r/Lovecraft

I was reading some biographical details on Lovecraft's personal life when I read that she moved to Los Angeles. A bit more digging and I found her grave site. What struck me was how bare her grave was. I expected a few rocks left as a sign that someone had visited but her grave was completely bereft. The Home of Peace Memorial Park itself was well maintained and the staff were patient with me in locating her plot.

I have pictures but for some reason posting them has been disabled.

Researching for a cosmic horror tabletop campaign set on the American frontier (disclosure: my own project, and that's the last you'll hear of it, this post is about the fiction), I went looking for how much of the West exists in the Mythos canon. The answer is: one story, and Lovecraft was embarrassed by it.

"The Transition of Juan Romero" (written 1919, unpublished in his lifetime) has everything the subgenre would later be built on: a Western mine, a blasting operation that opens a gulf the engineers cannot sound, drums from below, and a workforce that understands before the educated narrator does. HPL considered it minor work and never submitted it anywhere. It only saw print after his death.

What strikes me rereading it is that the story's engine is economic. Nobody in it is a cultist. The abyss is opened by a mining company doing exactly what mining companies do: dynamiting deeper because the vein pays. That feels like the most honestly American mechanism for cosmic horror ever put on the frontier, greed as an unwitting summoning ritual, and Lovecraft got there decades before the weird west became a genre label. "The Colour Out of Space" works the same soil from the other side: the rural family that stays on poisoned land because leaving costs too much.

So, two questions for the room. First: is Juan Romero underrated, or was Lovecraft right that it's apprentice work? The prose is rough, but the bones seem ahead of their time. Second: what's the best Mythos or Mythos-adjacent fiction actually set in the American West? I know the anthology scene has touched it (and CAS set work in California), but I suspect this community knows corners of it I haven't found.

I just watched the new Minions movie, and a cute version of Cthulhu shows up—plus, there’s a pair of monsters named Howard & Phillips. Some Lovecraftian tropes are present too, and in the end, >!the Minions defeat Cthulhu and imprison him with an arcane spell, saving the world.!< Absolute cinema.

Yesterday I watched Guillermo del Toro’s mini-series Cabinet of Curiosities, which dedicates two episodes to adapt two Lovecraft stories, Pickman’s Model and Dreams in the Witch House.

These aren’t really completely faithful adaptations – they expand the stories a lot, adding new characters and scenes, and, I must say, they are quite shocking and gory for someone who may not be used to horror. Not sure what HPL would make of them, honestly. For the most part though, they maintain the spirit of the original stories.

The series is generally awesome, and short, just 8 eps long, so I recommend it.

I certainly didn't expect Cthulhu to be pronounced like that.

While some may see it as a thick-headed tactic based on "Just tell us what the monster looks like already, Howard!", I honestly think a truly creative director who says "'Unspeakable horrors', you say? Is that a challenge?" would be able to make a far more engaging and even a more horrific film if given the budget to make it.

The most "Lovecraftian" experience I've ever had in a movie wasn't even in a horror/suspense film. It was in the Marvel film Doctor Strange. The shifting landscapes and perspectives created by the dueling magic-users was disorienting to me. I could see everything on-screen in perfect clarity, but even so I struggled to comprehend it. I've never felt like that before: No blurry backgrounds or shadows to hide anything, and yet visual understanding eluded me. Now transpose that mental response onto a "monster" design, and I think you might have cracked a code.

Hello, I saw this book on Amazon, and it seems like a sequel to Shadow over Innsmouth. Has anyone seen it?

I'm endlessly curious about the origin of ideas like this, one of the most compelling things about Lovecraft are the ideas he originated and other, older ideas he brought under one roof.

Aklo is something he inherited from prior works, and supposedly the trail for that begins with Arthur Machens The White People. But the off-hand way they're mentioned in that story feels more like a reference to a pre-existing concept which Machen appreciates. It reminds me of the way in which Lovecraft referenced The King in Yellow.

I guess my question is, if we *are* sure that Machen wholly invented Aklo, what were his inspirations? How did he conceptualise that? And if we aren't sure of that, then from where else might they have been derived?

My interest is mostly just because of how much I enjoy Aklo conceptually. A pseudo-sentient language, inherently corrupting, an undercurrent to all post-babel language which more closely aligns with the fundamental symbolic elements of the cosmos. It's like the perfect Lovecraftian take on the Lingua Adam when done right.

I'd just like to have as firm a grasp on the fundamental basis of the idea as possible.

Hi, I'm compiling a list of all the Lovecraftian TV episodes I can find. Direct adaptations or simple "vibes" are all welcome.

Rod Serling's Night Gallery (1969)

-Pickman's Model -Cool Air

-The Return of the Sorcerer

Kolchak (1974)

-They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be...

-Horror in the Heights

Space 1999 (1975)

-Dragon's Domain

The Tomorrow People (1977)

-The Heart of Sogguth: Beat the Drum

Il fascino dell'insolito (1980)

-La cosa sulla soglia

The Twilight Zone (1985)

-Gramma

The Real Ghost Busters (1986)

-The Collect Call of Cthulhu

Justice League (2001)

-The Terror Beyond I & II

Masters of Horror (2005)

-Dreams in the Witch-House

-The Fair-Haired Child

True Detective (2014)

Creepshow (2019)

-The Things in Oakwood's Past

Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022)

-Graveyard Rats

-The Autopsy

-Pickman's Model

-Dreams in the Witch House

THE OFICIAL LIST (THANKS!):

https://www.imdb.com/es-es/list/ls4110126627/?ref_=uspf_t_2

Hear me out. This is like, a weirdly specific thing to rant about but it's not what it sounds like:

"Did you know that HP Lovecraft was actually like, really racist?"

