A certain man embarks on a business trip to Mexico. In the train, he finds himself alone in a compartment with someone who turns out to be a dangerous maniac.
Another story being revised for Adolphe de Castro (the previous one being The Last Test). Lovecraft agreed to take it on solely because Castro paid upfront for the revisions. The writer struggled with this text, which held no promise, so for entertainment, he decided to mix horror and a bit of humor for the initiated (something he usually avoided and believed should not be done). Even the grotesque behavior of the madman on the train is spiced up with quotes from a certain German Lovecraft once traveled with to Washington.
A humorous tale of a fictional scholar from the 4th century, and his skull. The inspiration for the story stemmed from the mistaken belief of Maurice W. Moego's students that 'ibid.' (an abbreviation for the Latin 'ibidem,' meaning 'in the same place') was the author's surname. The piece, in the process, serves as a satire on academic erudition and the meticulousness of scholarly work.
The so-called 'Roman dream,' excerpted from a letter to Donald Wandrei dated November 2, 1927. In this dream, Lovecraft was a quaestor in one of the Spanish provinces under Roman rule. In the town of Pompeii, an ancient people threatened the city, performing terrifying rituals every year on the eve of November. This dream, rich in details and frightening in its suggestiveness, was inspired in the writer by reading the Aeneid translated by James Rhodes.
A classic tale from the Master of Weird Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft's 'The Call of Cthulhu' chronicles the journey of Francis Wayland Thurston as he examines the notes of his dead uncle and learns of a strange and mysterious cult that worships an ancient monster - Cthulhu - a terrifying human/octopus/dragon hybrid that lives in the hidden city of R'lyeh.
As the narrator plunges further into this mystery, he begins to suspect that this ancient creature may, indeed, be real. If so, what would happen if this ancient evil being was...released upon the world?
One of the strangest and most bizarre stories from the man who put strange and bizarre stories on the map, 'The Call of Cthulhu' is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
'The Outsider' is a short story by American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written between March and August 1921, it was first published in Weird Tales, April 1926. In this work, a mysterious individual who has been living alone in a castle for as long as he can remember decides to break free in search of human contact and light. 'The Outsider' is one of Lovecraft's most commonly reprinted works and is also one of the most popular stories ever to be published in Weird Tales.
'The Outsider' combines horror, fantasy, and gothic fiction to create a nightmarish story, containing themes of loneliness, the abhuman, and the afterlife. Its epigram is from John Keats' 1819 poem 'The Eve of St. Agnes'.
In a letter, Lovecraft himself said that, of all his tales, this story most closely resembles the style of his idol Edgar Allan Poe, writing that it 'represents my literal though unconscious imitation of Poe at its very height.' The opening paragraphs echo those of Poe's 'Berenice', while the horror at the party recalls the unmasking scene in 'The Masque of the Red Death'.
'The Music of Erich Zann' is a horror short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. Written in December 1921, it was first published in National Amateur, March 1922.
Due to lack of funds, a university student is forced to take up lodging in an almost empty apartment building on a street named 'Rue d'Auseil'. One of the few other tenants is an old German man named Erich Zann. The old man is mute and plays the viol[a] with a local theater orchestra. He lives alone on the top floor and at night he plays strange melodies the student has never heard before. Despite Zann's dissatisfaction with his own music, the student invites himself to hear Zann play at his room. While watching the first night, the student's curiosity attracts him to the window of the room, which is the only window that can oversee the wall at the end of the mysterious street. Zann seems disturbed to discover that the student is able to hear his melody from his room and asks the student in a friendly manner to move to a lower floor where he won't hear Zann's music, only to return the next day to his antisocial behavior once the student has moved...
'The Cats of Ulthar' is a short story written by American fantasy author H.P. Lovecraft in June 1920. In the tale, an unnamed narrator relates the story of how a law forbidding the killing of cats came to be in a town called Ulthar. As the narrative goes, the city is home to an old couple who enjoy capturing and killing the townspeople's cats. When a caravan of wanderers passes through the city, the kitten of an orphan (Menes) traveling with the band disappears. Upon hearing of the couple's violent acts towards cats, Menes invokes a prayer before leaving town that causes the local felines to swarm the cat-killers' house and devour them. Upon witnessing the result, the local politicians pass a law forbidding the killing of cats. Influenced by Lord Dunsany, the tale was a personal favorite of Lovecraft's and has remained popular since his death. Considered one of the best short stories of Lovecraft's early period, aspects of The Cats of Ulthar would be referenced again in the author's works The Other Gods and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. It was first published in the literary journal Tryout in November 1920 and now resides in the public domain.
