The Necronomicon
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
The Necronomicon, as penned by the Mad Poet Abdullah al-Hazrad in the early 8th Century, is the edition of the "book of dead names" that has propagated across the globe. Copies are hidden in collections among collections at the Vatican, the New York Sanctum Sanctorum, Miskatonic University, as well as with several occultists and scholars. The original book, however, bound with human flesh, was composed of scrolls penned in blood that filled the seas by the Great Old Ones. All Necronomicons contain methods to summon creatures that never died and exist in worlds that never lived, to transfer your mind into the body of another, a guide for those planes beyond human senses, and a complete list of entities that have ever crawled the earth. The books are either updated secretly or mystically with new names when a new entity is summoned.
History
In the early ages of the universe, Gaea took her rest upon the Earth and lay with Uranous to bring about the Primordial deities. But many of those other deities became demons, and other entities that never lived and never died took their interest in the world. Gaea summoned Atum who began to consume these demons and entities with fire, corrupting himself into the Demiurge. Just as Chthon quickly penned his dark wisdom into the Darkhold, so did the Great Old Ones pen their wisdom to scrolls that they intended to hide until they could return. Those scrolls escaped the claws of their masters long ago and have repeatedly gone through humanity's ill-prepared hands.
Antiquity
A high priest who resided in the Mesopotamian city of Kandar was told by the Kandarian Demon and a creature named Beletseri to gather the scrolls to bind them together in the Necronomicon. The high priest, Urigan traveled the ancient world and suffered the hardships of starvation, thirst, and plague to assemble all of the writings of the Old Ones and then bound them together using the skin of what he thought was a non-believer. The Kandarian Demon and Beletseri had convinced Urigan that they were messengers of the goddess Ereshkigal but after the book was constructed they exposed their true nature. Horrified, Urigan denied them the book. Later, he had brought a plague of evil to Kandar spread with bites and scratches. The violence didn't end until all of the victims were completely dismembered and decapitated. The book somehow found its way to Akhsa, where another Sumerian priest used it to summon the entity known as Dagon, who promised their community prosperity and good fortune in exchange for human sacrifice. As long as the sacrifices were made, the worshippers of Dagon had good harvests and an abundance of golden treasures.
Medieval Times
Abdullah al-Hazrad of Sanaa, Yemen flourished under the Umayyad Caliphate sometime around 700 C.E. Most commonly known in the west as the Mad Poet Abdul Alhazred, he visited the ruins of Babylon, delved into the buried secrets of Memphis, and spent a decade in the ad-Dahna desert. When his wandering ended, he moved to Damascus where he penned a book of ultimate evil, the Kitab al-Azif. The name is said to be "the book of sounds that demons make and insects echo." Upon completion of his work in 738 C.E., al-Hazrad was recounting his travels in a public place, he claimed to have visited the City of Pillars, Irem, and found a nameless city beneath. He claimed to have found the shocking annals and secrets of a race older than humanity, which turned him into an indifferent Muslim, and to the worship of Yog-Sothoth and Cthulhu. And then he was seized by an enormous, invisible attacker, in broad daylight, with a large number of terrified witnesses, and he was devoured by the unseen monster that grabbed him.
The al Azif went undiscovered until 950 C.E. when it came into the possession of Greek translator and Constantinople resident, Theodorus Philetas. Theodorus translated al-Hazrad's work into Greek by 1,050 C.E. for Archbishop Michael I Cerularius, whose theosophers conducted experiments to what were only noted as terrible attempts. Theodorus titled his translation The Necromicon, or the Book of Dead Names. The copy provided to the church was then suppressed and burned. A copy of the Greek translation was then translated into Latin in 1,228 C.E. The official record claims that Olaus Womrius, a Danish Scholar, performed the Latin translation but the Latin texts appeared more than 3 millennia before his birth. The church banned the Necronomicon twice, first by Archbishop Michael I in 1,050 C.E. and again by Pope Gregory IX in 1,232 C.E.
