Image of Deep Ones

Deep Ones

The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance. The females would regularly mate with voluntary human males along the coast, creating societies of hybrids. A description is offered by the narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth: “I think their predominant color was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked … They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design—living and horrible.” The Deep Ones are creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931), but were already hinted at in the early short story “Dagon”.
Alias Deep Ones, Dagon
Real Names/Alt Names N/A
Characteristics Villain, Pulp Characters, Weird Tales Universe, Deity, Immortal, Prehuman Epoch
Creators/Key Contributors H. P. Lovecraft
First Appearance “Dagon” in The Vagrant (Nov 1919)
First Publisher Popular Publications [Internet Archive] [LUM]
Appearance List “Dagon” in The Vagrant (Nov 1919) and Weird Tales (Oct 1923), The Shadow over Innsmouth (Novella, April 1936)
Sample Read Weird Tales (Pulp) [Internet Archive]
Description The Deep Ones are a race of intelligent ocean-dwelling creatures, approximately human-shaped but with a fishy appearance. The females would regularly mate with voluntary human males along the coast, creating societies of hybrids. A description is offered by the narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth: “I think their predominant color was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked … They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design—living and horrible.” The Deep Ones are creatures in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. The beings first appeared in Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow over Innsmouth (1931), but were already hinted at in the early short story “Dagon”.
Source Deep One – Wikipedia
Artist depiction of Dagon in black and white | Dominique Signoret
Artist depiction of Dagon in black and white | Dominique Signoret