Joe Slater

Joe Slater is a fictional character created by H. P. Lovecraft for his short story "Beyond the Wall of Sleep".
==Background==
Joe Slater was an inmate at a mental hospital in New York State, having been confined there as a criminally insane murderer during the winter of 1900-1901. He died there a few weeks later at the age of forty-two. Slater had previously lived in a backwoods community of generational hill dwellers in the Catskill Mountains, and was regarded by his psychiatric caregivers as a primitive degenerate. 
An intern at the hospital (who is not named) studied the particulars of his case and began to suspect that a higher cosmic intelligence was trapped within the physical confines of Slater's otherwise decadent brain. From the things that Slater ranted about during his manic episodes, the intern learned that this higher soul that inhabited Slater's body during its current incarnation on Earth yearned to break free of its fleshly prison and seek vengeance against a mysterious entity that had perpetrated a terrible wrong against it. This resulted in Slater's extreme mental turmoil which ultimately led to his death. 
Using an experimental telepathic communication device that he designed as an undergraduate, the intern made contact with the soul being inside Slater's mind as Slater lay dying. During their conversation, the intern learned that his "brother of light" would become incorporeal after Slater's death, and finally undertake a last battle with its hated nemesis near the star Algol. Slater died then, and there were no further transmissions. The night after his death, a bright new star was discovered near Algol. Within a week or two it had visibly faded, and in a few months it had become barely discernible to the naked eye. (: "Beyond the Wall of Sleep")
Category:Humans
Category:Characters Originating From Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:Deceased (In Mythos)