The original collection of scrolls, bound in human flesh, now called the Necronomicon had been used to summon the Kandarian Demon, who then used his mighty power to bring more of his kin, the Deadites to the world of the living. Shortly after the summoning, it disappeared only to be rediscovered on an altar in a graveyard near Castle Kandar in England around 1,228 C.E. Shortly before the chosen one was discovered in the English countryside. On the promise of returning him to his own time, the chosen one ventured to the graveyard to retrieve the Necronomicon but the incantation to release the book was not completed. A flood of Deadites possessed the bodies in the graveyard to form an army of darkness and attacked Castle Kandar. The battle was long and costly, but united the people of Lord Arthur of Kandar and Henry the Red bringing a lasting peace in regional struggles between men. With the Deadites returned to planes beyond, the chosen one was sent home and the book was left in the care of Arthur's Wise Man.
The Renaissance
After the invention of the printing press, the Latin translation of the Necronomicon was printed in Germany late in the 15th Century. After that, the Greek translation was printed in Italy during the first half of the 16th century. Another run of the Latin translation was printed in the 17th Century, this printing was believed to be run in Spain. 15th Century copies of the Book of Dead Names found their way into the British Museum and the collection of an unnamed American millionaire, only described as being celebrated. The final translation of the Necronomicon was done by royal astrological, scientific advisor, and occultist, who used Baron Hauptman's Greek copy to translate the text to English. This version is the most commonly found today but is also known to be flawed, although several potent passages remain intact.
In colonial Massachusetts, Vlad Dracula Tepes came as he toured the world where he fell in love with a Salem woman. Eventually, the sickness of his curse became known by Hiram Shaw, the colony's religious leader and rumored to be a Sorcerer Supreme. To conceal his presence, Dracula hypnotized an African slave to poison Salem's children to draw suspicion of witchcraft in the region. The Salem coven sent letters for help to Lilith and Sara, the Caretaker for assistance. At first, they sent mystic artifacts, but the seizures, pains, and prickling among the children continued so Agatha and Caretaker moved their Abbey to Salem. In this process, Shaw came across other occultists and acquired the Darkhold and the last known copy of the Greek translation of the Necronomicon. The conflict ended with many innocent people in Salem being hung as witches, Agatha using dark magic to destroy her coven but to join Sarah at the Abbey. Lilith fell to the influence of Chthon through the Darkhold before it was lost again, and Shaw's copy of the Necronomicon was burned.
The Industrial Revolution
Since the Medieval period, the skinbound Necromicon remained lost though pages had been found but never disturbed in Castle Kandar. Of the 6 copies known to be still in existence, the British Museum and the American Millionaire retained theirs, and others found their way to Paris' Bibliotheque Nationale, Harvard's Widener Library, the library at Miskatonic University at Arkham, and the library of the University of Buenos Ayres. A Greek text was whispered to belong to the Pickman family of Salem until Richard Upton Pickman's disappearance in 1926.
The grave of a legendary tomb raider in Holland was robbed in Holland, but all of the tomb's inhabitants' remains were found untouched. Only a jade amulet that resembled a canine's head was missing from the casket. An unknown creature mauled several people in England, and the scene of the final murder, a mass murder was where authorities finally recovered the jade amulet. They returned to the antiquities authority in the Netherlands. Shortly after the amulet's recovery, authorities responded to a suicide where the victim confessed to robbing the tomb raider's grave with one of the other victims and believed that the other victims had turned into the creatures causing the murders. The suicide victim also stated that he believed this was his only option because he was also becoming one of those creatures due to the amulet's influence and its connection to the powers held within the Necronomicon.
