In biology, a hybrid is the offspring that results when individuals of different species reproduce with each other. The concept of interbreeding between humans and inhuman beings is a common theme in the Cthulhu Mythos, being central to stories such as "The Dunwich Horror", "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It is likewise present in the Mythos-adjacent works of Arthur Machen, such as The Great God Pan and "The Novel of the Black Seal", which have influenced the writings of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, among others.
Overview[]
In Lovecraft's fiction, hybridization is one of the paths that might lead to what he regarded as degeneration. Although it is, in a sense, the opposite of inbreeding (in which the two parents are genetically too close to each other, rather than too far apart), Lovecraft depicts both processes as potential ways to spawn aberrations and monsters.
It should be noted that Lovecraft often used the word "hybrid" in a more colloquial sense as an adjective to describe beings that combine traits of different creatures. For example, he referred to Pan as a "hybrid man" ("To Pan"); to the white apes as "hybrid creatures" and "jungle hybrids" ("Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family"); to the Byakhee as "hybrid winged things" ("The Festival"); to the Children of the Sphinx as "hybrid blasphemies" ("Imprisoned with the Pharaohs"); to Joseph Curwen's resurrected monsters as "nameless hybrids" (The Case of Charles Dexter Ward); to the creatures that inhabited Europe 200,000 years ago as "hybrid entities" ("Out of the Aeons"); and to the Swine-Things as "hybrid anomalies" (Supernatural Horror in Literature). He also used the word to describe a heterogeneous group of people in "The Call of Cthulhu".
Hybrid creatures in the Mythos[]
The Gyaa-yothn were created by hybridization, resultant from cross-breeding a species of horned reptilian quadrupeds from Yoth with a mammalian species enslaved by the K'n-yanians. (HPL: The Mound)
In 1929, an American biologist named Dr. Thomas Slauenwite successfully cross-bred the legendary devil-flies of Uganda with another fly species, creating a hybrid insect that was just as lethal and also retained the devil-fly's mysterious trait of "stealing" the consciousness of those who die from its infection. (HPL: "Winged Death")
A dog named Wolf, that belonged to 19th century Oklahoma settlers Walker and Audrey Davis, had coyote ancestry (HPL: "The Curse of Yig"), meaning that either he or one of his ancestors was a coydog or dogote.
The Deep Ones seem actively interested in hybridizing with humans. A population of human-Deep One hybrids used to inhabit Walakea's island in the South Pacific, until being wiped out by another group of islanders in 1838. Another population was formed in the American town of Innsmouth in 1846 (HPL: The Shadow Over Innsmouth), and several others are known to exist in other coastal cities around the world (AWD: The Trail of Cthulhu).
In the Dreamlands, the Gods of Earth mated with the "daughters of man" in the past, and fathered many children, resulting in a large number of Dreamlanders with divine blood. (HPL: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath)
A race of "strange hybrid men" lives under the ice and snow of Antarctica (AWD: "The Thing That Walked on the Wind"), but it's not known whether these are hybrids in the biological sense or merely the colloquial sense.