'Dagon' is a short story by American author H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in July 1917 and is one of the first stories that Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant. Dagon was later published in Weird Tales. It is considered by many to be one of Lovecraft's most forward-looking stories.
The story is the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who relates an incident that occurred during his service as an officer during World War I. In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by an Imperial German sea-raider in 'one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific'. He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly, south of the equator, until he eventually finds himself stranded on 'a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about [him] in monotonous undulations as far as [he] could see The region was
putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and less describable things which [he] saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain.' He theorizes that this area was formerly a portion of the ocean floor thrown to the surface by volcanic activity, 'exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths.
'The Picture in the House' is a short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. It was written on December 12, 1920, and first published in the July issue of The National Amateur—which was published in the summer of 1921.
While riding on his bicycle in the Miskatonic Valley of rural New England, a genealogist seeks shelter from an approaching storm in an apparently abandoned house, only to find that it is occupied by a 'loathsome old, white-bearded, and ragged man,' speaking in 'an extreme form of Yankee dialect...thought long extinct.' The narrator notices that the house is full of antique books, exotic artifacts, and furniture predating the American Revolution. The old man is apparently harmless and ignorant, but shows a disquieting fascination for an engraving in a rare old book, Regnum Congo, and admits to the narrator that it made him hunger for 'victuals I couldn't raise nor buy'- presumably human flesh. It is suggested that the old man in the house was murdering men who stumbled upon the shack to satisfy his 'craving', and that the old man has extended his life preternaturally through cannibalism. The narrator realizes the old man has been alive for over a century. The old man denies that he ever acted on his desire, but then a red drop of blood falls from the ceiling, clearly coming from the floor above, and splashes a page in
the book. The narrator then looks up to see a spreading red stain on the ceiling; this belies the old man's statement. At that moment, a bolt of lightning destroys the house, bringing oblivion to the narrator.
'The Tomb' is a fictional short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in June 1917 and first published in the March 1922 issue of The Vagrant. It tells the story of Jervas Dudley, who becomes obsessed with a mausoleum near his childhood home.
'The Tomb' tells of Jervas Dudley, a confessed daydreamer. While still a child, he discovers the padlocked entrance to a mausoleum belonging to the Hyde family, whose nearby mansion had burnt down many years previously. Jervas attempts to break the padlock, but is unable. Dispirited, he takes to sleeping beside the tomb. Eventually, inspired by reading Plutarch's Lives, Dudley decides to patiently wait until it is his time to gain entrance to the tomb.
One night, several years later, Jervas falls asleep once more beside the mausoleum. He awakes suddenly in the late afternoon, and fancies that as he awoke, a light had been hurriedly extinguished inside the tomb. Jervas then returns to his home, where he goes directly to the attic, to a rotten chest, and therein finds the key to the tomb. Once inside the tomb, Jervas discovers an empty coffin with the name 'Jervas' inscribed upon the plate. He begins to sleep in the empty coffin each night, yet those who witness him sleeping see him asleep outside the tomb, not inside as Jervas believes. Jervas also develops a fear of thunder and fire, and is aware that he is being spied upon by one of his neighbours.
Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrated by Matthew Schmitz, and includes a fully immersive cinematic music score.
'The Book' is an unfinished short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, believed to have been written in late 1933. It was first published in the journal Leaves in 1938, after Lovecraft's death.
In the story fragment, the narrator is given an ancient book by a strange bookseller, and when he takes it home and examines it, weird and sinister events ensue...
Brought to you by Altrusian Grace Media and narrated by Matthew Schmitz, and includes a fully immersive cinematic music score.
'The Beast in the Cave' is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. The first draft was written in the Spring of 1904, with the final draft finished in April 1905, when Lovecraft was age fourteen. It was first published in the June 1918 issue of the amateur journalism publication The Vagrant, this being the equivalent of a well-edited fanzine today. The tale is to be regarded as an example of Lovecraft's juvenilia, and is classed as such in collections of his works.
In the 1930s Lovecraft sometimes sent a copy of the typescript to his promising young correspondents, as an example of what he had produced at their age, and also as a first exercise in re-writing. In this way, he could best judge how much imagination and promise they really had.
A man touring the vast Mammoth Cave becomes separated from his guide and becomes lost. His torch expires and he is giving up hope of finding a way out in the pitch dark when he hears strange non-human footsteps approaching him...
