Shadow Over Innsmouth Narrator

In HPL's preliminary notes to the story, the narrator is called Robert Olmstead. However, HPL renamed a number of the characters in the final story, so it's impossible to tell if he still considered Robert Olmstead to be the character's name.

The narrator had the Deep Ones taint, received from his great-grandmother, Pth'thya-l'yi. For details of his ancestry, see The Descent of Robert Olmstead. The narrator was born in 1905-1906, probably in Toledo, Ohio; at least, his immediate family was living in Toledo when he was attending college. He attended Oberlin College in Ohio. Following his third year in college, he decided to celebrate turning 21. He undertook a tour of New England, intending to view antiquarian sights and research his family geneaology. As part of this tour, he visited Innsmouth on July 15-16, 1927. From talking to Zadok Allen, he learned too much of the town's curse. The locals tried to detain him, but he managed to escape. He made frightened appeals to the authorities, which would later cause the Federal government to take drastic actions in Innsmouth. Meanwhile, he cut most of his remaining tour short, but stopped long enough in Arkham to find disquieting clues that he had Marsh ancestry.

The narrator returned to Oberlin for his final year and graduated in June. The following month, he visited his late mother's family in Cleveland, where he found further evidence that he was descended from the Marsh family. He started work in an insurance company and tried to ignore the hints of his ancestry. Then in the winter of 1930-31, he started having dreams of undersea ruins and sea creatures. His health deteriorated until he had to quit his job and became an invalid. He developed noticeable signs of the Innsmouth look. He wrote a long account of his visit to Innsmouth and his discoveries there. At the end of his account, his fear of his coming transformation changed into joy. He renounced earlier temptations toward suicide and decided to free his fellow Innsmouth-tainted cousin, Lawrence Williamson, from a Canton asylum, and together to go to sea and join the Deep Ones forever. [HPL Innsmouth (online text)]

In 1940, an Innsmouth grocery store named Hendreson told Abel Keane the fate of the man who brought in the Federals. Hendreson referred to this man as "Williamson," apparently in reference to the narrator's mother's maiden name. Hendreson said that when the Innsmouth locals learned that Williamson had both Marsh and Orne blood, they just waited for him to come back. He eventually returned to Innsmouth, went down to the water singing, dove in, and was never seen again. [AWD Sky]

While speaking of HPL's story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," Albert Wilmarth commented that the original model for the narrator, and his cousin from the Canton asylum, had both disappeared, and speculated about whether they were down in Y’ha-nthlei. [FL Terror2]

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