that surrounds it has endured seemingly forever. I know more now than I did then, and many of the things I've come to understand seem to be explainable only by the unseen hand of some terrible consciousness, a will that reaches out from places unseen to twist the thoughts and will of men.

Knowing that I needed to get out of Michigan, lest my pursuers pick up my trail a scant several hours from where I last left them, I set out for Rhode Island and Brown. I sought answers for the questions that had been raised by the things I had learned in the last month. I would find only more terrifying questions, and more fodder for the nightmares that continue to torment me even today.

Moshintun, MI

I've been unable to find a wireless connection for some time since I last wrote in my blog. Any of you reading this might have feared that my pursuers had overtaken me. While I'm safe for the moment, I fear that I've drawn too much attention to myself already -- I'm certain that members of the Cthulhu Cult are following me, which is why I've fled my home in Michigan as I search for the truth about the Cult and Barack Obama's connection to it.

I have beat around Obama's connection to the Cult for too long. I should also tell you what book I've come to be in possession of, the source of my nightmares. The book is an abridged copy of the Necronomicon, donated to the University of Northern Michigan by the family of a recently late gentleman from Moshintun in Keweenaw county. The deceased's kin believed the man to be an amateur scholar of Native American culture and religion, and presented some of his books and papers as covering this matter. As a graduate student in history working for the summer at the University, I was charged with cataloging these materials. I immediately recognized that they were mis-characterized. The English items contained chants and rituals that were terrifying, unwholsome, and not at all like the naturalist religion of the Native Americans. The illustrations and woodblock prints were not of animal spirits, but wholly unearthly figures whose origins I could not even being to hypothesize on.

After an unsuccessful week of searching our library for any context for these documents, I decided to go to the town of Moshintun to see if there was anyone who could explain to me the interests of the dead man and help me make sense of these items. To understand my experience, one must first know that to call the town remote is an exercise in the most drastic understatement. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is generally poorly served by highways, and the rural northernmost communities are worst off. After a few hours of bad, winding roads through marshy undergrowth populated by various wading birds, I arrived at the old library in Moshintun.

My appointment with the chief reference librarian started off with a hearty, amicable greeting. She told me that since the old mine had gone under a decade and a half ago, there had been less and less interest in academics in this community, as well as little interest in the community by academics. She was extremely excited to be assisting in research like this into her town and its inhabitants. Thus encouraged and expecting a productive day's search, we dug in.

"You were right that this is unusual writing -- I don't think I've ever seen anything like it," she told me after I had spread out the books and papers I had received on the table. "You said it came from someone in this town?"

I told her the name of the man it had come from, as well as what little his family had been able to tell me about his studies. She considered for a few moments, and said "I wonder if it has anything to do with that new church or lodge of whatever that formed in town a couple of years ago, the Order of the Goran." She explained to me that after the mine closed, the economy of the town totally fell apart. All that was left now was a little bit of shipping, and even that industry had been largely dependent on materials going to and from the mine. The boats would leave on Lake Superior, and head for ports up and down North America and Central America loaded down with zinc and nickel.

"Anyway, a few years ago, one of the boat owners came back with stories about natives somewhere down Mexico, up in the mountains. They practiced this Goran religion, and he swore up and down that it put them in touch with the Earth in such a way that it actually helped them find new veins of gold and other precious stones in their old mines. He said that it was time we started looking into new ways of thinking about our lives and our spirituality, or else our town would go under." She went on to explain that he brought back literature about the faith, and eventually a church was started in town with a small but growing following. She thought it stood at about two dozen parishioners today.

At the end of our afternoon of discussion, I shook hands with the kindly woman and bid her adieu. It seemed like I was on the right track with this Order of the Goran, and she said she'd get whatever materials she could from the church and forward it on to me. True to her word, I received a package at the University five days later from Moshintun. It had pamphlets, service programs, a sort of hymnal, and best of all a small volume that represented about a quarter the pages of my tome (that I now know to be the Necronomicon). With the translated version to use to understand the strange hieroglyphs in the book, I was able to make much headway uncovering the rest of the book. Horrible rituals honoring strange creatures from the stars that came to Earth when it was still forming; prophecies that told of these Elder Ones raising from the ancient sunken cities where they sleep; descriptions of the same that turned my stomach and haunt my dreams. I painstakingly translated the volume that become more horrifying with each page.

