Ancient Web: Cthulhu Files Mapped the Mythos One Fictional Town at a Time

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

H. P. Lovecraft left imaginary places that sound as though a visitor ought to be able to find them on a map. Joseph F. Morales has spent years building those maps, then explaining why the evidence does not always agree.

Visit Cthulhu Files.

The website brings together a Cthulhu Universalis reference, an annotated bibliography, guides to fictional gods and places, maps of Arkham, Dunwich and Innsmouth, story texts, original research essays, and artwork. Its bibliographic focus is deliberately limited to Lovecraft's early collaborators, correspondents and predecessors rather than everything published under the Mythos label since.

The annotated bibliography organizes authors such as Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Clark Ashton Smith and Donald Wandrei. It identifies the editions used when indexing fictional creatures, books and places. That is important because a shared literary world can change depending on whose story is being read.

A fictional geography with footnotes

One especially meticulous project is the map of Dunwich. Morales explains that Lovecraft left fewer clear geographical clues for Dunwich than for other fictional towns. He therefore reconstructs one plausible layout using the travel directions and named locations in The Dunwich Horror, while acknowledging that other maps would fit the same text.

The site also contrasts Lovecraft's shifting pantheons with Derleth's later moral division between benevolent Elder Gods and rebellious Great Old Ones. Rather than presenting those as one perfectly consistent supernatural theology, its essays describe how the authors revised or disagreed with each other.

There is even a photographic tour of New England locations connected to the fictional settings, alongside a gallery about Danvers State Hospital using older photographs. The research has accumulated additions into 2026.

The website's footer gives Joseph F. Morales a copyright span beginning in 1996. That is the author's claimed span, not a verified history of every current page. It also gives a Creative Commons attribution license for much of the site's own writing, with separate credits for illustrations.

The monsters are fictional. The scholarly habits—checking editions, mapping contradictory descriptions, recording attributions—are entirely real.

Explore the main reference and its carefully qualified Dunwich map.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.