Yes, we know, it's like the MOST well known thing about him. Why do people keep talking about Lovecraft's racism as if it's this obscure fact that's been brushed under the rug? This isn't like Mother Tereasa secretly doing bad things (which she did)

Please understand, my gripe isn't with people dislike Lovecraft for his racism, that's valid. My gripe is specifically that a lot of people who talk about his racism usually do it as if it was this super unknown side of him. It isn't.

Lovecraft was never subtle about his bigotry. He seemed to have worn it on his sleeve, and it's really obvious from his work.

Does anyone see where I'm coming from? Actual Lovecraft experts please let me know if you've observed this when he's been discussed in academic circles. I noticed it a lot in Uni. Again, I'm not annoyed with people talking about his racism, I'm annoyed that people think we don't already know about it.

Think about it. The reasons why you go insane in Lovecraftian Mythos are either:

A. You’re completely unable to comprehend whats in front of you.

B. You’re forced to comprehend something “You were not meant to.”

But consider: These were people in like the early 1900s.

If you just slapped a few tentacles and flesh onto some of our modern day tech, it would fit right in with the Mythos.

”This thing made of stone and metal can force you to see other planes that arent physically possible and allows you to walk through them” VR headset

”There’s a Mirror that can show you a practically infinite amount of information that you would never be able to fully explore even in 100 lifetimes.” Phones, Computers, and the Internet

”There are things that print meat that can come alive” 3D Printed Organs

”A giant Necropolis of metal and screaming electricity that drains water, screams at the top of its lungs, and whose heart burns you alive if you approach too closely” AI data Centers or a Nuclear Reactor

”A weapon that melts flesh and metal with equal ease by literally bringing a star to earth to burn entire cities to ash, where the dead are lucky, as those who initially survive will slowly rot away and melt as they excrete their own organs” The Nuclear Bomb

”There is a perfect sphere of Darkness in the center of our local cosmos and in every other cosmic sphere; Nothing, not even light escapes it, Time and Space become entangled near it to the point they switch roles, it constantly hungers but can never be filled, with a heart that has no size but is infinitely dense. It will outlive everything else in the known universe, even the stars will have long blinked out and they will only be gone after a number of years that is a value of 10 followed by 100 zeros.” A Black Hole

By this point, maybe the Square Hole of our mind has been stretched just enough that you can at least jam the Round Peg in there without *completely* obliterating the Hole…

Right?

Like yeah, they‘d probably be “rocking on the floor sucking their thumb and will need years of extensive therapy” mentally shattered, but maybe not “Screaming and rambling in unknown tongues while clawing their eyes out and will spend the rest of their short life in a mental institution” levels of insane.

just got the complete fiction and everything is in release order. Just read the early works and I want to know what is actually worth reading. Dagon was really good, but i’m not really in the mood to read something like the alchemist or the beast in the cave. Yes, they’re fun stories, but I just don’t think it’s what i wanna read right now. should i just jump into the call of cthulhu or the mountains of madness?

Hey everyone! Hope you're all well.

I'm just about to finish Mountains of Madness and I'm loving it! I'm trying to decide what to read next. I've already read Dagon and CoC.

I'm thinking maybe Shadow Over Innsmouth since I already have it downloaded, but I didn't get very far into it on my last attempt, so I'm thinking maybe something different. However, I'm more in the swing of things with Lovecraft now, so maybe my feelings will be otherwise if I restart it.

In any case, what are y'all's other recommendations for what to read next?

In H.P. Lovecraft's lore, "Drowners" are a parasitic group of entities within the Cthulhu Mythos. They feed on the life force of other cosmic gods. First detailed in the expanded mythos, these alien parasites are closely associated with the Outer God Yibb-Tstll.

How many stories are they in? And how come as a Fan of Lovecraft's Circle work I just heard of it? What exactly is their goal besides of course feeding?

And while it's probably stupid question could I use The Term for my own works? (Although I suspect no since it seems like it's a new thing).

Very aware of Cthulhu and his ilk from public consciousness and their inclusion in media and video games. Very into horror podcasts and the like (Magnus Archives, Old Gods of Appalachia, etc. I'm also a big fan of The Lovecraft Investigations, which kind of got me started on all this). I've recently started a Lovecraft journey through podcasts of people reading his works. I listened through At The Mountains of Madness as a standalone (I read it years back but am revisiting everything now) and I'm now starting the HorrorBabble podcast readings of Cthulhu mythos works.

Is it just me or is everyone in the Lovecraft world just terrified of everything? Maybe I'm being dense, but I feel like it would be like having a cryptid sighting or something, like running into Big Foot or the Mothman - I'd be freaked out for a bit and need some time to process, but I feel like a Lovecraft character experiencing the same thing would have a nervous breakdown and be institutionalized. Like the narrator in Mountains was just terrified of every strange carving and structure. I feel like I'd be more in awe and filled with excitement where he'd filled with terror and dread just looking at a mountain range. Granted I'm not very far in anything, but is it the pull of the old ones making people go insane, or is this Lovecraft's own instabilities bleeding into the page? I know he was a troubled man in a lot of ways, so I wonder if he assumed this is how everyone was and poured that into his characters?

(Also, if there are other horror podcasts you'd recommend that fit the general genre I'm down for a listen.)