The Invisible Man

Name: Dr Jack Griffin, The Invisible Man

Appearance: Before becoming invisible, Griffin was an albino scientist described as six feet tall, with pale skin, white hair, and red eyes. As an invisible man, he initially wears a coat, goggles, gloves, and a hat to hide his form, with the only visible parts of him being his eyes. After becoming invisible, to conceal his invisible state, Griffin wrapped his face in bandages, wore large dark goggles, and donned a long-sleeved coat and gloves. His body was completely invisible, with the only remaining visible parts being his pupils. Any blood from wounds or food in his stomach would remain visible until assimilated by his body.

Speech: Formal, British accent, sometimes goes into megalomaniacal tangents.

Info: A man in winter cloths inn owned by Mr. and Mrs. Hall of the English village of Iping, West Sussex, during a snowstorm. The stranger wears a long-sleeved, thick coat and gloves; his face is hidden entirely by bandages except for a fake pink nose; and he wears a wide-brimmed hat. He is excessively reclusive, irascible, unfriendly, and introverted. He demands to be left alone and spends most of his time in his rooms working with a set of chemicals and laboratory apparatus, only venturing out at night. He also causes a lot of accidents, but when Mrs. Hall addresses this, the stranger angrily demands to put it on his bill. While Griffin is staying at the inn, hundreds of strange glass bottles arrive. Many local townspeople believe this to be very odd. He becomes the talk of the village with many theorizing as to his origins.

Meanwhile, a mysterious burglary occurs in the village. Griffin is running out of money and is trying to find a way to pay for his board and lodging. When his landlady demands that he pay his bill and quit the premises, he reveals part of his invisibility to her in a fit of anger. An attempt to apprehend the stranger is thwarted when he undresses to take advantage of his invisibility, fights off his would-be captors, and flees to the downs.

There Griffin coerces a tramp, Thomas Marvel, into becoming his assistant. With Marvel, he returns to the village to recover three notebooks that contain records of his experiments. When Marvel attempts to betray the Invisible Man, he threatens to kill him. Marvel however manages to escape the Invisible Man, and with that the Invisible Man chases him to the seaside town of Port Burdock. Marvel escapes to a local inn and is saved by the people at the inn, with the Invisible Man coming in. One of the citizens in the bar has a revolver, and shot five rounds, with one of them hitting the Invisible Man. Marvel later goes to the police and tells them of this "invisible man."

He takes shelter in a nearby house that turns out to belong to Dr. Kemp, a former acquaintance from medical school. To Kemp, he reveals his true identity. Griffin is a former medical student who left medicine to devote himself to optics.

Griffin tells Kemp the story of how he became invisible. He explains how he invented chemicals capable of rendering bodies invisible, which he first tried on a cat, then himself. Griffin burned down the boarding house he was staying in, along with all the equipment he had used to turn invisible, to cover his tracks, but he soon realised that he was ill-equipped to survive in the open. He attempted to steal food and clothes from a large department store, and eventually stole some clothing from a theatrical supply shop on Drury Lane and headed to Iping to attempt to reverse the invisibility. Having been driven somewhat unhinged by the procedure and his experiences, he now imagines that he can make Kemp his secret confederate, describing a plan to begin a "Reign of Terror" by using his invisibility to terrorise the nation.

Kemp has already denounced Griffin to the local authorities and is waiting for help to arrive as he listens to this wild proposal. When the authorities arrive at Kemp's house, Griffin fights his way out and the next day leaves a note announcing that Kemp himself will be the first man to be killed in the "Reign of Terror". Kemp, a cool-headed character, tries to organise a plan to use himself as bait to trap the Invisible Man, but a note that he sends is stolen from his servant by Griffin.

Griffin shoots and wounds a Scotland Yard Inspector who comes to Kemp's aid, then breaks into Kemp's house. Kemp bolts for the town, where the local citizenry come to his aid. Griffin is cornered, seized, and savagely beaten by the enraged mob, with his last words being a desperate cry for mercy. Despite Griffin's murderous actions, Kemp urges the mob to stand away and tries to save the life of his assailant, though it is not meant to be. The Invisible Man's battered body gradually becomes visible as he dies, pitiable in the stillness of death. A local policeman shouts to have someone cover Griffin's face with a sheet.

In the epilogue, it is revealed that Marvel has secretly kept Griffin's notes and—with the help of the stolen money—has now become a successful business owner, running the "Invisible Man Inn". However, when not at work running his inn, Marvel sits in his office trying to decipher the notes in the hopes of one day recreating Griffin's work. Because several pages were accidentally washed clean during Marvel's chase of Griffin, since the remaining notes are coded in Greek and Latin, and since Marvel has no comprehension of even the basic mathematical symbols he sees in the notes, he is completely incapable of understanding them.