




                       The Shadow Over Innsmouth

                        _Horrifying Novelette_

                          By H. P. LOVECRAFT

                 _Unspeakable monstrousness over-hung
                 the crumbling, stench-cursed town of
               Innsmouth ... and folks there had somehow
                   got out of the idea of dying...._

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                       Weird Tales January 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] During the winter of 1927-28 Federal government officials made a
strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient
Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in
February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by
the deliberate burning and dynamiting--under suitable precautions--of
an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty
houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this
occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on
liquor. Keener news-followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of
arrests, the abnormally large force of men used in making them, and
the secrecy surrounding the disposal of the prisoners. No trials, or
even definite charges, were reported; nor were any of the captives
seen thereafter in the regular jails of the nation. There were vague
statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about
dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive
ever developed. Complaints from many liberal organizations were met with long
confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips
to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became
surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to
manage, but seemed largely to cooperate with the government in the
end. Only one paper--a tabloid always discounted because of its
wild policy--mentioned the deep-diving submarine that discharged
torpedoes downward in the marine abyss just beyond Devil Reef. That
item, gathered by chance in a haunt of sailors, seemed indeed rather
far-fetched; since the low, black reef lies a full mile and a half out
from Innsmouth Harbor. But at last I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. Results, I am certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock
of repulsion could ever accrue from a hinting of what was found by
those horrified raiders at Innsmouth. For my contact with this affair
has been closer than that of any other layman, and I have carried away
impressions which are yet to drive me to drastic measures. It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning
hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for government
inquiry and action brought on the whole reported episode. I was willing
enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain; but now
that it is an old story, with public interest and curiosity gone, I
have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in
that ill-rumored and evilly-shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous
abnormality. I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first
and--so far--last time. I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour
of New England--sightseeing, antiquarian, and genealogical--and had
planned to go directly from ancient Newburyport to Arkham, whence my
mother's family was derived. I had no car, but was traveling by train,
trolley, and motor-coach, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport they told me that the steam train was the thing to
take to Arkham; and it was only at the station ticket-office, when I
demurred at the high fare, that I learned about Innsmouth. The stout,
shrewd-faced agent, whose speech showed him to be no local man, seemed
sympathetic toward my efforts at economy, and made a suggestion that
none of my other informants had offered. "You _could_ take that old bus, I suppose," he said with a certain
hesitation, "but it ain't thought much of hereabouts. It goes through
Innsmouth--you may have heard about that--and so the people don't
like it. Run by an Innsmouth fellow--Joe Sargent--but never gets any
custom from here, or Arkham either, I guess. Leaves the Square--front
of Hammond's Drug Store--at 10 A.M. and 7 P.M. unless they've changed
lately. Looks like a terrible rattletrap--I've never been on it." That was the first I ever heard of shadowed Innsmouth. Any reference
to a town not shown on common maps or listed in recent guidebooks
would have interested me, and the agent's old manner of allusion
roused something like real curiosity. So I asked the agent to tell me
something about it. He was very deliberate, and spoke with an air of feeling slightly
superior to what he said. "Innsmouth? Well, it's a queer kind of town down at the mouth of
the Manuxet. Used to be almost a city--quite a port before the War
of 1812--but all gone to pieces in the last hundred years or so. No
railroad now--B. & M. never went through, and the branch line from
Rowley was given up years ago. "More empty houses than there are people, I guess, and no business to
speak of except fishing and lobstering. Everybody trades mostly either
here or in Arkham or Ipswich. Once they had quite a few mills, but
nothing's left now except one gold refinery running on the leanest kind
of part time. "That refinery, though, used to be a big thing, and Old Man Marsh,
who owns it, must be richer'n Croesus. Queer old duck, though, and
sticks mighty close in his home. He's supposed to have developed
some skin disease or deformity late in life that makes him keep out
of sight. Grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, who founded the business. His mother seems to've been some kind of foreigner--they say a South
Sea islander--so everybody raised Cain when he married an Ipswich
girl fifty years ago. They always do that about Innsmouth people, and
folks here and hereabouts always try to cover up any Innsmouth blood
they have in 'em. But Marsh's children and grandchildren look just
like anybody else so far's I can see. I've had 'em pointed out to me
here--though, come to think of it, the elder children don't seem to be
around lately. Never saw the old man. "And why is everybody so down on Innsmouth? Well, young fellow, you
mustn't take too much stock in what people around here say. They're
hard to get started, but once they do get started they never let
up. They've been telling things about Innsmouth--whispering 'em,
mostly--for the last hundred years, I guess, and I gather they're
more scared than anything else.