The Eldritch Taint Upon the Eastern Seaboard: A Ritz Footwat Investigation
By Ritz Footwat, Unrelenting Seeker of the Uncanny
I have seen the creeping rot of modernity stretch its skeletal fingers across this so-called civilization, but nowhere is the evidence of eldritch interference more insidious than the Eastern Seaboard. In the cracked streets of Boston, in the fog-choked alleys of Providence, and in the whispering tides of New England’s accursed shore, the elder gods lurk—not in the imaginings of the fever-brained, but in the very fabric of our existence.
The feeble-minded will tell you that Lovecraft, the bitter old fool, was nothing more than a man afflicted with phobias of his own making. I say he was an oracle, a lunatic who accidentally glimpsed the shadow of something vast and unthinkable. If you have ever stood upon the wharf in Arkham (or its real-world counterpart) and felt your gut clench for no rational reason, you know precisely of what I speak. The thing beneath the waves does not need your belief to be real—it simply is. And it is waiting.
Boston: A City on the Edge of Madness
The learned men of Harvard will insist that the university’s peculiar architectural choices are mere historical artifacts of changing tastes, but the keen observer knows better. The hidden geometries within the campus, the impossible angles, the way the buildings seem to loom over the very people who built them—all signs of a higher influence. Perhaps a darker one. What dreadful agreements were made in the past that keep such a city standing? And how long before those compacts crumble?
Providence: Cradle of the Doomed
I walked the streets of that dreary town, the place where Lovecraft himself dared to dream. A place where the churches hold their congregations in trembling silence and the old houses seem to lean toward each other as though conspiring in the night. The river is deep, too deep, and the murky depths have swallowed more than just foolish drunkards. The people here do not speak of what they have seen, but they look at you like they know that you know.
Innsmouth (or What Remains of It)
Yes, reader, I went there. Not to the fictional Innsmouth of Lovecraft’s tales, but to the real coastal towns that he used as inspiration. The places where the locals eye you as though you are the intruder, where the air is thick with brine and something darker, heavier. It is not what they say that disturbs—it is what they will not say.
The Unnatural Persistence of These Accursed Places
Why do these towns endure? Why do people remain where they should not? Is it stubbornness? Is it ignorance? Or is it something far more wretched, something binding, something that calls to them from below the waves and behind the walls? I do not ask you to believe me. I ask you only to look. To see the trembling lip of the fisherman as he casts his net into waters he dares not disturb. To listen to the strained laughter of those who claim ignorance. To stand upon the rocks at dusk and feel the weight of something watching, waiting.
I have written this not as a warning, for the warnings were given long ago and promptly ignored. No, this is simply a record, a chronicle of an Eastern Seaboard that does not belong to mankind as much as it belongs to something older, something greater, something that merely tolerates our presence here. For now.
And should I vanish from these pages—should my words one day end without conclusion—you will know precisely why.
R.F.
