Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter is a fictional character created by H.P. Lovecraft. Carter appears in many of Lovecraft's writings including Through the Gates of the Silver Key, The Statement of Randolph Carter, and many of Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories.
Contents
Early Life
Carter is descended from old Arkham stock originally from Edmund Carter the wizard who fled the Salem witch trials. Edmund Carter had built a gambreled roofed homestead near the "Snake-Den," a nearby cave. During his childhood Randolph Carter visited the old homestead often, then owned by Christopher Carter, and spent much time around the hills and exploring the caves nearby including the "Snake-Den." The local farmers gossiped after Randolph's own disappeared that he had changed somehow when he was nine after spending a "memorable day" in the Snakes Den, where he said he had found a secret fissure at the back of the cave leading to a secret inner cave.
It is also known that Carter began his long experience in the Dreamlands as a childhood, visiting many places that he strove a lifetime to revisit later in life.
Interest in Mysticism and the Disappearance of Harley Warren
Dream Travels
Disappearance
Randolph Carter disappeared on the seventh of October 1928, after visiting his ancestral Arkham home and the "Snake-Den" a strange cave near by. According to his old servant Parks, who died two years later, Carter was led by an "strangely aromatic and hideously carved box" and an old parchment and a carven key. Before leaving Carter claimed the parchment would lead him to his lost child hood, filled with dreams and peaceful adventure.
After disappearing, several of Carter's fellow mystics argued that he still lived in the Dreamlands as the king in Illek-Vad. The most prominent of these mystics, Ward Phillips, tried his best to stop Carter's heir, a distant cousin Ernest B. Aspinwall, from breaking up the Carter estate. After a long legal debate Philips, Aspinwall, the creole mystic Etienne-Laurent de Marigny and Swami Chandraputra a high-caste Brahmin met at Etienne de Marigny's home to discuss and split up the Carter estate. There the Brahmin reveled what he knew of Carter's disappearance.
