The complete collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories
Where to start?
This is an alphabetical list of HP Lovecrafts stories. People new to Lovecraft's fiction should start with:
The Call of Cthulhu
Probably the most well known and popular of the stories The Call of Cthulhu is a story told in three parts by a narrator who discovers aspects of a mysterious and savage cult centered around an inconceivable horror at the bottom of the sea. This story is a great starting point for people interested in the Cthulhu Mythos.The Dunwich Horror
The Dunwich Horror Is a story about the terror visited upon an decaying town deep in the the forest by the Whateley family and their terrifying secret.The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space was Lovecraft's favorite tale and shares the story of the "blasted heath" a patch of land where nothing grows or lives caused by a mysterious meteorite that lands on a remote farm deep in the forests of Arkham.For more collections see our collections page
The complete list
Total: 65 = Has audio
At the Mountains of Madness
March 1931
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I
I am forced into
speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without
knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons
for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its
vast fossil..
Read At the Mountains of Madness
Azathoth
June 1922
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When age fell upon
the world, and wonder went out of the minds of men; when grey cities
reared to smoky skies tall towers grim and ugly, in whose shadow none
might dream of the sun or of Spring's flowering meads; when learning
stripped the Earth of her..
Read Azathoth
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
January 1919
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I have often wondered
if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the occasionally
titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which they
belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps
no more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences-..
Read Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Celephais
November 1920
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In a dream Kuranes
saw the city in the valley, and the seacoast beyond, and the snowy peak
overlooking the sea, and the gaily painted galleys that sail out of
the harbour toward distant regions where the sea meets the sky. In a
dream it was also that..
Read Celephais
Cool Air
March 1926
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You ask me to explain
why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others
upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the
chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There
are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour, and..
Read Cool Air
Dagon
July 1917
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I am writing this
under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.
Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone, makes
life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself
from this garret..
Read Dagon
Ex Oblivione
September 1921
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When the last days
were upon me, and the ugly trifles of existence began to drive me to
madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly
upon one spot of their victims body, I loved the irradiate refuge of
sleep. In my dreams I found a little of the beauty I had vainly..
Read Ex Oblivione
Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
January 1920
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Life is a hideous
thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal
hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.
Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations, will perhaps
be the ultimate exterminator of our human species—if..
Read Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
From Beyond
January 1920
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Horrible beyond
conception was the change which had taken place in my best friend, Crawford
Tillinghast. I had not seen him since that day, two months and a half
before, when he told me toward what goal his physical and metaphysical
researches were leading; when he had answered my awed and almost..
Read From Beyond
He
August 1925
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I saw him on a sleepless
night when I was walking desperately to save my soul and my vision.
My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for
poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient
streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and..
Read He
Herbert West–Reanimator
June 1922
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I.
From The Dark
Of
Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can
speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to
the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered
by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its..
Read Herbert West–Reanimator
Hypnos
March 1922
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Apropos of sleep, that sinister adventure of all our nights, we
may say that men go to bed daily with an audacity that would be incomprehensible
if we did not know that it is the result of ignorance of the danger.
Baudelaire
May the merciful
gods,..
Read Hypnos
Ibid
January 1928
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"...as Ibid says
in his famous Lives of the Poets."
From a student theme.
The erroneous idea
that Ibid is the author of the Lives is so frequently met with, even
among those pretending to a degree of culture, that it is worth correcting.
It should..
Read Ibid
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
May 1924
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Mystery attracts
mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as a performer of
unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives and events
which my calling has led people to link with my interests and activities.
Some of these have been trivial and irrelevant, some deeply dramatic
and..
Read Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
In The Vault
September 1925
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There is nothing
more absurd, as I view it, than that conventional association of the
homely and the wholesome which seems to pervade the psychology of the
multitude. Mention a bucolic Yankee setting, a bungling and thick-fibred
village undertaker, and a careless mishap in a tomb, and no average
reader..
Read In The Vault
Memory
January 1919
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In the valley of
Nis the accursed waning moon shines thinly, tearing a path for its light
with feeble horns through the lethal foliage of a great uperas-tree.
