Character guide

Halpin Frayser

major

Also known as Frayser, Halpin

Halpin Frayser is the spoiled youngest of a well-to-do Nashville family, a reluctant law student whose maternal great-grandfather was a Colonial poet and whose mother secretly dotes on that same tainted inheritance. His father, a politician, ignores him; his relatives dismiss him as an intellectual black sheep likely to disgrace the flock by bleating in meter. Dreamy, indolent, and romantic, Halpin drifts toward a haunted wood where his one thought becomes a written appeal to benign powers—until his own mother's corpse-face stares back at him from the dark.

Haïta

major

Also known as Thou, thy

Haïta lives alone in a valley cave, faithful to his sheep and to the god Hastur, dutiful even toward a feeble hermit he feeds with ewe's milk and oat cake. When a beautiful maiden appears beside him and offers companionship, he ruins it by wishing she were a man so they could wrestle and race—and she vanishes, leaving flood and danger behind. Thrice she returns, thrice he fails to accept her as she is, and his longing to know her name becomes the very thing that keeps her away.

Moxon

major

Moxon is a mechanician whose chess-playing automaton draws visitors curious to see a machine outplay men—and to hear its maker defend it with a strange, proprietary tenderness. He insists the thing has a mind of its own, and his talk slides from engineering into something closer to metaphysics or obsession. The tension lies in whether Moxon controls his creation or has quietly surrendered something to it, and that ambiguity is what makes every game at his table feel like a wager with consequences.

Brainerd Byring

major

Also known as Second - Lieutenant Brainerd Byring, Lieutenant Byring, Byring

Brainerd Byring rides with a detachment ordered into hazardous, silent country, where a missing vidette named Dunning has already broken orders and ridden forward alone. When the major halts at the cedar forest's edge and sees Dunning standing motionless over a dead horse and a dead man, the expedition's discipline begins to fray. Byring's world is one of sabers drawn, forbidden conversation, and men whose fear shows in small disobediences—and it is in that charged dark that his own fate closes in.

Jo Dunfer

supporting

Also known as Jo, Dunfer, little Jo, Joseph, Joey

Jo Dunfer—Gopher to those who know him—is a little man with a wagon, a bitten finger, and a tongue he keeps for reasons of his own. He narrates the ruin of Whisky and Ah Wee with a sardonic performer's relish, then turns on his listener with an accusation that reframes the whole story: nine years of madness, a woman he loved and followed from San Francisco, and a grave he has refused to visit. His grief and his venom are inseparable, and both drive the tale toward its reckoning.

Hiram Beeson

supporting

Also known as Mr. Hiram Beeson, Mr. Beeson

Hiram Beeson dies on the sixteenth of July, 1863, known to every man, woman, and grown child in his village, and is buried two days later with a funeral the local paper cannot ignore. Around his death gather the ordinary rituals of a small town—mourners, newspaper notices, the slow work of settling a life—but the narrative refuses to let him rest. What matters is the pull his absence exerts on the living, and the suspicion that Beeson's business with them is not finished.

Hawver

supporting

Hawver is a rough-edged wagon driver who tells the story of Silas Deemer's death with theatrical, mocking precision, transforming himself from comic narrator to grieving avenger before the listener's eyes. His devotion to a woman lost to a rival, and his long-hoarded secret about her lover's end, give his tale a venomous undertow. His sudden charge that the listener poisoned the man makes him both unreliable and unforgettable, and his parting fear of the dead man's ghost lingers like a chill.

William Holt

supporting

Also known as Mr. William Holt, Mr. Holt, Holt

Holt is a passenger on the Morrow who becomes quietly obsessed with Miss Janette Harford, a woman whose family name matches a branch of his own. When he looks into her eyes, he sees a strange procession of familiar faces peering back through her, a vision that unsettles him more than the coming storm. His introspection and his inability to name what draws him to her make him a perfect witness to the uncanny, and his survival of the wreck leaves him haunted by what he saw.

Hugh Morgan

supporting

Also known as Morgan, the late Hugh Morgan

Morgan is the subject of a coroner's inquest, his corpse showing wounds no human hand could have made, his death witnessed by a friend who saw him thrown down by an unseen force. The diary he left behind becomes a crucial piece of evidence, hinting at something stranger than murder. His fate drives the investigation into the supernatural, and the jurors' skepticism only deepens the unease his death creates.

Mohun Dampier

supporting

Also known as Dampier, Mohun

Dampier is a friend whose quiet composure cracks when a tapping sound interrupts a late-night conversation, and he insists no one is there. He tells of a past encounter with a doppelgänger that seemed to seal his fate, and his calm acceptance of the uncanny unnerves his listener. His story anchors the collection's theme of doubles and premonitions, and his willingness to face the inexplicable makes him both tragic and compelling.

