(not to be confused with Lin Carter's story of the same title) was also inspired by the name of Robert Blake's tale. Other characters Edwin M. Lillibridge Lillibridge was an inquisitive reporter for the Providence Telegram (a real paper) who first investigated the Church of Starry Wisdom and disappeared in 1893. Blake finds his skeleton while investigating the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill, and finds a notebook on his body. He also finds a cryptogram which he takes away to decipher and eventually deduces is written in Aklo. This cryptogram provides a history of the trapezohedron across the ages; a kind of parallel text to History of the Necronomicon. Later, Lillibridge's oddly damaged skeleton disappears from the church; it is not found when police go to investigate the reports of movement in the church steeple. Enoch Bowen In Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark", Enoch Bowen is a renowned occultist and archaeologist who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1843, Bowen earned some measure of fame when he found the tomb of the unknown pharaoh Nephren-Ka (a reference to Robert Bloch's story "The Fane of the Black Pharaoh", published 1937). A year later, Bowen mysteriously ceased his archaeological dig and returned to Providence where he founded the Church of Starry Wisdom. He dies circa 1865.He also appears in "The Shadow from the Steeple", Robert Bloch's sequel to "The Haunter of the Dark". Ambrose Dexter In "The Haunter of the Dark", he is referred to only as "superstitious Doctor Dexter", who threw the Shining Trapezohedron into "the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay" after the death of Robert Blake. In "The Shadow From the Steeple", Bloch's sequel, the darkness of the bay's bottom gives Nyarlathotep the power to possess Dr. Dexter (who is given the first name of Ambrose). The possessed Dr. Dexter takes a position on a nuclear physics team developing advanced nuclear weapons. Nephren-Ka In "The Haunter of the Dark", Nephren-Ka is said to have "built around it [the Shining Trapezohedron] a temple with a windowless crypt, and did that which caused his name to be stricken from all monuments and records". The Shining Trapezohedron then remained in the ruins of the temple until it was re-discovered by Enoch Bowen in 1843. Inspiration Lovecraft wrote this tale as a reply to "The Shambler from the Stars" (1935) by Robert Bloch, in which Bloch kills the Lovecraft-inspired character. Lovecraft returned the