Kayak only cache! This is the eighteenth cache of the "Monster Mash Trail" series that are scattered along the scenic Pocomoke River that begins in Snow Hill, MD. The Monster Mash Trail is compiled of various monsters from movies and "real" monsters. Local legends dictates that the Pocomoke Forest, which this river runs through, is extremely haunted and has a plethora of history and lore so we thought this type of theme would be perfect! This is a small, water-tight container. Please BYOP! Happy Hunting!
About the monster: Cthulhu is an alien “Elder God” dreamed up by H.P. Lovecraft, who first appeared in 1928 with the release of The Call of Cthulhu in Weird Tales magazine. During Lovecraft’s career as an author, he wrote about many strange creatures, most notably the “Great Old Ones” or Elder Gods, and none have gained as much fame as Cthulhu. There are even cults worldwide who worship this fictional beast. Lovecraft’s success with this particular monster was so great that he went to great lengths to create an artificial language for Cthulhu worshipers, called R’lyehian. It was named after the mythical undersea city in which Cthulhu became imprisoned. It is a difficult language and is typically expressed visually in R’lyeh glyphs, which is a hieroglyphic lettering system supposedly brought to Earth by the spawn of Cthulhu. Cthulhu’s name is also difficult to pronounce; the way that it is typically spoken today, kah-thu-loo, according to Lovecraft, is simply as close as the human vocals cords can ever come to reproducing the syllables of this alien language.
Cthulhu is a “Great Old One” that is depicted as being colossal, but his exact size has never been revealed. Lovecraft describes Cthulhu as “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind." He currently lies in a death-like sleep in the sunken city of R’lyeh that is believed to be somewhere in the Southeast Pacific Ocean. A passages from one of Lovecraft’s stories states that “when the stars are right”, the city of R’lyeh with rise from the sea, never able to sink again, and Cthulhu will awaken to revel across the world, “ravening for delight.” Although humans worship him as he sleeps, they are irrelevant to his grand design, but it is implied that Cthulhu will ultimately require the assistance of his human cult to escape his watery prison.
Cthulhu is often regarded as “evil”, however that is not how he is presented in The Call of Cthulhu or other works by Lovecraft. Conversely he is amoral, with an ethic that transcends the conventional notions of good or evil. Cthulhu’s amorality might be compared to what S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz called the “anti-mythology” of Lovecraft’s fiction. In most mythologies, humanity’s significance in the universe is validated by our connection to divine agents with similar moral values. Lovecraft shattered this concept by flooding his stories with the idea that common human laws, interests, and emotions have no validity or importance in the vastness of the Universe. A quote by Lovecraft reads, “To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all… [W]hen we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity—and terrestrialism at the threshold.” Cthulhu’s nature appears to be consistent with this statement.
Through Lovecraft and other authors that have continued his legacy after his death, it has been revealed that Cthulhu has an extensive family tree that stretches across the stars. According to Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, Cthulhu’s parents were an androgynous deity called Nagoob who mated with an “Outer God” named Yog-Sothoth and bore Cthulhu on the planet Vhoorl. Lin Carter, in his Xothic legend cycle, paired Cthulhu with a quasi-female entity named Idh-yaa and produced four offspring: Ghatanothoa, Ythogtha, Zoth-Ommog, and Cthylla. Brian Lumley, an English horror writer, introduced an equally powerful, but questionably benevolent, brother of Cthulhu called Kthanid. In some accounts, Idh-yaa is the “wife” of Cthulhu and there have never been any descriptions of her outside of her home planets identification; a double star known as Xoth. This is where Cthulhu is said to have mated with Idh-yaa to produce their four children. Besides these four offspring, there are also the “star-spawn” of Cthulhu who are basically miniature Cthulhu’s that can manipulate their shapes though they always retain their master’s distinctive outline. They are said to have arrived on Earth with Cthulhu and built R’lyeh with basaltic rock on an island in the Pacific Ocean. When R’lyeh sank, the star-spawn became trapped beneath the sea with Cthulhu, though it is understood that some of his spawn are still free. Possibly even roaming the woods of Worcester!