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One of the most exciting
scenes in Love craft's fiction is the climactic pursuit of the sailor Johansen
by the monster Cthulhu in "The Call of Cthulhu". It goes without
saying that Johansen's experiences on R'lyeh have no basis in fact, but it is
well known that many people at least claim to have had analogous experiences.
These are, of course, the famous reports of sea-creatures such as the Loch Ness
Monster. It might be fun to examine some of these, to see what parallels to the
Johansen narrative they may offer.
Lovecraft described
Cthulhu as combining characteristics of "an octopus, a dragon, and a human
caricature." "A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly
body with rudimentary wings. . . ." Most reported sea-monsters bear little
resemblance to this picture, save that most of them are as dragon-like as the
ancient Pleisiosaur is imagined to have been. This, in fact, is the leading
guess as to the identity of these creatures, if they actually exist.
There is a suggestion of
tentacles about the head in just a few instances. We are told by witnesses that
the monster of Lake Storsjo in Sweden "had either a hairy mane or ears just
behind the head" (Warren Smith, Strange Secrets of the Loch Ness Monster,
p. 88). A captain Lorenz von Ferry described a sea-beast he had encountered off
Norway. "About its neck is a kind of mane, which looks like a parcel of
sea-weeds hanging down in the water" (Ibid., p. 128). The clearest example
would be that of the lau, a creature sighted in Lake Victoria. "The
neck is long, serpentine, and the animal is said to have tentacles" (Ibid.
, p. 97).
One particularly
interesting note in Lovecraft's description is strikingly corroborated in a
real-life sea-monster report. Lovecraft recounts how "great Cthulhu slid
greasily into the water." Captain Albert Franklin Pierce saw a sea-serpent
off the coast of Massachusetts, while hauling lobster pots. He recalled that,
"The water was all greasy where it went down" (Lawrence D. Geller, Sea
Serpents of Coastal New England, p. 9). Interestingly, the same serpent was
seen off the coast of Marblehead (Lovecraft's "Kingsport") three days
later.
Cthulhu is said to swim,
with "strokes of cosmic potency", raising "vast waves" in
his wake. Given the size of such behemoths, it is hardly surprising to find the
same detail commonly used in real sea-monster reports. Nicholas Witchell quotes
two sightings of the Loch Ness Monster: "The tranquility had been replaced
by a surging mass of water. . . . [B]oth [witnesses] watched 'an enormous animal
rolling and plunging' until it disappeared with a great upsurge of water."
"It is capable of quite extraordinary speed and is capable of creating a
commotion, a disturbance in the water that would suggest it must be of immense
proportions" (The Loch Ness Story, pp. 28, 63).
In Lovecraft's story,
the sea-monster kills several of Johansen's crew members and starts out after
Johansen's fleeing ship. By far most sea-serpent reports are quite uneventful
compared to this. It is usually more than enough excitement just to see the
creature surface, which is about all that usually happens. But occasionally one
reads of pursuit by a sea-monster, sometimes malevolent, sometimes out of mere
curiosity. In 1893, a Dr. Farquhar Matheson had a "close encounter"
with a sea-beast. "It had a long, straight neck that was as tall as my
mast. . . . It was then about two hundred yards away and moving straight for
us" (Smith, p. 45). In 1874, a Swedish fisherman was aghast to find a
sea-serpent rising out of the water near his boat. "I didn't want to alarm
the beast. . . . But I did want to get away from it as quickly as possible. . .
. I became even more frightened when I had rowed about ten meters' distance and
the animal began to swim toward me. . . ." Fortunately, the thing soon took
off and threatened him no more (Smith, pp. 77-78).
More reminiscent of
Cthulhu's menacing pursuit is the tale of Russian geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov
in 1952. He was swimming in Lake Vorota when a sea-serpent surfaced. "There
was no question about the monster's intentions. It was heading straight for us
and only when the ripple of water it had stirred reached our feet was its
terrible hypnotic spell broken. We were able to flee the water and escape not a
minute too soon" (Smith, p. 119). Apparently, the Mokele-mbembe monster who
inhabits the rivers of Zaire makes a habit of attacking intruders. It "is
said to attack [canoes] at once and to kill the crews. . . ." Johansen
would have felt right at home. (Smith, p. 95. )
Johansen, in a desperate
burst of ingenuity, realized he could not escape the gelatinous titan pursuing
him through the waves, so he turned the ship about and rammed the monster,
gaining himself enough time to escape. We find that a few of those who in real
life claim to have sighted monsters have also taken defensive action, some
shouting at the monster, some trying to beat it off with oars. Usually such
maneuvers prove even less potent than Johansen's, failing to do any more than
cause the monster to lose interest.
One account, however,
bears a surprising resemblance to Lovecraft's. According to the latter,
"There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder" when Johansen's bow
smashed into Cthulhu. Then, astern, "the scattered plasticity of that
nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its original hateful form. . .
." According to legend, Commodore Stephen Decatur was once inspecting the
manufacture of cannon balls in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. "While testing
shot on the firing range one day, Decatur observed a bizarre creature flapping
its wings across the range. With precision, he sighted and then fired a
cannonball directly through the Jersey Devil. All present were stunned that the
gaping hole did not appear to affect the Devil in the least. He continued flying
casually on his way" (James F. McGloy and Ray Miller, Jr., The Jersey
Devil, p. 31). In both cases, the very tearing asunder of the creature
proved ineffective.
Well,
then. Do these several points of correspondence between Lovecraft's fictional
"Johansen narrative" and actual sea-monster sightings suggest that
"The Call of Cthulhu" may have been based on a real experience? No,
not even Crypt of Cthulhu would go so far as to suggest this, but our
brief comparison has indicated that Lovecraft's tale does carry a good deal of
verisimilitude, even in its most extraordinary scene.
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