/r/Lovecraft
Dedicated to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this is your stop for all of his outstanding works and weird fiction in general!
Dedicated to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this is your stop for all of his outstanding works and weird fiction in general!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
Rules
Keep discussion civil
No restricted content such as: memes, tattoos, jokes, apparel, AI images, etc.
Submissions must be directly related to Lovecraft, his work, and contemporaries.
Artwork posts are only allowed to be posted under certain restrictions.
Please read the sidebar before asking where to begin reading.
All self-promotion must be disclosed and kept within reasonable limits. Selling artwork, merch, or similar items is prohibited.
Use spoiler tags where appropriate.
Spoiler formatting
>!Spoiler!< will appear as Spoiler
Violation of the rules will result in post removal and in some cases bans.
It helps to report instances of spam and posts/comments that break the rules.
If you have any questions about the rules, please don't hesitate to message the moderators.
For the full list of rules please check the wiki
Where do I start?
HP Lovecraft wrote short and unconnected stories. Technically speaking you can read them at random. However for the best experience it's recommended that you read them in chronological order by date written or in most cases, just pick up a book and read left to right.
If you really just want to read the 'greatest hits' then you can browse the subreddit's top picks.
Where can I read Lovecraft?
With very few exceptions, Lovecraft's entire body of work is in the public domain and can be read online for free from numerous sources. We suggest the HP Lovecraft Archive.
What book do I buy?
Please consult the spreadsheet for an overview of a large number of physical books. The most popular collections are generally the Knickerbocker edition and Barnes and Noble varieties.
All Lovecraft's stories can be found here
The subreddit's favorite picks
Brown University's HPL Collection (manuscripts, letters, etc)
Complete archive of Weird Tales magazine by /u/legofan94
Spreadsheet for help determining which physical collection to purchase.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein
Tentaclii : H.P. Lovecraft blog
The Complete Works in various eformats here.
Reviews of Lovecraftian games by /u/Avatar-of-Chaos
S.T. Joshi answers reddit's questions:
Related Subreddits
/r/Cimmeria (Robert E Howard)
Please note that this is not the place to post your own personal glimpses of insanity. Content not related to Lovecraft [e.g. ranting, gibberish, hallucinations] should not be posted here. If you feel that you have been touched unnecessarily by eldritch forces, find a sanitarium near you that can restore 1d4 SAN per week.
For information on art used in the sidebar please check the wiki.
/r/Lovecraft
Guayota is a 3D Puzzle Adventure game developed by Team Delusion and published by Dear Villagers for Steam on the 13^(th) of August, 2024, and by Plug in Digital on the Nintendo Switch. As of the 15^(th) of August, 2024, the version is 1.0.10.
Made in Unreal Engine.
The story follows an unnamed expedition member searching for the fabled Saint Brendan's Island by the Crown, which, according to legend, is said to be Paradise on Earth. The expedition sailed to the Island of Tenerife to gather information—the islanders speak of an island to the west, and only to get there is to let the tide sweep them. Westward, the group gazes upon a thick fog, venturing through it—folding the sail and arriving at an Island: this counts for the prologue while the story continues through the gameplay, the expedition researching the Island's temples.
The narrator and the writing are phenomenal. Sarah Nightingale provided the narration. There is a bit of backstory with each expedition member, indulging in their occupation and relationship with each other. Nicolás part is essential as a chronicler—he forwards the story after obtaining all the information. The narrative graphics reminisce of a children's book with shadowy characters while the gameplay is cel-shaded, keeping the look from the counterpart. The music is relaxing and eerie at times.
Puzzles halve into two modes, the Real World and the Plane of Madness, with increasing difficulty and size—flicking the camera to see beyond and a button can highlight devices.
Each Temple follows a specific theme containing different puzzle arrangments and traps, with a mural at the end of each room. The puzzles consist of alighting objects with a source of light—a fluorescent rock, fire or lasers—to cross bridges or through a threshold. These are activated after reaching a requirement (mark next to gaps and doors). The traps spray water to extinguish the unnamed explorer's torch after three hits—plunging them into a world of darkened madness. In more challenging rooms, there is an Oil basin. However, I find the second Temple's wall trap frustrating. It adds another dart for each alighted object. Getting hit is unavoidable.
The unnamed explorer isn't alone in the Temple; a Maxio joins them—blessing a dash ability.
The Plane of Madness follows different hindrances and designs, but there are no traps and plenty of invisible walls. Obstacles clash with the themes, preventing alighting objects. Some walls change state when walking or dashing through. Doors close and open when holding an oil canister or a rock. And flowers blocking lasers.
"They stay and never wander elsewhere."
The final Temple's mismatched themes use the objects in other ways, introducing a new mobile trap, the Tibicenas—it is oddly aware of my location, and sometimes the pathfinding breaks.