And within the depths of the valley, where the light reaches not, move
forms not meant to be beheld. Rank is the herbage on each slope, where..
Read Memory
Nyarlathotep
January 1920
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Nyarlathotep...
the crawling chaos... I am the last... I will tell the audient void...
I do not recall
distinctly when it began, but it was months ago. The general tension
was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added..
Read Nyarlathotep
Pickman's Model
September 1926
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You needn't think
I'm crazy, Eliot- plenty of others have queerer prejudices than this.
Why don't you laugh at Oliver's grandfather, who won't ride in a motor?
If I don't like that damned subway, it's my own business; and we got
here more quickly anyhow in the taxi. We'd have had to walk up the hill..
Read Pickman's Model
Polaris
January 1918
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Into the North Window
of my chamber glows the Pole Star with uncanny light. All through the
long hellish hours of blackness it shines there. And in the autumn of
the year, when the winds from the north curse and whine, and the red-leaved
trees of the swamp mutter things to one another in the small hours..
Read Polaris
The Alchemist
January 1908
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High up, crowning
the grassy summit of a swelling mount whose sides are wooded near the
base with the gnarled trees of the primeval forest stands the old chateau
of my ancestors. For centuries its lofty battlements have frowned down
upon the wild and rugged countryside about, serving as a home and stronghold..
Read The Alchemist
The Beast in the Cave
March 1905
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The horrible conclusion
which had been gradually intruding itself upon my confused and reluctant
mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly
lost in the vast and labyrinthine recess of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as
I might, in no..
Read The Beast in the Cave
The Book
November 1933
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My memories are
very confused. There is even much doubt as to where they begin; for
at times I feel appalling vistas of years stretching behind me, while
at other times it seems as if the present moment were an isolated point
in a grey, formless infinity. I am not even certain how I am communicating..
Read The Book
The Call of Cthulhu
June 1926
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Of such great powers or beings there may be conceivably a survival...
a survival of a hugely remote period when... consciousness was manifested,
perhaps, in shapes and forms long since withdrawn before the tide
of advancing humanity.....
Read The Call of Cthulhu
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
March 1927
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The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and
preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in
his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes
at his Pleasure; and by the lyke..
Read The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Cats of Ulthar
June 1920
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It is said that
in Ulthar, which lies beyond the river Skai, no man may kill a cat;
and this I can verily believe as I gaze upon him who sitteth purring
before the fire. For the cat is cryptic, and close to strange things
which men cannot see. He is..
Read The Cats of Ulthar
The Colour out of Space
March 1927
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West of Arkham the
hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has
ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically,
and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint
of sunlight...
Read The Colour out of Space
The Curse of Yig
October 1928
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In 1925 I went into Oklahoma looking for snake lore, and I came out with a fear of snakes that
will last me the rest of my life. I admit it is foolish, since there are natural explanations
for everything I saw and heard, but it masters me none the less. If the old story had been all
there was to it, I..
Read The Curse of Yig
The Descendant
January 1926
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Writing on what
my doctor tells me is my deathbed, my most hideous fear is that the
man is wrong. I suppose I shall seem to be buried next week, but...
In London there
is a man who screams when the church bells ring. He lives all alone
with his streaked cat in Gray's Inn, and people call..
Read The Descendant
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
November 1919
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There is in the
land of Mnar a vast still lake that is fed by no stream, and out of
which no stream flows. Ten thousand years ago there stood by its shore
the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath stands there no more.
It is told that
in the immemorial years when the world was young, before..
Read The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
January 1927
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Three times Randolph
Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched
away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden
and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades
and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic..
Read The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The Dreams in the Witch House
February 1932
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Whether the dreams
brought on the fever or the fever brought on the dreams Walter Gilman
did not know. Behind everything crouched the brooding, festering horror
of the ancient town, and of the mouldy, unhallowed garret gable where
he wrote and studied and wrestled with flgures and formulae when he
was..
Read The Dreams in the Witch House
The Dunwich Horror
January 1928
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Gorgons and Hydras,
and Chimaeras - dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies - may reproduce
themselves in the brain of superstition - but they were there before.