Jaralson

supporting

Also known as Detective Jaralson

Jaralson is the law's representative in a case that quickly outruns rational explanation, listening as a witness named Gopher confesses to a long-hidden crime and accuses the detective himself of murder. His composure under the accusation, and his decision to let the man go, reveal a pragmatism that borders on resignation. His presence grounds the story in procedure even as the supernatural seeps in, and his final handshake with Gopher is a gesture of uneasy respect.

Silas Deemer

supporting

Also known as Silas, Deemer, the late Silas Deemer

Deemer is a well-known village merchant whose death and burial are followed by reports of his ghost appearing in the closed store, lit by an eerie glow. The townspeople gather to watch, at first mocking, then silent as the apparition goes about its business. His return is not vengeful but eerily mundane, and the child's innocent mention of the jug he left behind suggests a haunting tied to unfinished matters. He embodies the collection's quiet, unsettling take on the supernatural.

Barr Lassiter

supporting

Also known as The elder Lassiter, Lassiter

Barr Lassiter walks up the gravel path to the house where he was born, expecting two years of war to have aged him past recognition, and finds every familiar object unchanged but every familiar face turned away. His father withdraws without a word; his mother stares into cold ashes; his sister passes him as though he were a stranger. The ache of that rejection drives him back to camp and then back again the next day, where a former playmate waits to tell him what the moonlight would not.

Henry Saylor

supporting

Also known as Saylor

Henry Saylor, called Gopher, narrates the deaths of Whisky and Jo with a consummate actor's control, drawing sympathy for his dramatis personae and then turning it, with a grin, upon himself. He kept a cussed secret for the sake of a woman who loved another man better than she loved him, and the keeping of it has eaten at him ever since. When the narrator asks why he held his tongue, he answers only that it is that kind of tongue, and not another word will he say.

Bramwell Olcott Bartine

supporting

Also known as Bartine, the late Bramwell Olcott Bartine

John Bartine sits by the fire and refuses, with a mysterious reluctance, to answer so simple a question as the time of night, until his guest's impudence forces the story out of him. The watch has been in his family for three generations, ever since his great-grandfather Bramwell Olcott Bartine, a Colonial Tory, was arrested one night by Washington's rebels and marched into a darkness that swallowed him forever. Weeks later the watch was found on the porch, wrapped in paper bearing the name of the old man's only son, and Bartine is wearing it still.

John May

supporting

Also known as John, May senior, May

John May lives with his family in a strained truce after his father struck him and he answered with a terrible threat that was never withdrawn. One Sunday in June his father goes out with a spade to dig at a spring a mile away and does not return; John comes home at five with his clothing wet in spots, complains of illness, and takes to his bed. In his delirium he raves of murder but names neither victim nor murderer, and the neighbors, remembering the threat, are ready to hang him before the story from Nolan changes everything.

Orrin Brower

supporting

Also known as Brower

Orrin Brower's tale reaches the reader through the voice of Henry Saylor, the sardonic little man who narrates the deaths of Whisky and Jo and then turns on his listener with the charge that he poisoned the beast's drink. The story of Brower is bound up with that accusation, with a woman followed from San Francisco, with a secret kept until it ate a man up, and with a headstone gouged in one day. Whatever Brower encountered in the wood, it has left the narrator of his story unable to look at a grave without fear of meeting the man buried in it.

Gordon Doyle

supporting

Also known as Doyle, Mr. Gordon Doyle, Mr. Doyle

Gordon Doyle is three weeks out from Liverpool on the City of Prague, bound for New York with a broken shaft and a lunatic for a cabinmate, and he is engaged to marry Janette Harford, whom he met a year ago in London and whose family cut up rough about the match. He explains, with the calm of a man who thinks his listener half awake, that Janette sailed on the Morrow to avoid detection, and that the broken shaft may yet let her reach New York first. When the lunatic asks what he knows of Janette Harford, Doyle changes color and lays his fingers on the man's wrist.

John Bartine

supporting

Also known as Bartine

Bartine is a Virginia gentleman whose heirloom watch was returned to his family after his great-grandfather, a Tory planter, vanished into rebel custody during the Revolution. The watch's habit of stopping at fatal moments has made him secretive and volatile, and he bristles when a friend demands he simply tell the time. His fierce, unapologetic bitterness about the past turns a parlor conversation into a haunted inheritance, pulling the reader into the story's central question of whether such things can be.

William Hayner Gordon

supporting

Also known as Gordon

Aboard the Morrow, Gordon befriends Miss Janette Harford, a young woman bound for Devonshire, and discovers their families share an uncanny connection. When he looks into her eyes, he sees a crowd of familiar strangers peering back through her, a vision that unsettles him more than love ever could. His introspective nature and growing obsession with this phenomenon place him at the center of a tale about souls that cross paths before bodies ever meet.

Young Halpin

supporting

Also known as Halpin, young Halpin

Halpin Frayser is the spoiled, indolent youngest of a well-to-do Tennessee family, more drawn to literature than the politics his father and brothers pursue. His mother secretly shares his poetic temperament, but the family dismisses him as an intellectual black sheep descended from a Colonial versifier. Alone in a haunted wood, he confronts a spectral figure in grave clothes, and the encounter sets him on a path where his inherited sensitivities become a matter of life and death.

