Babson, Eunice Bartolomeo Corsi Birch, George Bixby, Hannah  Black Book, The Black Goat  Black Man, The Black Pharaoh, The Black Stone, The Black-winged Ones, The Blake, Robert Blasted Heath, The Boardman Street Bohm, Seaman Bolton, Massachusetts

Bolton Worsted Mills Book of Dzyan Book of Eibon Bowen, Enoch (Professor) Boyle, Doctor Brattleboro Reformer  Briden, William Brightholme, Viscount Bronze Gate Brown Jenkin Brown University Bulletin, The Bulletin — The Plateau of Leng Burrower Beneath, The

Babson, Eunice. One of three servants from Innsmouth, Massachusetts who attended Edward and Asenath Derby during their three year marriage. Eunice was described as a swarthy young woman, marked with the anomalies of feature and who seemed to exude the continuous odor of fish. Upon Asenath’s disappearance, Edward sent the servants away amidst accusations and protests. Until Edward’s death three months later, a check was sent to them in Innsmouth to guarantee her silence.

The Thing On The Doorstep, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bartolomeo Corsi. A twelfth-century Florentine monk. Bartolomeo Corsi was a victim of a mind transfer with a member of the Great Race of Yith. This transfer took him back to almost 150,000,000 B.C., where he met Professor Peaslee.

The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Birch, George. Up until 1881, George Birch was the village undertaker for Peck Valley. A callused and primitive man, resorting to practices in undertaking that would be considered barbaric and illegal today. Though not an evil man, Birch has been described as lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable. On April 15th, 1881, Birch’s entire attitude change, though.
    The winter of 1880-1881 left George with nine bodies to bury upon the spring thaw. Those bodies were kept in a single receiving tomb. When the spring thaw came, the grave diggers dug nine holes, and it was up to George to lay the souls to rest. As proof of his laziness, it took George an additional three days to attempt burial of a second body after that of Darius Peck was laid to rest. Upon entry into the receiving tomb, George went about retrieving the coffin of Matthew Fenner for burial.
    Matthew Fenner was a small man, and one of the few who George gave all his skill could produce. Birch’s first coffin for Matthew turned out too flimsy and awkward for his taste and he cast it aside, but kept it for use later. He finally did find use for the coffin during that winter, giving to a vindictive man named Asaph Sawyer. That Asaph was too tall for the coffin made for the smaller Fenner didn’t stop George, he merely cut Asaph’s feet off at the ankle so the man would fit.
    A wind blew the door to the tomb shut, the old rusted latch finally breaking after all the mistreatment given to it by George through the winter. All too quickly the man realized his predicament, trapped in the crypt with no one to help him. George realized he would have to get himself out, and went about trying to figure a way out of the place. He noticed finally a slit like transom in the brick façade above the door might be able to be enlarged, if he only had a way to get up to it. Looking around the tomb, he decided that if he stacked them right, the eight remaining coffins would suffice as a sort of a step ladder.
    After stacking the coffins, Birch works from late afternoon until after midnight before he decided he would be able to get through the transom. After a short rest, he stepped up on the uppermost coffin to try his escape. The weight of his body pushed his legs through the lid of the casket, though, filling the room with a billowing stench. When he tried to get out through the transom, he realized an apparent drag on his ankles. Sudden, horrible pain shot through his calves, and all he could picture was splintered wood and nails digging into his skin. When he finally did escape, he found to his horror his lower legs and ankles mangled and bloody. He crawled to the cemetery lodge, where the lodge-keeper, a man named Armington, helped him in and went to get a doctor.
    After Doctor Davis dressed his wounds, the doctor went to the crypt to see what had happened. Upon his return, he made George swear he would say only that the wood and nails damaged his lower legs. What had really happened was beyond both men’s wildest nightmare. The spirit of Asaph Sawyer had its revenge for Birch cutting off his legs, for it was Sawyer’s coffin through which Birch’s own legs had fallen through.

In The Vault, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bixby, Hannah. A resident of Peck Valley in the 1870s who died and was interred by George Birch. Mr. Birch receive much heartache for his apparent lack of sensitivity and attention to detail when Hannah’s family, wishing to move her body from the Peck Valley Cemetery to a cemetery in the city where they lived, found the body of Judge Capwell there, instead.

In The Vault, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Black Book, The. The great book that sits before Azathoth in which all must sign their name in blood. This book contains spells and the key to how angles and curves can be used to allow travel between dimensions.

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The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, The. One of the Great Old Ones, the Black Goat of the Woods is another name for Shub-Niggurath.

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Black Man, The. Another name for Nyarlathotep. Keziah Mason of Arkham confessed this name to the Court of Oyer and Terminer under intense pressure as reference to the deity. See also Nyarlathotep.

