Barzai the Wise, a high priest and prophet greatly learned in the lore of the "gods of earth", or Great Ones, attempts to scale the mountain of Hatheg-Kla in order to look upon their faces, accompanied by his young disciple Atal. Upon reaching the peak, Barzai at first seems overjoyed until he finds that the "gods of the earth" are not there alone, but rather are overseen by the "other gods, the gods of the outer hells that guard the feeble gods
The story traces the history of the eponymous street in a New England city, presumably Boston, from its first beginnings as a path in colonial times to a quasi-supernatural occurrence in the years immediately following World War I.
"The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is a short novel about a weird hybrid race of humans and creatures resembling a cross between a fish and a frog, which lives in the seaside village of Innsmouth.
The story follows Walter Gilman, who takes a room in the Witch House, an accursed house in Akham, Lovecraft's fictional New England town. The house once harbored Keziah Mason, an witch who disappeared mysteriously from a Salem jail in 1692. Gilman discovers that over the centuries most of its occupants have died prematurely. In his dreams while at the house, Gilman travels to the city of Elder Things and communes with the evil witch and her hench
The story is narrated as a "found manuscript" penned by Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, a Lieutenant Commander in the Imperial German Navy during the days of World War I. It documents his untimely end at the bottom of the ocean.
A lone traveler 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."
The story begins by describing the ancestors of Sir Arthur Jermyn, a British nobleman. His great-great-great-grandfather, Sir Wade Jermyn, had been an early explorer of the Congo region, whose books on a mysterious white civilization there had been ridiculed. He had been confined to an asylum in 1765. Lovecraft describes how the Jermyn family has a peculiar physical appearance that began to appear in the children of Wade Jermyn and his mysterious
"Ex Oblivione" is a prose poem.It is written in first person and tells of the dreams of a presumably dying man. In his dreams, the man is walking through a valley and encounters a vine-covered wall with a locked bronze gate therein. He longs to know what lies beyond the gate.
The story is told from the first person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person’s pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.
Randolph Carter discovers, at the age of 30, that he has gradually "lost the key to the gate of dreams." As he ages, he finds that his daily waking exposure to the more "practical", scientific ideas of man, has eventually eroded his ability to dream as he once did, and has made him regretfully subscribe more and more to the mundane beliefs of everyday, waking "real life". But still not certain which is truer, he sets out to determine whether the
"The Statement of Randolph Carter" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft which tells of a traumatic event in the life of Randolph Carter, a student of the occult loosely representing Lovecraft himself.
Daniel Upton, the story's narrator, begins by telling that he has killed his best friend, Edward Derby, and that he hopes his account will prove that he is not a murderer.
The narrator, hearing tales of a "lurking fear" upon Tempest Mountain in the Catskills, takes two men with him to investigate. They camp inside the deserted Martense mansion as a lightning storm approaches, and feeling strangely drowsy, they all fall asleep. The narrator wakes up to find both his companions missing, and in a flash of lightning sees a demonic shadow cast upon the fireplace chimney from a grotesque monster like the other one.
The unnamed narrator describes the final fate of his good friend, Denys Barry, an Irish-American who reclaims an ancestral estate in Kilderry, a fictional town in Ireland. Barry ignores pleas from the local peasantry not to drain the nearby bog, with unfortunate supernatural consequences.
The story is about a golden-haired youth who wanders into the city of Teloth, telling tales of the great city of Aira, where he was prince. While Iranon enjoys singing and telling his tales of wonder, few appreciate it. When a disenfranchised boy named Romnod suggests leaving Teloth to go to the famed city of Oonai (which he thinks may be Aira, now under a different name), Iranon takes him up on his offer.
The story tells of an unnamed narrator, who has moved from New England to New York City and greatly regretted it. One night, while wandering an older part of Greenwich Village, he happens upon a man strangely dressed in garments from the eighteenth century. The man offers to show the narrator the secrets of the town.
The story involves a mine that uncovers a very deep chasm, too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom. The night after the discovery of the abyss the narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside the mine, drawn against their will by a mysterious rhythmical throbbing in the ground.
Hypnos is a first-person narrative written from the perspective of an unnamed character living in Kent, England. The narrator writes that he fears sleep, and is resolved to write his story down lest it drive him further mad, regardless of what people think after reading it.
Carter, a weird fiction writer, meets with his close friend, Joel Manton, in a cemetery near an old, dilapidated house on Meadow Hill in the town of Arkham, Massachusetts. As the two sit upon a weathered tomb, Carter tells Manton the tale of an indescribable entity that allegedly haunts the house and surrounding area. He contends that because such an entity cannot be perceived by the five senses, it becomes impossible to quantify and accurately d
It is a recording of a dream, where the main protagonist is a Roman military official in the Basque country near Pompelo. The countryside is, every year, ravaged by terrible hill people who kidnap citizens and perform cruel rituals at a Sabbath. The narrator wishes to lead a military expedition to crush these hill folk, as a feeling of approaching evil has enveloped the countryside, due to a riot between the citizens and the hill people. These hi
Millenia ago, the Old Ones ruled our planet. Since that time, they have but slumbered. But when a massive sea tremor brings the ancient stone city of R'lyeh to the surface once more, the Old Ones awaken at last.
A lighthouse keeper named Basil Elton engages upon a peculiar fantasy in which a bearded man piloting a mystical white ship is found sailing upon a bridge of moonlight. Elton joins the bearded man on this ship, and together they explore a mystical chain of islands unlike anything that can be found on Earth.