A man was taken to Kingsport Hospital in Massachusetts after being pulled from the local harbor on December 26th, 1925. He awoke disoriented and when authorities told him that evidence shows he walked off a cliff. The man became agitated and was taken to St. Mary's Hospital in neighboring Arkham, where he was provided a copy of the Necronomicon. The man told the authorities what he could remember from Christmas night only after he found the passage in the Book of Dead Names that haunted him. The man had come to Kingsport where they hold a Yuletide celebration that is older than recorded history, and the town was an ancient sea town, centuries out of date and not like the one he woke up in. Eventually, he found the family home where distant relatives lived and they had him wait on the porch. A pile of books was all he had to keep him company, and in that pile was a copy of the Necronomicon in Latin. At the stroke of 11, the town’s people took to the street and brought the man with them. They led him to a secret passageway from a church to a cave with a wide oily river. Winged creatures then came from the cave and they would select members of the community, who would climb onto the creature’s back and disappear into what he knew was a nightmare of poison springs and frightful cataracts. The man was chosen to go, but he refused. The people of Kingsport, if you could still call them people with their featureless faces and bodies with bulbous and squishy features. They then showed him that he bore a striking resemblance to them, at which point he threw himself into the river to escape. Then he woke in Kingsport Hospital.
When orderlies discovered that the cell that once contained Charles Dexter Ward was empty except for an obscene amount of dust, Dr. Marinus Bicknell Willett began an investigation to discover the cause of Ward's madness and the physiological changes, which accompanied it. Dr. Willett realizes that Ward was researching his genealogy and discovered the mystery of his ancestor Joseph Curwen. Dr. Willett revealed that Curwen was a slave trader and rumored alchemist who was revealed to be a necromancer and mass murderer. When the citizens of Danvers, Massachusetts caught wind of Curwen's blasphemies, they raided his home and found bodies, creatures that were not quite human, and a copy of the Necronomicon. Dr. Willett continued tracking Charles Ward and found that Ward had recovered Curwen's ashes and his copy of the Necronomicon. The revelation also led the doctor to recover Curwen's copy of the Necronomicon just as what appeared to be Charles Ward came to claim it. After a scuffle, Ward was imprisoned and the doctor discovered that he owned a bungalow in Pawtuxet Village that sat atop the old homestead where Curwen conducted his atrocities. Dr. Willet went to the Bungalow, where he found the old catacombs beneath and that Curwen's necromantic rituals had begun anew. Damnable creations were there. One of whom instructed Dr. Willett to reverse a resurrection ritual and destroy Ward's remains afterward. The doctor did as instructed, turning Ward's remains to dust and that dust was dumped into the sea.
Dunwich, Massachusetts was an African-American village suffering the poverty of segregation and societal inequalities when Lavinia Whateley gave birth to a bastard son. Lavinia was already a pitied woman, born albino with physical birth defects, and her father, Old Whateley was despised for practicing dark sorcery and witchcraft. Lavinia's baby was named Wilbur and he inherited her unfortunate appearance but not her albinism. Wilbur also matured at an astounding rate, becoming an adult at just 10 years of age. The unnaturally young man and Old Whateley sequestered themselves and locals grew suspicious that they were dabbling in more forbidden rituals. Animals were aggressive with Wilbur because of his odd odor, and Old Whately bought more and more cattle but his herd never grew. Wilbur then became obsessed with getting another copy of the Necronomicon as the family's copy was damaged and missing pages. He goes to Miskatonic University to examine theirs. When he requests to borrow the book, the librarian refuses and tells other libraries with a copy to refuse him theirs as well. Around this time, the African-American residents in Dunwich were suffering attacks by an unseen or indescribable beast, but authorities took no action as more deaths occurred. When Wilbur couldn't acquire a Necronomicon by normal means, he attempted to steal the copy from Miskatonic. After Wilbur broke in at night, he was mauled by a guard dog that mauled Wilbur after it picked up his scent. University faculty and staff see that Wilbur's body wasn't entirely human before it melted into a sickening puddle. The librarian and 2 professors travel to the Whateley farm, seeing the aftermath of the unseen creature terrorizing Dunwich all around. In the barn, they confront the unseen creature with a passage from the Necronomicon designed to destroy the creature. It first revealed the creature which caused 1 of the university professors to suffer shock, then it killed the thing but not before it cried for help in English. The librarian deduced that the creature in the barn was Wilbur's twin brother and bore a better resemblance to the boy's father.