The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Black Pharaoh, The. See Nephren-Ka.

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Black Stone, The. A stone of undetermined substance discovered by Henry Akeley on Round Hill in Vermont (probably in the latter part of 1927 or early 1928). The stone is covered with strange hieroglyphics which could also be found adorning the pages of the dread Necronomicon. Most of the etchings were so worn that they became indiscernible, lending to the determination of the stone's ancient origin. Henry Akeley attempted to express the stone to Albert Wilmarth at Miskatonic University for closer study, but the package was stolen by a human ally (Mr. Noyes?) enroute to Arkham. Later it was discovered that the stone originated from Yuggoth. The Black Stone's current whereabouts is unknown, though one can reasonably deduce it is probably beneath Round Hill, Vermont in the Mi-Go's outpost.

The Whisperer In Darkness, H.P. Lovecraft

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Black-winged Ones, The. Creatures in ally with the Great Old Ones. The Cthulhu Cult discovered in the swamps south of New Orleans on November 1, 1907 blamed the Black-winged Ones with the ritual killings conducted there.

The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Blake, Robert (Robert Bloch). An accomplished writer and painter who lived in Providence, Rhode Island and Milwaukee, Wisconsin most his life before dying sometime around 2:35 a.m., August 7th, 1935. Officially, Blake’s death was attributed to either being struck by lightning or by profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharged. Unofficially, though, there are still those who attribute his death to something more sinister, a darkness that hid in the steeple of the Free-Will Church until Blake’s explorations of the place released the creature.
    Blake was devoted to the fields of myth, dream, terror, and superstition. Before returning to Providence during the winter of 1934-1935 from Milwaukee, he had visited the city once before to see a strange old man as deeply given to the occult as he, though that visit had resulted in death and flame. This time he returned to write, living in the upper story of a place on College Street. From his window he could look out on the old town, and was inspired greatly by what he saw. In fact, he produce five of his best known short stories—The Burrower Beneath, The Stairs in the Crypt; Shaggai, In the Vale of Pnath, and The Feasters from the Stars. Additionally, he painted seven canvases that studied the nameless horrors of the universe.
    Every night he would sit and stare outside the window at Federal Hill, and often gazed fascinated on the dark spires of an old church perched on top of the hill. Finally, late in April 1935, Blake made his first trek to Federal Hill in an attempt to locate the church that haunted his thoughts. His trek took him through the maze of streets and alleys on Federal Hill, where he tried to ask about the church of passers-by, though all would feign ignorance about any church fitting that description. Still he pushed on, determined to find the place.
    The church finally appeared to his southwest, and following the sight, he found himself on a huge, wind-swept square with the church on the other side. The church was in great disrepair, the buttresses laying on the ground and the place surrounded by brown, neglected weeds and grasses. Huge Gothic windows covered with soot stood mostly unbroken, and the massive doors were still intact. The church was surrounded by a high, rusted fence atop a wall, the only gate visibly padlocked against intruders.
    Blake looked for someone in the square to ask about the church, but the only one who would talk to him about it at all was an Irish policeman on the opposite side of the square. The officer told him that a bad sect (Starry Wisdom) had occupied the church in the late 1800s, and it took a priest to exorcise the demons they called forth. The church, itself, had stood empty since 1877, and was, by all accounts, better left to fall into ruin with the passage of time.
    After further investigation, Blake found he could gain access to the church grounds through the fence on the side. He slipped through as passers-by crossed themselves and ran for shelter. Finding a basement window that would allow him into the church, Blake slipped into the darkness.
    His exploration of the lower levels was in quick fashion, the inner doors unlocked against intruders. Paintings obscured by soot were everywhere, what little of them Blake could make out he didn’t like, and the cross above the altar was not a cross at all, but resembled an ankh or crux ansata of Egypt. A library in the rear most room revealed ancient and forbidden tomes that made Blake’s blood run cold—a Latin version of the Necronomicon, the Liber Ivonis, the Cultes des Goules, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten, the De Vermis Mysteriis, along with copies of the Pnakotic Manuscript and the Book of Dzyan. In the rotting desk Blake found a small record book filled with cryptic entries which he pocketed.
    Finished below, Blake made his way to the tower, where he discovered a room where the bell should be with a stone pillar in the middle. Upon the pillar was a metal box of asymmetrical form, open for inspection. Inside was an egg shaped gem, later to be identified as the Shining Trapezohedron. After a search of the room, he discovered the skeletal remains of Edwin M. Lillibridge, a reporter for the Providence Telegram who disappeared in 1893 while exploring the church. From the skeleton he took a pocketbook and a paper which had scribbled notes of the history of the Free-Will Church scribbled on it.
    Without knowing it Blake found him back at the stone, staring into its depths. There revealed for him was the darkness of the universe, and through his actions, he awoke the Haunter of the Dark. A sudden feeling of helplessness and a realization that this was the Shining Trapezohedron made Blake turn away and close the box. Upon doing so, he heard a soft rustling above. He fled the church and returned to his home.
    He stayed away from the church, instead turning his thoughts to deciphering the cryptograms in the notebook he found in the library. Finally in June he broke the code, the text in the dark magical Aklo language. Among the things that he discovered by reading the text, he discovered that gazing upon the Shining Trapezohedron awakens the Haunter of the Dark, much to his distress. He realized the only thing that protected him was the street lights surrounding the church, for the Haunter of the Dark could not tolerate light at all, the faintest touch enough to banish it back into the darkness from whence it came.
    In early July, scrapings could now be heard in the church, throwing the surrounding community into a terrified state. On July 17, an article in the Journal threw Blake into a fever of horror. It seems that a thunderstorm caused a power outage on Federal Hill, and during that interval of no light the community surrounding the church went mad with terror. The people surround the church with lighted candles as bumping and flopping sounds erupted from within. Finally, when the lights came back on, an awful commotion erupted from the steeple.
    Another article in the Bulletin elaborated on the event, telling of what a pair of reporters found upon entering the church that day to see what happened. The dust in the vestibule had been plowed in a singular way, and a bad smell was everywhere. The tower was half cleaned of dust, all the tower's windows were broken and cushions from the pews below had been stuffed in their place to block out the light. No mention of either the Shining Trapezohedron or the skeleton was made.
    From this point on to his death, Blake became rigid with terror, especially during thunderstorms. On July 30th, Blake suffered a partial nervous breakdown. After retiring for the evening, he suddenly found himself in a very dark and mysterious place. After groping around he realized where he was—in the tower of the very church he sought to avoid. The next morning he awoke to find himself fully dressed, bruised and covered with dirt and cobwebs. After that he refused to leave his house, ordering his food brought to his house, and tying his legs to the bed at night to keep from sleepwalking.
    A terrific thunderstorm on the evening of August 8th just before midnight brought lightning to separate parts of the city, and two fireballs were reported. At 2:12 a.m., all the lights in Providence went out. On Federal Hill, the community once again ringed the church with candles, but a rising wind blew most of them out. Fumbling sounds began to sound in the tower, accompanied by evil odors emanating from the grounds. There was a sudden sound of splintering wood and a large object crashed to the ground. A darkness flew from the tower to the east like a meteor.
    The next day members of the Psi Delta house noticed a blurred white face in the westward window of Blake’s home. When the same face was seen in the same position that evening, they called the police. Upon forcing entry into the room, the police found Robert Blake dead, sitting rigid and upright behind the desk. A hideous expression was frozen on his face, where, by his own hand he confessed it was from seeing the Haunter of the Dark coming to kill him.

