Nameless Thing, Nameless One

[HPL Diary (online text)]: An ancient forgotten being that lurks underground near Chorazin, New York, possibly beneath the ruined house of the van der Heyl family, or more probably under a nearby hill with an ancient stone circle. No one knows how long the Nameless Thing has lain buried here. However, the stones on the hill, according to archaeological and climatological evidence, must be fabulously early. The Iroquois regarded those stones with fear and loathing.

The van der Heyls became linked with the Nameless Thing when Claes van der Heyl visited the hidden city of Yian-Ho in the late 1500s; possibly during the period when he wrote his diary, the 1560s to 1580s, or possibly in 1591, when he did something that "could never have been done without generations of evil heritage, or some link with the outside." Something was sent to follow Claes until he, or one of his descendants, should accomplish a certain task. Apparently the task involves awaking the Nameless Thing, though it is not clear if this is the final goal of the task or simply a step in the task.

It was in search of the Nameless Thing that Claes's descendant Hendrick van der Heyl came to New-Netherland (that is, New York) in 1638 and built his house outside Chorazin, near the stone circle. From 1795 onward, strange cries and chants proceeded at certain seasons from Chorazin and from the great house and the hill of standing stones. The van der Heyls interbred with certain lesser "guardians" from underground, which led to many of the van der Heyls having snake-like or swine-like features. The family disappeared in 1872, for unknown reasons. However, the decadent residents of Chorazin continued to be worshippers of the Nameless Thing and held gatherings at the stone circle.

In 1908, a van der Heyl descendant named Alonzo Typer visited the house in search of the Nameless Thing. His diary recorded his impressions of a number of eldritch entities that he sensed in the house, but it is difficult to be sure which of his experiences pertain to the Nameless Thing, and which to other beings. He found two diaries and a key from Claes van der Heyl; the key was for a lock which Claes had brought from Yian-Ho and which was fixed to a door in the cellar under the house. It is unclear why the van der Heyls locked this door; possibly the Nameless Thing is too dangerous to summon except in specific circumstances, perhaps involving the use of protections.

From Claes's diaries, Typer learned a chant to "transfigure that Forgotten One who is Guardian of the Ancient Gateway." It seems that "Forgotten One" is another name for the Nameless thing, for Typer also wrote "I have been rehearsing the Chant that will transfigure the Nameless Thing." Typer hoped to contact the Nameless Thing on Walpurgis Eve (April 30-May 1), but soon felt that the Thing was hunting him instead. When Walpurgis came, something came through the cellar door and seized Typer, after which he was never seen again.

Claes van der Heyl left a color drawing that might be a depiction of the Nameless Thing. It was "a monstrous creature resembling nothing so much as a squid, beaked and tentacled, with great yellow eyes, and with certain abominable approximations to the human form in its contours. On the paws, feet, and head-tentacles were curious claws . . . while the entity as a whole sat upon a great throne-like pedestal inscribed with unknown hieroglyphs of vaguely Chinese cast." Typer thought "that monstrous shape [must] be a focus for all the evil in unbounded space, throughout the aeons past and to come—and those eldritch symbols be vile sentient eikons endowed with a morbid life of their own and ready to wrest themselves from the parchment for the reader’s destruction." At various times during his stay in the house, Typer glimpsed black claws, and it seems probable that these were the claws of the Nameless Thing.

The description of the creature is undeniably reminiscent of Cthulhu, though the latter's wings and hind hooves are not mentioned. Also, Cthulhu is thought to be lurking beneath sunken R'lyeh in the Pacific, rather than in upstate New York. Conceivably the Nameless Thing is one of Cthulhu's brethren, the Great Old Ones; however, there is no direct evidence to support this speculation.

It remains possible that the creature in the Claes's drawing was not the Nameless Thing, but some other entity that the Nameless Thing can lead you to. Notably, Alonzo Typer wrote that "No human eye has even yet glimpsed" the Nameless Thing, although Typer had already seen Claes's drawing. Typer may have thought (1) that the drawing was of some other entity that Claes had seen, or (2) that the drawing was of the Nameless Thing, but Claes based the drawing on legends or prehuman sources of information.

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