Jervas Dudley

Jervas Dudley is the narrator in the short story The Tomb. In the beginning, we learn that he is being held and treated in an asylum for the insane.

From his earliest childhood he had been a "dreamer and a visionary," and supposedly has some sort of contact and even rapport with the deceased.

"Wealthy beyond the necessity of a commercial life, and temperamentally unfitted for the formal studies and social recreations of my acquaintances, I have dwelt ever in realms apart from the visible world; spending my youth and adolescence in ancient and little-known books, and in roaming the fields and groves of the region near my ancestral home."

On his explorations around the countryside (presumably near Boston, he happens to find the endtrance to the Tomb of the Hydes, a hillside burial vault underneath the former Hyde Mansion.