Robert Blake was an occult writer and historian who moved to Providence, Rhode Island to seek information on the Necronomicon and other occult artifacts rumored to be floating around New England. Blake broke into a church on Federal Hill that locals seemed hesitant to discuss, where he discovered texts in the Aklo language, the skeleton and notes of a reporter, a copy of the Necronomicon, and the Shining Trapezohedron that the Starry Wisdom Cult, operating out of the church only in secret to outsiders, had possessed. Blake took all of the discovered items to research but he began to be tormented by his dreams. He visited Dr. Dexter, a therapist who specialized in sleep disorders but Blake's condition didn't improve. Blake awoke in the church in a panic and raced home, fearing to go back to sleep. The next morning Dr. Dexter found him dead and the cause was deemed to be a lightning strike. Dr. Dexter met with Blake's friend, Howard Phillips to investigate Blake's death, and they concluded that the Shining Trapezohedron was the cause. Locals reported that a shadow left the steeple the night of his alleged lightning strike, and they believed the evil had left. Dr. Dexter took the box that contained the Trapezohedron, a gate through space and time, and tossed it into the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay. Phillips was unsatisfied and kept searching, but was found dead 3 days later.
In 1935, Austrian authorities found a car filled with bodies and a mannikin that drove off a cliff in the Alps and smashed into the rocky floor below. Investigating the incident, it was discovered that the bodies were of Baron Krutze and all of his living heirs and that they were Nazi sympathizers but there was no evidence of who murdered them. Following up on anyone that may have had a motive for the murders they discovered the body of Lucio Nuti with no obvious cause of death at an occult ritual site with a copy of the Necronomicon open to a page for summoning spirits who will grant wishes. Additionally, some footprints matched a mannikin's that appeared to have walked away from the scene under its own power. The Austrian authorities questioned Lucio's Roma community and they reported that he had often spoken of wanting revenge against the Baron and his family for the sins committed against his family and their abuses of power.
World War II
German aviation ace Baron Hans von Hammer kept a copy of the Necronomicon in his castle outside Berlin. He was a legendary pilot in the Great War, a balloon buster and dogfighter, and he got back in the cockpit for the second world war where he brought down more allied planes than anyone else. His efforts didn't stop the Allies from winning the war and Baron von Hammer had his squadron's experimental fighters destroyed before he surrendered. When Nazi command received word of vonz Hammer's surrender, they sent a Nazi corporal to Vonz Hammer's castle to recover his Necronomicon with the intent of delivering it to Hitler. Unfortunately, Hitler had already committed suicide at this point so the book of dead names went to Anton Arcane, a Nazi Magus. Arcane’s bunker was bombed by Allied B-17 bombers just as he received the Necronomicon, and he never had the opportunity to use the book.
Cold War Era
A sorcerer used a copy of the Necronomicon to summon 3 demons that he wished to unleash upon the world. He needed to collect the Red Jar of Calythos, the Green Bell of Uthool, and the Silver Wheel of Nyorlath to cast the spell that would free the demons and restore their great powers. Instead of facing the powerful guardians of these relics himself, Faust decided that he would enchant superheroes to do this for him. He employed an enchantment that turned the heroes into finger puppets, with each of his fingers representing a hero, and he sent three heroes after each item. Martian Manhunter discovered that the heroes were stealing the artifacts and deduced that they were under the control of some other force. Coordinating with forces from Atlantis, they were able to free the heroes and defeat Felix Faust. The heroes took the artifacts into their possession, but Faust warned that they would never stop the Great Old Ones when they returned in 100 years.