Saint Brendan's Island is a Phantom Island named after Saint Brendan, who claimed to have landed on it in 512 AD with 14 monks, with whom he celebrated a Mass. On the Island, these monks end up discovering murals, reinterpreting them under the context of Catholicism. While in the Plane of Madness, these murals described the mythology of the Guanches, the former Indigenous inhabitants of the Canary Islands. Each Temple worships a Guanche deity: Magec, the Deity of the Sun and Light; Achamán, the Creator; Chaxiraxi, the Deity of Fertility.
"Change."
Cosmic Horror is initially light builds over time, a Madness-causing Darkness that puts explorers into a trance-like state and exposes the murals' truth. Saint Brendan and his monks found something evil that could only be the Devil within the Mountain slab—worshipped by the Ancient Canarians, Guayota, a Malignant Deity of the Underworld. Guayota once imprisoned Magec inside Teide, plunging the world into Darkness. The Guanches prayed to Achamán to save Magec and instead imprison Guayota within Teide.
Guayota's Cosmic Horror is recontextualising the original myth. It reminds me of a quote by Algernon Blackwood that introduces Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (1928). Guanche Mythology incorporates a characteristic of the entity; it expels black smoke that causes agony or induces a trance-like state—depending on the individual. Guayota's myth appears primarily truthful, with deviations from Gunaches belief. The murals veer into the future—displaying the unnamed adventurer examining other murals and their duality. And a prophecy by Achamán, much as you might expect it to be.
Guayota has two endings—one with the entity free and the other with restored seals. In the Alive Ending, one scene is missing text.
Duality plays a more significant role in the final section with the addition of portals, providing an extra layer to puzzle-solving.
Guayota is a challenging 3D Puzzler with an engaging Cosmic Horror narrative and setting inspired by the Canary Islands' Myths—searching for a fabled Paradise on Earth that should have remained a phantom among legends.
Guayota gets a strong recommendation.
The HPLHS's silent film "The Call of Cthulhu" just dropped on Tubi. Yeah, I know, Tubi ugh. But it's a film rarely found in the wilds of streaming services -- I've only watched it on my personal DVD -- and, being an HPLHS product, it's very (but not perfectly) faithful adaptation of Lovecraft's story. It's silent, as mentioned above, but that kinda fits in with era and mood of the story.
I couldnt get it when i read; From the perspective of the guys who found him, he had a heart attack due the fear and panick, but... the fly's countdown was predicting the heart attack? predicting the future? or it was caused by the disease? but is said the disease could last several mounths before the patient die... or maybe, at the end of the countdown did the fly became or do some horror and it leads the MC to have a heart attack? or maybe was due to some mistake with the chemistries he was using? but these things implies the fly can take his target's soul even if he did not die due the disease.... this is kinda weird, i mean... in a regular day, a guy who was inffected but didnt realize it yet, can be hit by a truck and SUPRISE, now he's a fly!
Theres any consensus to how he died? or the did text make it clear and i'm just dumb?
I really enjoyed the Call of Cthulhu silent short and Whisperer in the Darkness film.
Are there any other movies in black in white like these?
A friend has set a Lovecraftian themed puzzle for me and I think it might be a book cypher for a particular edition of King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, but it will take too long to order from Amazon. Does anyone own this copy and would be able to send me photos of a couple pages? Thanks so much!!
EDIT: Resolved, thanks anyway! was able to use Amazon "look inside" and lucked out by getting to view helpful pages. Puzzle solved.
i know that things from the void get repelled by it but i have never met with an instance of a shoggoth being in any way connected to the void or the other gods, so it confused me when in some media i saw them being affected by it
Title
A little heads up, i'm still fairly new to "reading" I started reading a little bit last year and I got my kindle this month and i've been reading a bit. There's this game I really love which has a very gothic and dark environment and i've heard that Lovecraft has a lot of this, so I dug around and I found two different versions of The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and I'm not sure what makes them different other than one being longer. I'm not sure if The Complete Fiction is a good starter or not but feel free to leave suggestions on where to start if this isn't a good starting point. Here are the the two editions that i'm curious about:
The shorter one and here is the longer one
I just re-read "The Colour Out of Space" for the first time in over a decade, and it's just as impressive as I recalled, but one thing I never quite understood is how the colour out of space is visible to the characters in the story. Perhaps I missed some vital piece of information in the text, but could someone please elucidate if possible?
The titular colour, if I understand correctly, lies outside the visible spectrum. If that's the case, then it means the characters in the story were able to perceive that which was formerly imperceptible. Is this because of the effect the alien thing had on the minds of the people in its vicinity; the effect which, in the case of the Gardner family, resulted ultimately in madness? Did the alien thing from the meteorite globule somehow "activate" a dormant sense organ in the human eye or brain, not unlike the Resonator machine in "From Beyond" activating the dormant pineal gland, enabling people to see the formerly unseen?
Or am I completely off track?
Is it rather the case that the colour out of space is actually within the visible spectrum, and humans had the ability to view it all along, and simply didn't, because the alien colour was never before present on earth in any form, and scientists therefore never had the knowledge necessary to include it in what they understood to be the visible spectrum?
