Robert Martin Olmstead (HPL: "Notes for The Shadow Over Innsmouth") is the narrator of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It is remarked that his eyes have the same strange quality seen in all descendants of Obed Marsh. In the story's final pages, he learns he himself is the great-great-grandson of Obed Marsh and a Deep One, and in time will become one of the amphibious monsters he witnessed in Innsmouth.
Growing up in Toledo, he journeys to Massachusetts and stops at Innsmouth almost by chance, as it is on the way from Newburyport to Arkham, while on a journey to discover more of his family roots.
Olmstead's name is never given within the original story, but is given as Robert Martin Olmstead in Lovecraft's notes for the story.
In "The Watcher from the Sky", by August Derleth, a character refers to the Shadow Over Innsmouth narrator as Williamson. In the original story, James Williamson was the name of Olmstead's maternal grandfather.
In Other Media[]
- In Caliber Comics' The Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft: The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a supposedly "authorized" version of the story, Olmstead's surname is inexplicably given as Loveless.