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Innsmouth is a fictional town created by H. P. Lovecraft. It is located in Essex County, Massachusetts.
Innsmouth is a setting of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" by Lovecraft, and referenced in later works. Lovecraft first used the name "Innsmouth" in his 1920 short story "Celephaïs" (1920), where it refers to a fictional village in England. Lovecraft's more famous Innsmouth is in Massachusetts. This latter Innsmouth was first identified in two of his cycle of sonnets Fungi from Yuggoth. Lovecraft called Innsmouth "a considerably twisted version of Newburyport", Massachusetts.
Lovecraft placed Innsmouth on the coast of Essex County, Massachusetts, south of Plum Island and north of Cape Ann. The town of Ipswich, Massachusetts is said to be a near neighbor, where many Innsmouth residents do their shopping; Rowley, Massachusetts, another neighboring town, is said to be to the northwest. This would place Innsmouth in the vicinity of Essex Bay. The description of the fictional Massachusetts village is said to be based on the real fishing town of Fleetwood, Lancashire which bears a marked resemblance to the description of the village.
Neil Gaiman's short story "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" explains that the American Innsmouth was named after an older English village.
Lovecraft writes that Innsmouth is in a horrendous state of decay, with many of the buildings rotting and on the point of collapse. The town was "founded in 1643, noted for shipbuilding before the Revolution, a seat of great marine prosperity in the early nineteenth century, and later a minor factory center." The loss of sailors in shipwrecks, and the War of 1812, caused the town's profitable trade with the South Seas to falter; by 1828, the only fleet still running that route was that of Captain Obed Marsh, the head of one of the town's leading families.
Prior to the events of the story, in 1840, Marsh starts a cult in Innsmouth known as the Esoteric Order of Dagon, based on a religion he had learned from certain Polynesian islanders in his travels. The town's fishing industry soon experienced a great upsurge. Then in 1846, a mysterious plague struck the town, killing most of the population, but in reality, the deaths were caused by the Deep Ones in league with Obed Marsh. When Marsh and his followers were arrested, the sacrificial rites ceased and the Deep Ones retaliated. The cult activity resumed, and interbreeding increased, spawning deformed fish-humans. Consequently, Innsmouth was shunned for many years, until 1927 when it came under investigation by federal authorities for alleged bootlegging.
The next year, an incursion by the authorities detonated explosives in Devil Reef off the coast. The villagers were arrested and disappeared mysteriously in government custody.