Jermyn House. The family estate of the Jermyn family, located somewhere in England near the town of Huntingdon.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Lady. See Ape-princess.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Nevil. The second son of Sir Robert Jermyn. In 1849, he disappeared from his home and ran away with a vulgar dancer. When he returned a year later, he was widowed and the father of a son named Alfred. Nevil died October 19th, 1852 while successfully defending his son from the murderous rampage of Sir Robert.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Sir Alfred. The only son of Nevil Jermyn and the father of Sir Arthur Jermyn. Sir Alfred earned his title by his fourth birthday. At the age of twenty, he became a member of a band of music hall performers. Sometime between the age of twenty and thirty-six, Alfred married and fathered a son. These two he deserted at the age of thirty-six to join, of all things, an American circus. Sir Alfred died a ghastly death at the hands of one of the circus gorillas when he unexplainably attacked the gorilla in its cage. The gorilla was momentarily caught off guard, but regained itself quickly and tore Alfred to shreds.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Sir Arthur. Poet and scholar who
lived in England in the late 1800/early 1900s until he committed suicide on August 13,
1913 in the swamps near his home. Arthur Jermyn was the descendant of Sir Wade Jermyn, one
of the earliest explorers of the Congo region of Africa.
Arthur was the son of Sir Alfred Jermyn and a music-hall singer of
unknown origin. His physical appearance was loathsome at best, though most found it
difficult to categorize what he did look like. His facial expression, the strange angles
of his facial bones, and the length of his arms repulsed most onlookers. What he lacked in
physical appearance, though, he more than made up for with his mind. Arthur attended and
took the highest of honors at Oxford University, a feat destined in most minds to redeem
the lack of intellectual stock in his ancestors.
Though a poet and scholar, Arthur decided to follow in his
ancestors’ footsteps and continue their exploration of the Congo region. Sir
Wade’s accounts of a lost city populated with great beasts both terrified and
intrigued him to no end. After his mother’s death in 1911, Arthur sold a portion of
his estate and conducted an expedition into the deepest Congo.
There he encountered an aged Kaliri chief named Mwanu, who told a
tale of a lost city populated by great white apelike creatures. He informed Arthur that a
tribe called the N’bangus attack and destroyed the city, carrying off a great icon of
worship called the ape-princess.
In 1912, Arthur succeeded in finding what was left of the city. As
related by Mwanu, the city was all but gone, though he did find one passage that led into
a series of vaults as told by Sir Wade in his stories. Unfortunately, the small size of
his party didn’t allow him to explore the dark vaults.
A Belgian agent at a trading post on the Congo by the name of M.
Verhaeren later informed Arthur that he believed he could not only locate the mysterious
ape-princess as told in the tales of Mwanu, but he could buy it as well. This excited
Arthur and he immediately made arrangements with Verhaeren to procure it for him.
In June, 1913, Arthur received a letter from Verhaeren informing
him of his success in purchasing the ape-princess. He described the stuffed goddess as
being extraordinary to behold. Around the creature’s neck was a gold chain and
pendant. The stuffed goddess, he wrote, would arrive in about a month.
Upon the package’s arrival on August 3, 1913, Arthur had the
box taken to a chamber which housed a collection of African memorabilia as collected by
his ancestors and then dismissed his servants. Less than a quarter of an hour later, a
scream erupted from the chamber. Immediately, Arthur burst from the room, ran down into
the cellar, doused himself in oil, ran through the stable yard to the black moor beyond
the house. Suddenly Arthur’s body engulfed itself in flames.
The apparent reason for Arthur’s suicide lays with the
stuffed ape-princess. The golden locket that set around her neck were the arms of the
Jermyn house, and the princesses’ face marked a mirror-like resemblance to
Arthur’s own terrible features.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Sir Philip. Son of Sir Wade
Jermyn. Philip shared a strong resemblance to his father. Even so, his appearance and
conduct was, at times, so coarse that he was shunned by most. Philip was densely stupid
and was given to periods of extreme violence.