The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Blasted Heath, The. Area of land centered on the Nahum Gardner farm west of Arkham in the Miskatonic Valley. The area gets its name from its appearance, five acres of desolate land in the middle of the Massachusetts countryside. Described by a surveyor in 1927 as "gray desolation that sprawled to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields…There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine gray dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about."
    The effect described is the result of a meteorite crashing into the Gardner farm next to the well in June, 1882. Over the year that followed, the poison of the Colour Out Of Space, the life force contained within the meteorite, spread through the surrounding land, destroying the Gardner family completely. The creature disappeared from the land in 1883, but it is conjectured that there are other meteorites, other globules that gave birth to more of the Colours, one possibly still inside the well.
    Up until the building of the Arkham Reservoir in the 1920-30s, the effect of the Blasted Heath was spreading at the rate of about an inch a year. Even now, submerged beneath the dammed waters of the Miskatonic, one must wonder whether the river has cleansed the land of its blight, or whether the effect is still spreading.

The Colour Out Of Space, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Boardman Street. Street in Haverhill, Massachusetts where the Peaslee family had their home.

The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bohm, Seaman. Sailor of the Imperial German Navy and crewman aboard the U-29 submarine during World War I. On June 18, 1917, the U-29 sunk the British ship Victory. After destroying the ship and killing the crew, the U-29 submerged and resurfaced at sunset. Clinging to the rail of the ship was a corpse of a sailor, assumed to be a member of the Victory’s crew. The corpse was thrown overboard, marking the beginning of the end for the crew and the submarine.
    On June 19th, Seaman Bohm became violently ill. On the 20th, Bohm went insane. In order to quiet his ravings, Lt. Cdr. Heinrich, the ship’s captain, killed him.

The Temple, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bolton, Massachusetts. Factory town near Arkham, Massachusetts. It was in Bolton where Herbert West set up his laboratory of horrors to conduct his reanimation experiments.

