 In the story, Warren is a mysterious occultist and friend of Carter (Lovecraft's alter ego), who suffers a gruesome but undefined fate while exploring a crypt in Big Cypress Swamp.Lovecraft mentions Warren in two other short stories.In "The Silver Key", which he wrote in 1926, he describes Harley Warren as "a man in the south, who was shunned and feared for the things he read in prehistoric books and clay tablets smuggled from India and Arabia".