Philip married his gamekeeper’s daughter, a person of gypsy
descent, just after twelve years of assuming his title. Before the birth of his son,
Philip joined the navy as a common sailor. After the close of the American war (Civil
War?), he became a merchantman trading in Africa. Finally, Philip disappeared one night
while his ship lay off the Congo coast. He returned to the lost city of his father’s
tale, unconscious of his heritage. There are no records of his actions or whereabouts
after the return.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Sir Robert, Bt..
Great-grandfather of Arthur Jermyn and an English anthropologist of great note. Son of
Philip Jermyn and the daughter of a gamekeeper, one of possible gypsy descent. In 1815, he
married the daughter of the seventh Viscount Brightholme and had three children. The
oldest and youngest were never seen because of deformities. The middle son, a boy named
Nevil, ran away and married an obscene dancer. A year later he returned a widower and
father of a boy and was pardoned by his father.
Robert believed that a strange consistency in Sir Wade
Jermyn’s ravings were the result of native myths, and as such went about collecting
legends of the Onga tribes of the Congo. On October 19, 1852, Samuel Seaton visited Robert
with notes taken from the Onga tribes and discussed them with Robert in his study. When
Robert later departed the study, he left behind the dead, strangled corpse of Seaton.
Before he was through, Robert managed to kill all three of his children. Nevil died
successfully defending his son from the attack.
Robert was tried and convicted and, after repeated attempts at
suicide, died of apoplexy during his second year in jail.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Jermyn, Sir Wade.
Great-great-great-grandfather of Sir Arthur Jermyn and one of the earliest explorers of
the Congo region. His bizarre conjectures on the prehistoric white Congolese civilization
created great ridicule when published in his book, Observation on the Several Parts of
Africa.
Sir Wade married an mysterious woman he met in Africa and kept her
and his son in utter seclusion. He claimed his wife was the daughter of a Portuguese
trader he met there on his travels and did not like the English ways. Upon their return
from Africa, he kept his wife in a secluded wing of Jermyn House and waited on her alone.
When he and his wife returned to Africa, he would allow no one but a loathsome black woman
from Guinea to care for the child.
He returned to England after the death of his wife and assumed
complete care of the child. It was during this period, after drinking one too many ales at
the Knight’s Head, he would spin tales of lost cities and great white ape-like
creatures.
As Sir Wade’s son grew out of infancy, he seemed to dislike
being at home more and more, setting up headquarters in the Knight’s Head. After his
constant ravings, the townsfolk had him placed in the madhouse in Huntingdon in 1765. In
1768, Sir Wade Jermyn died.
Arthur Jermyn, H.P. Lovecraft
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Johansen, Gustaf. Second mate of the two-masted schooner Emma from Auckland. Johansen is described as a sober and worthy man. On February 20, 1925, Johansen set sail to Callao aboard the Emma. The ship was attacked on March 22 by the Alert. A battle ensued and Johansen remained as one of eight survivors from the Emma, though his own ship sunk. This forced the survivors to commandeer the Alert, where they found a statue of Cthulhu in a shrine below deck. Along with his fellow survivors, Johansen discovered Cthulhu's tomb on R'lyeh jutting from the Pacific Ocean and accidentally released the creature. Johansen and William Briden were the only ones to escape. Johansen was rescued on April 12, 1925. An inquiry followed, clearing his name of any wrong doing. Johansen returned to the Old Town of King Harold Haardrada, Norway, with his wife, where he died mysteriously when a bundle of paper was dropped on him from above. He had recorded the events of March-April 1925 in English before he died, so his wife would not be able to read the horror he lived.
The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft.
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John Hay Library. Library in Providence, Rhode Island. It was behind the library that Robert Blake lived from 1934 to 1935 where he died of fright in August when the Haunter of the Dark came to kill him.
The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Journal of the American Psychological Society. A journal in which Professor Peaslee published his studies, observations, and recollections of dreamstate during his period of amnesia from 1908 to 1913.
The Shadow Out Of Time, H.P. Lovecraft.
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Journal, The. Newspaper in Providence, Rhode Island.
The Haunter of the Dark, H.P. Lovecraft.
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