Randolph Carter
Randolph Carter is an antiquarian and one-time student of the fictional Miskatonic University. Based on clues from various stories, he was probably born around 1874 and grew up in and around Boston. At the age of ten, he underwent a mysterious experience at his great-uncle Christopher's farm and thereafter exhibited a gift of prophecy.
He is the descendant of Sir Randolph Carter, who had studied magic during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. Sir Randolph had then emigrated to America and his son Edmund Carter later had to flee the Salem witch-trials. Carter also had an ancestor involved in one of the Crusades, who was captured by the Muslims and learned "wild secrets" from them.
Carter served in the French Foreign Legion during the First World War, and was badly wounded in fighting near Belloy-en-Santerre in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme in which the Legion participated.
In 1918 Carter joined his friend Harley Warren in the latter's investigations of a mysterious crypt in an ancient abandoned cemetery near Arkham. Warren believed the crypt contained evidence that could confirm some of his speculations, the details of which he refused to share with Carter, who suspected his friend had come under the influence of the Necronomicon. After Warren's death while excavating the crypt, Carter became more deeply involved in occult investigations.
Carter was the owner (and perhaps creator) of a magical silver key which enabled him to access the Dreamlands.
Carter disappeared in 1928.