Vasili Oukranikov

Vasili Oukranikov is a fictional character who appears in the story "The Ghost-Eater", written by H. P. Lovecraft with C. M. Eddy, Jr. Oukranikov was a werewolf in life, and in death is a ghost who haunts the Devil's Woods between Mayfair and Glendale in Maine.
The character, a Russian immigrant, is described as "a tall, thin, handsome chap with shiny yellow hair and a wonderful manner"; he is strikingly handsome, with thin, clean-shaven face, glossy, flaxen hair neatly brushed, long, regular eyebrows that met in a slanting angle above the nose, shapely ears set low and well back on the head, and large expressive gray eyes almost luminous in their animation. Oukranikov is of "impressive height", and walks with "long, limping steps"; he wears a "long lounging-robe of gray swathing his lean form." He has "a magnificently even set of firm white teeth," and a visitor is struck by "the fineness of his slender hands, with their long, tapering fingers whose ruddy, almond-shaped nails were slightly curved and exquisitely manicured"--in striking contrast to the "huge hairy arms that hung at his side".
He is a man of "engaging personality": "His voice was soothing and well modulated, and his eyes held a calmness almost hypnotic." But there is a "quality of strangeness in him; some subtle alienage that could hardly be analyzed." His eyes glow "almost phosphorescently" in a darkened room.
Oukranikov is remembered by a Glendale resident as "a servant of the devil—a werewolf and eater of men." When transformed, he takes on "the gaunt form of a great gray wolf." He walks with one hind foot...held in the air, as though wounded by some stray shot." In his wolf shape, he has the same "gray phosphorescent eyes" that he does in human guise.
Suspicions about Oukranikov were confirmed when "one night somebody took a pot shot at the wolf, and the next time the Russian came into Glendale he walked with a limp." When another Russian immigrant, Feodor Tchernevsky (known as the Count), went to confront him, he was killed by the werewolf; townsfolk "found the Count’s mangled body...and a gaunt gray wolf hovering over it with blood-slavering jaws." The mob "killed it—filled it full of lead and buried it in the house, and then burned the place down." This happened 60 years before the present day of the story, which was published in 1924--so 1864 or earlier.
Category:Characters Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Other Supernatural Beings
Category:Deceased (In Mythos)