They are transcripts, types - the archtypes are in us, and eternal...
Read The Dunwich Horror
The Evil Clergyman
January 1933
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I was shown into
the attic chamber by a grave, intelligent-looking man with quiet clothes
and an iron-gray beard, who spoke to me in this fashion:
"Yes, he
lived here- but I don’t advise your doing anything. Your curiosity makes
you irresponsible. We never come here at night,..
Read The Evil Clergyman
The Festival
October 1923
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Efficiut Daemones, ut quae non sunt, sic tamen quasi sint, conspicienda
hominibus exhibeant.
(Devils so work
that things which are not appear to men as if they were real.)
Lacantius
I was far from home,
and the spell of the eastern..
Read The Festival
The Haunter of the Dark
November 1935
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I
have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge or lustre or name.
Cautious investigators
will hesitate to challenge..
Read The Haunter of the Dark
The Horror At Red Hook
August 1925
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I
Not many weeks ago,
on a street corner in the village of Pascoag, Rhode Island, a tall,
heavily built, and wholesome-looking pedestrian furnished much speculation
by a singular lapse of behaviour. He had, it appears, been descending
the hill by the road from Chepachet;..
Read The Horror At Red Hook
The Hound
September 1922
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In my tortured ears
there sounds unceasingly a nightmare whirring and flapping, and a faint
distant baying as of some gigantic hound. It is not dream - it is not,
I fear, even madness - for too much has already happened to give me
these merciful doubts...
Read The Hound
The Lurking Fear
November 1922
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I.
The Shadow On The Chimney
There was thunder
in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest
Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness
was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible
which has made..
Read The Lurking Fear
The Moon-Bog
June 1926
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Somewhere, to what
remote and fearsome region I know not, Denys Barry has gone. I was with
him the last night he lived among men, and heard his screams when the
thing came to him; but all the peasants and police in County Meath could
never find him, or the others, though they searched long and far...
Read The Moon-Bog
The Mound
January 1930
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I.
It is only within the last few years that most people have stopped thinking of the West as a
new land. I suppose the idea gained ground because our own especial civilisation happens
to be new there; but nowadays explorers are digging beneath the surface and bringing..
Read The Mound
The Music oF Erich Zann
March 1921
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I have examined
maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never again found
the Rue d’Auseil. These maps have not been modern maps alone, for I
know that names change. I have, on the contrary, delved deeply into
all the antiquities of the place,..
Read The Music oF Erich Zann
The Nameless City
January 1921
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When I drew nigh
the nameless city I knew it was accursed. I was traveling in a parched
and terrible valley under the moon, and afar I saw it protruding uncannily
above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave.
Fear spoke from the age-worn stones of this hoary survivor of the..
Read The Nameless City
The Other Gods
August 1921
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Atop the tallest
of earth's peaks dwell the gods of earth, and suffer not man to tell
that he hath looked upon them. Lesser peaks they once inhabited; but
ever the men from the plains would scale the slopes of rock and snow,
driving the gods to higher and higher mountains till now only the last..
Read The Other Gods
The Outsider
August 1921
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Unhappy is he to
whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched
is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with
brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books, or upon awed watches
in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees..
Read The Outsider
The Picture in the House
December 1920
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Searchers after
horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais,
and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the
moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed
steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The..
Read The Picture in the House
The Quest of Iranon
February 1921
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Into the granite
city of Teloth wandered the youth, vine-crowned, his yellow hair glistening
with myrrh and his purple robe torn with briers of the mountain Sidrak
that lies across the antique bridge of stone. The men of Teloth are
dark and stern, and dwell in square houses, and with frowns they asked..
Read The Quest of Iranon
The Rats in the Walls
September 1923
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On 16 July 1923,
I moved into Exham Priory after the last workman had finished his labours.
The restoration had been a stupendous task, for little had remained
of the deserted pile but a shell-like ruin; yet because it had been
the seat of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me. The place had not..
