Barnabas Marsh

Barnabas Marsh is a fictional character, the head of the semi-human Marsh family in H. P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. In Lovecraft's story, he is the most powerful figure in the sinister town of Innsmouth.
Also known as Old Man Marsh, Barnabas owns the gold refinery that is Innsmouth's main industry; he's said to be "richer'n Croesus". He is the grandson of Captain Obed Marsh, the New England sea captain who made an alliance with the undersea Deep One civilization that involved breeding with nonhuman mates. Due to his Deep One ancestry, Barnabas is functionally immortal, though he may still be killed through violent means. This heritage also means he will gradually mutate into an undersea creature. 
Barnabas' father was Onesiphorus Marsh, Obed's eldest son, the child of his human first wife; Barnabas' Deep One heritage comes from his mother, who "was another o’ them as wa’n’t never seed aoutdoors," in the words of Zadok Allen, the alcoholic human resident of Innsmouth who provides most of the information about Barnabas in the story. (Barnabas Marsh never appears directly in the story's action.) Barnabas is married to a human woman from the nearby town of Ipswich, a choice he made against the wishes of the town's hybridized power structure; "they nigh lynched Barnabas when he courted her fifty odd year’ ago," Allen says.
At the time of the story, Barnabas' transformation had progressed to the point where he had not been seen in public for ten years; he is said to have "developed some skin disease or deformity late in life that makes him keep out of sight." He sometimes comes to the refinery in a "closed, curtained car", but mostly leaves the management of the works to a younger generation. Later we learn that he is no longer able to shut his engorged eyes. He is still able to wear clothing; it's noted that "he still wore the frock-coated finery of the Edwardian age, curiously adapted to certain deformities."
Barnabas was presumably either killed or imprisoned during the federal government's attack on the town in February 1928, or else escaped to Innsmouth's underwater sister city of Y'ha-nthlei.
Barnabas is the great-uncle of Robert Olmstead, the protagonist of The Shadow Over Innsmouth; Olmstead is unaware of the relationship at the time of his fateful visit to Innsmouth, and its unclear whether the Marsh family knows of the connection.
==In Other Media== 
*Barnabas Marsh appears as an antagonistic monster in Fantasy Flight Games' Lovecraft-inspired board game Arkham Horror.
Category:Characters Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Other Supernatural Beings