The narrator of this rather peculiar tale of horror flees in the early hours of July 16, 1927, shaken with terror, head over heels from the sleepy port town of Innsmouth. His desperate flight leads to an official investigation by the federal government, numerous arrests, and the demolition or burning of several old houses. Only long after everything is over, plagued by tormenting dreams featuring absurdly nightmarish creatures like the dreadful Shoggoths, does he decide to recount what he experienced in that "harbor of death and blasphemous abnormality filled with evil shadows." At that time, he witnessed a wicked ceremony of the followers of the fish god Dagon and the even more terrifying Cthulhu.