While Dr. Strange was seeking answers during an astral projecting to the Eye of Agomotto, Clea was attacked by a man known as the Silver Dagger. An inquisitor from the Vatican whose mission was to wipe out all other religions believing them to be the works of Satan. Not finding the Sorcerer Supreme, Silver Dagger took Clea hostage to interrogate her but got nothing before she fell unconscious. At that moment, Strange returned from the Eye of Agomotto and mistakenly inhabited the body of a wax sculpture of himself. Silver Dagger thought it must have been a trick and cut the statue to pieces but one of the hands fell near enough to Clea that she touched it and both sorcerers bonded. With their combined power, Clea broke free and defeated Silver Dagger. She then collected all of the occult relics Silver Dagger had kept over his career, including a copy of the Necronomicon, and returned them to the Sanctum Sanctorum. At the Sanctum, she returned Strange to his body.
Professor Raymond Knowby, Professor Henrietta Knowby, and their daughter and research assistant Annie Knowby rediscovered Castle Kandar's ruins in the English countryside. They found the skinbound Necronomicon and the missing pages inside. Raymond and Henrietta decided to return to their cabin in the Tennessee hills to begin translating the book. Annie stayed behind to lead the dig team in their absence and analyze the artifacts they discovered. Raymond documented the original texts and the process of translating them to audio recordings to be transcribed for later, unintentionally invoking numerous incantations contained inside its pages. Henrietta became possessed by the Deadites that he summoned and the Necronomicon told him the only way to save her soul was to decapitate and dismember her. Raymond couldn't bring himself to do that to his wife's body, so he locked her in the wine cellar. Annie Knowby continued exchanging letters with her father for years never receiving word of the misfortune that had befallen her parents.
A Michigan State University student named Ash Williams returned alone from a weekend trip to the Tennessee hills he took with his girlfriend, two friends, and his sister. He doesn't know what happened or how he found his way back to Elk Grove, Michigan. When Tennessee state police made their way to the cabin, they had to make their way through the backwoods because the bridge had collapsed, they discovered the bodies of the other 4 kids. Unfortunately, the amount of decomposition was far more advanced than they expected it to be and determining who killed the college kids beyond a reasonable doubt was nearly impossible. The Elk Grove and Michigan state police never got a hold of the cabin owners, Raymond and Henrietta Knowby.
Ash spent the next 5 years starting over in a new town where he picked up a job in housewares at S-Mart and continued his chemistry degree at a new university. He began dating Linda, a clerk at his job, but something kept calling him back to that cabin in the Tennessee hills. Ash and Linda went there for a romantic vacation. They found a tape recorder with Professor Raymond Knowby's transcriptions of the Necronomicon on it shortly after they arrived but Ash quickly stopped the playback. Not quickly enough because something broke through the window, and it killed and possessed Linda. Ash killed her in self-defense, twice, but not before she bit his hand and infected it with evil. Ash had to cut his hand off with a chainsaw. Anny Knowby, and her research partner, Ed Getley returned to the cabin to find blood everywhere and no sign of her parents, Raymond and Henrietta Knowby. They blamed Ash for the killing and their local guides knocked Ash unconscious and put him in the cellar. That's when Annie and Robert played the tapes and discovered the truth of what happened, and Ash was attacked by the Deadite possessing Henrieta's body. It wasn't long before the Deadites tore apart everyone but Ash and Annie at the cabin. Annie found a spell that would send the demons back to where they came from and recited it, which opened a whirling vortex in time and spice. That's when Ash's possessed hand stabbed her before she finished and the portal sucked everything and everyone inside. The Kandarian Demon attacked the house, but its head was so large that it couldn't fit through the door, let alone the rest of the demon. Eventually, the demon, Ash, his car, and the Necronomicon were sucked through the portal where they landed in 1,300 C.E. near Castle Kandar in the lands of Lord Arthur.