Read The Rats in the Walls
The Shadow Out of Time
March 1934
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I
After twenty-two
years of nightmare and terror, saved only by a desperate conviction
of the mythical source of certain impressions, I am unwilling to vouch
for the truth of that which I think I found in Western Australia..
Read The Shadow Out of Time
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
April 1936
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I
During the winter
of 1927-28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret
investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport
of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February,..
Read The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shunned House
October 1924
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I
From even the greatest
of horrors irony is seldom absent. Some times it enters directly into
the composition of the events, while sometimes it relates only to their
fortuitous position among persons and places. The latter sort is splendidly
exemplified by a case in..
Read The Shunned House
The Silver Key
January 1926
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When Randolph Carter
was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time
he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange
and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands
across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt..
Read The Silver Key
The Statement of Randolph Carter
December 1919
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Again I say, I do
not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think--almost hope--that
he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing.
It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a
partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. I will..
Read The Statement of Randolph Carter
The Strange High House in the Mist
November 1926
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In the morning,
mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and
feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of
dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still
summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of
those..
Read The Strange High House in the Mist
The Street
November 1919
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There be those who
say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they
have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.
Men of strength
and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of our blood who
had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At..
Read The Street
The Temple
January 1920
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Manuscript
Found On The Coast Of Yucatan
On August20, 1917,
I, Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, Lieutenant-Commander
in the Imperial German Navy and in charge of the submarine U-29, deposit
this bottle and record in the Atlantic Ocean at a point to me unknown..
Read The Temple
The Terrible Old Man
January 1920
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It was the design
of Angelo Ricci and Joe Czanek and Manuel Silva to call on the Terrible
Old Man. This old man dwells all alone in a very ancient house on Water
Street near the sea, and is reputed to be both exceedingly rich and exceedingly
feeble;..
Read The Terrible Old Man
The Thing on the Doorstep
August 1933
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I
It is true that
I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet
I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first
I shall be called a madman - madder than the man I shot in his cell
at the Arkham Sanitarium. Later some of my readers..
Read The Thing on the Doorstep
The Tomb
June 1917
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In relating the
circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for
the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural
doubt of the authenticity of my narrative. It is an unfortunate fact
that the bulk of humanity is too limited in its mental vision to weigh..
Read The Tomb
The Transition of Juan Romero
September 1919
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Of the events which
took place at the Norton Mine on October eighteenth and nineteenth, 1894,
I have no desire to speak. A sense of duty to science is all that impels
me to recall, in the last years of my life, scenes and happenings fraught
with a terror doubly acute because I cannot wholly define it...
Read The Transition of Juan Romero
The Tree
January 1920
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On a verdant slope
of Mount Maenalus, in Arcadia, there stands an olive grove about the
ruins of a villa. Close by is a tomb, once beautiful with the sublimest
sculptures, but now fallen into as great decay as the house. At one
end of that tomb, its curious roots displacing the time-stained blocks..
Read The Tree
The Unnamable
September 1923
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We were sitting
on a dilapidated seventeenth-century tomb in the late afternoon of an
autumn day at the old burying ground in Arkham, and speculating about
the unnamable. Looking toward the giant willow in the cemetery, whose
trunk had nearly engulfed an ancient, illegible slab, I had made a fantastic..
Read The Unnamable
The Very Old Folk
November 1927
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It was a flaming
sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of Pompelo, at
the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must have been
in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a senatorial
proconsul instead of a prætorian legate of Augustus, and the day
was the..
Read The Very Old Folk
The Whisperer in Darkness
September 1930
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I
Bear in mind closely
that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that
a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred - that last straw which
sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild
domed..
Read The Whisperer in Darkness
The White Ship
November 1919
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I am Basil Elton,
keeper of the North Point light that my father and grandfather kept
before me. Far from the shore stands the gray lighthouse, above sunken
slimy rocks that are seen when the tide is low, but unseen when the
tide is high. Past that..
Read The White Ship
What the Moon Brings
June 1922
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I hate the moon- I am afraid of it- for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and
loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
It was in the spectral
summer when the moon shone down on the old garden where I wandered;
the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage..
Read What the Moon Brings