Herbert West–Reanimator, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bolton Worsted Mills. Mills located in Bolton, Massachusetts, the largest of their kind in the Miskatonic Valley.

Herbert West–Reanimator, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Book of Dzyan. One of the forbidden tomes of arcane knowledge that speaks of the universe as it is within the realm of the mythos. One of the known copies existed for 91 years in an arcane library in the Free-Will Church o f Providence, Rhode Island. After Robert Blake’s death in 1935, a Doctor Dexter removed this and other tomes and added it to his library.

The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Book of Eibon. Book of black arts from ancient origin. Only fragments of the manual are known to exist, though their whereabouts are somewhat gray. Eibon was a great wizard of Hyperborea. It is believed that the original copy no longer exists, though Latin, French, and English translations are still in existence.

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Bowen, Enoch (Professor). One of the founders (?) of the modern sect of Starry Wisdom. Bowen returned from studying the occult and archeology in Egypt in 1844 to Providence, Rhode Island and bought the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill.

The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Boyle, Doctor. A doctor in western Australia during the mid 1930s who was familiar with the dream visions of Nathaniel Peaslee. When Robert Mackenzie discovered the ancient, weather worn blocks of stone in the desert and described them to Dr. Boyle, Boyle recommended he write Peaslee with his find. With the resulting expedition dispatched from Miskatonic University, he helped prove that the city of the Great Race of Yith actually existed.

The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Brattleboro Reformer. Newspaper in Brattleboro, Vermont, which printed Albert Wilmarth’s summary of local and mythological folklore. This printing led to the correspondence between Wilmarth and Henry Akeley.

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Briden, William. A member of the crew of the ill-fated Emma. On March 22nd, 1925, the Emma was sunk for trying to move into the area of R’lyeh by the ship Alert. The crew of the Emma was able to board and kill the Alert’s crew and then went on to find R’lyeh. Briden was one of eight crewmembers to survive the attack by the Alert. Along with his crewmates, Briden set foot on the cursed island and followed the horrific stairway that led to Cthulhu’s tomb. When the deity awoke and killed four of his mates, Briden, along with Gustaf Johansen, fled to the waiting Alert and drove the boat into Cthulhu’s jellified skull, driving the creature away. The Alert was then set adrift, and Briden died sometime before the Vigilant found the vessel and rescued the sole remaining member of the Emma’s crew, Johansen.

The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Brightholme, Viscount. The seventh Viscount Brightholme and father of the girl who married Sir Robert Jermyn.

Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft

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Bronze Gate. A small bronze gate that exists in a massive ivory covered wall in the land of dreams. The bronze gate hides an expanse of white emptiness, unpeopled and limitless in size, to which those who find the secret to the key ultimately pass through. This passing can be conceived as death, for when spoken of the writer rejoices in the fact that the demon Life has finally relinquished its hold on him.

Ex Oblivione, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Brown Jenkin. Familiar to Keziah Mason. Brown Jenkin, as local townsfolk of Arkham in the late 1600s named it, was first reported sighted in 1692. Records show that no less than eleven people testified seeing it. Even as recently as 1928 citizens still reported spotting the creature, and descriptions never vary, even over the centuries. The rat-like creature is described as having long hair and the shape of a rat, but its sharp-toothed, bearded face was evilly human, while its paws were like tiny human hands. Brown Jenkin took messages between Keziah Mason and the devil (most likely Nyarlathotep) and was nursed on the witch's own blood, which it sucked like a vampire. Its voice was a loathsome titter, and it could speak all languages. After Walter Gilman succeeded in destroying Keziah Mason in the late 1920s, Brown Jenkin burrowed through his torso and devoured his heart. Immediately after, the creature disappeared into a wall of the Witch-House, never to be seen alive again. In December of 1931, workmen and police found the familiar's skeleton in the ruins of the Witch-House's upper floors.

The Dreams In The Witch-House, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Brown University. University in Providence, Rhode Island, near where Robert Blake lived. It is also where Professor Angell taught during the early 1900s.

The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.

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The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bulletin, The. An evening newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island.

The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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Bulletin – The Plateau of Leng. A bulletin published by Professor Dyer of the Miskatonic University which describes, in detail, the entire history of the ill-fated Miskatonic University Expedition. The account entails the hitherto unknown discovery of the Plateau of Leng, the city of the Old Ones, and the encounter with the Shoggoth in the bowels of the earth. Published circa 1932-33 (?) in an attempt to curtail exploration by the Starkweather-Moore Expedition into the area.

At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft

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Burrower Beneath, The. Short story written by Robert Black in Providence during 1935, considered some of his best work.

The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.

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