King

minor

Also known as Mr. King

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter with a ghost.

Dr. Dorrimore

minor

Also known as Dorrimore

A doctor who investigates a mysterious death and encounters the supernatural.

Henry Armstrong

minor

Also known as Henry

A man who is executed and then experiences a strange afterlife.

Mr. Rosser

minor

Also known as Rosser

A man who encounters a ghostly figure in a haunted house.

Alvan Creede

minor

Also known as Alvan, Creede

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious and tragic event.

Whisky Jo

minor

Also known as Jo

A drunkard who encounters a supernatural entity.

Lawrence Barting

minor

Also known as Mr. Lawrence Barting, Barting, Mr. Barting

A man who returns from the dead to deliver a message.

Holker

minor

Also known as Mr. Holker

A man who investigates a mysterious disappearance.

Staley Fleming

minor

Also known as Fleming

A man who experiences a hallucination that leads to his death.

Dunning

minor

Also known as Trooper Dunning, Private Dunning

A soldier who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Janette Harford

minor

Also known as Miss Janette Harford, Miss Harford, Janette

A woman who becomes involved in a supernatural event.

Mr. Harker

minor

Also known as Harker

A man who investigates a haunted house.

Andrus C. Palmer

minor

Also known as Palmer, Andrus Palmer

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying vision.

Stevens

minor

Also known as John, John Stevens

A man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Philip Eckert

minor

An old man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Charles Ashmore

minor

Also known as young Charles Ashmore

A young man who mysteriously disappears without a trace.

Col. J. C. McArdle

minor

Also known as McArdle

A colonel who investigates a mysterious death.

James Burne Worson

minor

Also known as Worson

A man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter while running.

Ben Greene

minor

Also known as Ben, Private Bennett Story Greene, Ben Greene, Private Greene, Greene, Bennett Greene, Bennett Story Greene

A soldier who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Mr. Manton

minor

Also known as Manton

A man who is haunted by the ghost of his wife.

Rev. Mr. Cummings

minor

Also known as Mr. Cummings

A reverend who encounters a ghostly figure.

Margaret Corray

minor

Also known as Miss Margaret Corray, Miss Corray

A woman who becomes involved in a supernatural event.

John Mortonson

minor

Also known as John

A man whose funeral takes a bizarre and terrifying turn.

Hetty Parlow

minor

Also known as Hetty, Parlow

A woman who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Rev. Henry Galbraith

minor

A reverend who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Williamson

minor

Also known as Mr. Williamson

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Mrs. Williamson

minor

Also known as Williamson

A woman who is haunted by a ghostly apparition.

Sancher

minor

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Lieutenant Dudley

minor

Also known as Dudley

A lieutenant who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Robert Mosely Maren

minor

Also known as Mr. Robert Mosely Maren, Mr. Maren

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Hastur

minor

Also known as O Hastur

A mysterious and powerful entity from the city of Carcosa.

Jane

minor

A woman who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Mr. Grossmith

minor

Also known as Grossmith, whither Grossmith

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Herman Deluse

minor

Also known as old Deluse, Deluse

An old man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Bushrod Albro

minor

Also known as Albro

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Myron Bayne

minor

Also known as the late Myron Bayne, orb Bayne

A man who returns as a ghost to communicate with his descendants.

Mr. Dunfer

minor

Also known as Dunfer

The father of Jo Dunfer, involved in the tragic events of the story.

Mr. Galbraith

minor

Also known as young Mr. Galbraith

A young man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Mr. Wren

minor

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Miss Margovan

minor

Also known as Margovan

A woman who encounters a ghostly figure.

David William Duck

minor

Also known as Duck, Dave Duck

A man who is haunted by a ghostly apparition.

Charles May

minor

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious and tragic event.

Judge Veigh

minor

Also known as the late Judge Veigh

A judge who returns as a ghost to haunt his former home.

Mr. Creede

minor

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Mr. Dampier

minor

Also known as Dampier

A man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter with a doppelgänger.

Berry Davis

minor

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

Mr. Hoskin

minor

Also known as Hoskin

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

George W. Kent

minor

A man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Haley

minor

Also known as Mr. Haley

A man who experiences a strange and terrifying encounter.

George J. Reid

minor

Also known as George, George Reid

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Ramon Gallegos

minor

Also known as Gallegos

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

William Shaw

minor

Also known as Shaw

A man who experiences a strange and fatal encounter.

Robert Harding

minor

Also known as Harding

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Brewer

minor

Also known as Mr. Brewer

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Mrs. Harding

minor

Also known as Harding

A woman who is haunted by a ghostly apparition.

Mrs. Creede

minor

A woman who becomes involved in a mysterious event.

Rupert Bartine

minor

Also known as Bartine

A man who becomes involved in a mysterious event.