Superhuman Registration Era
When the vampiric hordes of Aqueos were waging war against the Kingdon of Atlantis, and the hammers of the Worthy were falling from the heavens to call forth their bearers, Namor tasked Alani Ryan to read the darkest of dark books. Alani discovered that the Atlantean amulet would allow her to breathe underwater from the Necronomicon and the intelligence on the aquatic vampires of Aqueos she found in the cursed tome had Atlantis considering her an honorary citizen. Then Namor was sucked into the Amulet and an unknowable hell. The Atlantean people turned on her. As the Atlantean Logomancer discussed strategies to rescue their king from the amulet with Alani, he theorized that the Necronomicon and other mystic scrolls and books were imperfect copies of ancient writings on the walls of ancient cities. Cities like the ruins under Mount Wundagore and the hidden undersea R'llyeh guarded by the enormous Lesser Old One Cthulhu. With the help of Dr. Doom and Logomancer, Loa went into the hell the amulet had taken Namor to and helped him find himself before they fought their way back out. The Atlantean copy of the Necronomicon and the Amulet of Atlantis were locked away in the Kingdom's treasure room.
After his adventures in the lands of Lord Arthur and Henry the Red, Ash Williams returned to Earth in 1,992 C.E. and spent over 2 decades avoiding responsibility, maturity, and the terrors of the Deadites. Then he pulled out the skin-bound Necronomicon to impress a woman he brought back to his trailer after a drunken bender. They read from it. The Deadites came for Ash after possessing the people around him and his much younger co-workers Pablo and Kelly. The bodies that the trio had to leave in their wake alerted law enforcement who started hunting them, believing that they could finally bust Ash for murder after he was able to avoid murder charges in 1982 and 1987. Another woman named Ruby also began hunting Ash, knowing of the Necronomicon and the Deadites she believed Ash was the source of the outbreak. The book brought Ash back to the Cabin in Tennessee where he has to face the truth of his past and relive the terrible things he had to do to survive the Deadites. Ruby turned out to be an Old One in human form and just before Ash could banish her, she tempted him with a new life in Jacksonville, Florida with no fear of persecution ever again. Ash accepted.
Ruby used the Necronomicon to summon her husband, Baal to complete the Deadite takeover of the Earth. Ash couldn't keep fooling himself the apocalypse wasn’t happening while he was partying it up for 10 months in a Jacksonville dystopia. He, along with Pablo and Kelly, escaped Jacksonville and returned to Elk Grove, Michigan. Ash was immediately met with resentment and suspicion as the people in town continued to accuse him of killing his friends, his girlfriend, and his sister. Even his father rejected Ash, and only allowed him to gather some things before letting him leave. When Ash, Pablo, and Kelly found Ruby she was under attack by her and Baal's spawn. Kelly and Ruby joined forces to deal with the spawn while Ash and Pablo chased down Baal and the Necronomicon. After killing the spawn and retrieving the book of dead names, the four of them regrouped and attempted to undo Ruby’s found deeds but Baal had other plans. Just before Baal finished his conquest, Ash and Ruby sent all 4 of them back to the cabin in 1982 so Ash could stop himself from ever getting the Necronomicon. In doing so, he discovered that he did kill Professor Raymond Knowby after the Deadites had taken him. And it was Ash who stopped the massive Kandarian Demon from killing his younger self in the forest and Ash brought his younger self home. When Ash returned to his time in 2,016 C.E., the people of Elk Grove, Michigan saw him as a hero and a mass murderer no longer.
References
- Necronomicon on Wikipedia
- Ash vs. Evil Dead on Wikipedia
- Necronomicon on Marvel Database
- Necronomicon on DC Database
- Justice League of America Vol. 1 #10 on DC Database
- Necronomicon on the H.P. Lovecraft Wiki
- Necronomicon on Evil Dead Wiki
- Ash vs. Evil Dead on Evil Dead Wiki
- Hiram Shaw's Journal on Marvel's Midnight Suns Wiki
Aliases:
- The Book of Dead Names
- The Book of the Dead
- The Darkest of Dark Books
- The Forbidden Tome of Alhazred
- Naturom Demonto
- The Necronomicon Ex Mortis
- Kitab al-Azif
- The Sumerian Book of the Dead
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