Proper nouns were the most difficult to work out. Names like Cthulhu that were translated into English from the heathen tongue were all I had to go on, and slow going it was. Slowly I built phonemes for the hieroglyphs, and was able to come up with rough English approximations for the names and personages described (though many still were translated to a jumble of unpronounceable syllables). Eventually I was left only with the author's name and title. The title I got first: Abd al-Hazred, Arabic for "Servant of the Devourer," a reference to Cthulhu who will drive all mankind mad and then consume them. The name was difficult, but I eventually got it. When I realized what it said, I immediately double- and triple-checked my work. Confident that everything was correct, the story of the mad old Hawaiian fisherman came rushing back to me.

The keeper of the Necronomicon for the Cult of Cthulhu, and some if its related cults is the intellectual leader of the movement, who uses the title Servant of the Devourer. He is always a learned and passionate follower. The current al-Hazred had signed the book that I had, which turned out to date only to the late nineties -- a recent edition. The hieroglyphs read "Bar'ak Ob[a]ma." Barack Obama, Junior Senator from Illinois. Leader of the Cult of Cthulhu.

It was only after I learned this that I learned something else -- that word of my studies had gotten out. I saw the same two burly, working class gentlemen following me around Marquette for two days, and became more and more nervous. On the third day, I came into my office and noticed that some of my effects had been disturbed. It had clearly been searched -- and some of the materials from the late gentleman's bequest turned up missing. Thankfully, I had kept the Necronomicon with me. I immediately packed my things and fled. I'm now on the lam, looking for the truth about this ancient evil and the man who will in a likelihood be our next President, unless light can be shined on the horrible secrets he's been keeping from America.

"Cthulhu fhtagn"

My first exposure to the Cult of Cthulhu came through a friend, a psychology graduate student in Seattle who told me about a patient he had in the winter of 2004-05. At the time I dismissed the cult and the man's story about Obama, then a rising star in the Democratic party, to be merely the ravings of a madman, a fantastic story to tell over dinner among friends discussing our work. I dismissed it entirely until last month, when I discovered the book that I referenced in my last posting -- the book that not only proved in my mind the existence of the Cult, but also corroborated the most fantastic parts of the story. I asked my friend to give me the case report -- he was perplexed, but complied. I'm afraid I can tell you only a little about the identity of the subject, since my friend is not one to breach medical ethics. Know only that I now believe every word to be true, though the man is no doubt very disturbed by what he's seen and been a part of.

The subject is described as a male, an Hawaiian native of advanced age. In his waning years, he had taken to telling his family and friends strange tales of bizarre rituals, of other fishermen dancing, screeching, and chanting around a fire--repeating strange syllables that cause the tongue to contort and turn the stomach of those who hear.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

The poor soul who had to transcribe his chanting during one of his reveries gave a valiant effort and quite nearly reproduced the phrase I would encounter cataloging volumes bequested to our library. The man's family, which was split between the Hawaiian islands and the Pacific Northwest, allowed him to stay on the islands where he had spent his whole life bringing in the bounty of the sea as long as they could bear to. The final straw came in the fall of 2004 when, as Barack Obama became a name recognized in households across America, the old man claimed to have met him as a boy during these occult gatherings.

The group of worshipers was not described as exceedingly large, so a young new face in the crowd was remarked by the man the first time he spotted the slender youth in the crowd. He at first kept his distance from the center of the ring they danced and chanted in, using a quiet and reserved voice. But he returned the next time a ceremony was held, and the next. Gradually, he became caught up in the spirit of the event, and bellowed out the syllables "Cthulhu fhtagn" as he danced in a mad, animalistic manner in the light of the flame. He says he saw Obama at every meeting and every ritual, becoming more and more fervent in his devotion, for two years.

It's quite a charge, I realize. But it does make sense. Barack Obama did live in Hawaii, right up until he graduated high school and went to college in Los Angeles. So the place and the time are right. Now that I know of the reality of the Cult, I know it would likely have flourished in Hawaii, as it has always been practiced most among fishermen and those who make their life in the high seas. I do not know what might have drawn Obama into the rituals, but I can guess that it might have had something to do with the deep crisis of faith and self he describes in "Dreams of My Father." As a young man, he no doubt would have been vulnerable to the call -- the Old Ones have been known to call out in the dreams of those who are vulnerable -- perhaps they reached him as he slept. Whatever the case, I didn't believe it either until the Cult and Obama turned up together again. This story informs that one, in which I will describe to you what I discovered among the dusty old books I was charged with cataloging. It is getting late now though, and I must be moving on. I have not stayed in one place long for the past several weeks, as I fear for my safety. I will write some more when I feel it's safe to do so.