Or, is it rather the case that there is no definite answer, and Lovecraft left the matter intentionally ambiguous so that still we would be contemplating the issue nearly a century after the story was written, here on this blasphemous monstrosity called the Internet?... Perhaps that.
Hopefully my question makes sense and someone can elucidate.
Anything worth watching?
I want to start with Lovecraftian literature but I wonder where should I start reading.Any book or movie or something else that you could recommend me?
I don't want to rewrite Cthulhu, but I like mystery and cosmic horror. I have a few ideas but I want to understand it before I make a galactic mistake. Any tips?
Greetings. I've found several maps of Arkham, most of them are similar, couple are a bit different. Is there a universally accepted Arkham map standard, or every contributor to Lovecraft Horror Universe makes their own version?
Hey guys. I noticed that I’ve kept a considerable amount of essays on the subject of Gothic and Cosmic horror from one of my lit classes at university. Many of which discuss Lovecraft. By chance, do you know of any horror journals/online magazines where I could possibly submit some for publication? Thanks a lot lads
In reading At the mountains of madness I was struck by this passage
It interested us to see in some of the very last and most decadent sculptures a shambling primitive mammal, used sometimes for food and sometimes as an amusing buffoon by the land dwellers, whose vaguely simian and human foreshadowings were unmistakable.
Do the Elder Things have a sense of humor? Now I know many mammals and birds can be quite playful, so I could see a sapient species descended from canines or corvids developing something approximating a sense of humor. It seems odd that such alien creatures as the Elder Things would have such a human quality .
Just what exactly would they find funny in those shambling mammals ? Humans find simians to be amusing buffoons, but I think that is due to the many similarities they share with us (we don't typically find arthropods to be funny)
As the title says. I just want lovecraftian country/folk like music for inspiration for a DnD thing I am doing. I have Marah and the Mainsail, Coyote Kid, Those Poor Bastards, and some songs by the Aviators even though it's not folksy.
I'm doing a dnd oneshot that takes place on a mysterious lighthouse with some sort of enchanter monster, hiding deep underneath the waters, forcing the players to distrust one another. What more can I do to make the setting feel more lovecraftian?
I’m planning to attend the HP Lovecraft Film Festival/CthulhuCon in Portland, OR during October 4th-6th. Checking their website, I don’t see any information about ordering tickets yet. There is a note to sign up for their mailing list but AFAIK no communications have been sent out yet. Does anybody know when tickets actually go on sale (or maybe they are already and I just don’t know about it)?
Hey gang! I while ago (maybe 3 years or so?) I read a series of blog posts. Each one examined a different Lovecraftian deity, and explored what kind of people might worship those deities. For example, it talked about how Shub-Niggurath worshippers might tend towards ecofacism, etc. I remember that post also quoted Walt Whitman's 'When I heard the learn'd astronomer'. I think the blog also talked about how people drawn to the King in Yellow might have a desire for some greater narrative purpose to their life, even if that narrative is a tragedy.
I could have sworn the posts were all titled something like, "understanding egregores" but that's not turning up any results.
Any leads as to what the hell I'm looking for? I'm starting to suspect the posts have been taken down; so alternatively, does anyone have a Wayback Machine link?
It happened to occur to me recently that, while the shoggoths in At the Mountains of Madness are often viewed by literary critics through the lens of Lovecraft's racism, I can't help but see parallels between the Antarctic shoggoths and modern artificial intelligence (AI). They have no proper intelligence of their own, but can mimic it by copying their creators. Originally used for their convenience, they gradually go beyond control and eventually replace the Old Ones. They even create subpar, nonsensical "art" by mimicking their creators' artworks! Just thought I'd share.
Delta Green is a TTRPG that takes the foundation of the Lovecraft mythos and Call of Cthulhu RPG and expands I to a secret government conspiracy to stomp out the unnatural before the general public discovers it's existence.
Ancient history is unearthed. And the Agents find the site where their targets appear to have relocated their operations.
Sorry, Honey, I Have To Take This features serious horror-play with comedic OOC, original/unpublished content, original musical scores and compelling narratives.
On whichever of platforms that you prefer:
[Apple - Sorry Honey, I Have To Take This](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sorry-honey-i-have-to-take-this/id1639828653)
[Spotify - Sorry Honey, I Have To Take This](https://open.spotify.com/episode/4hQnNPVujDBqyC3mR9ftzN?si=3f8798b5dc0d4c51)
[Stitcher - Sorry Honey, I Have To Take This](https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sorry-honey-i-have-to-take-this)
We post new episodes every other Wednesday @ 8am CST.
Please check it out and let us know what you think on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/SorryHoneyCast).
Hang with us on [Discord](https://discord.gg/dbVJTA5b).
We also share media on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/sorryhoneypodcast)
We hope you like it :)
I'm going on a late holiday trip and since I've already read all of Lovecraft's stories like five times, I thought I could branch out a little. I'm specifically looking for something either on Spotify or free to download somewhere online.
All the games being based on the same thing over and over is getting old and I want games based of the Man in Yellow and the others rather than just a reference
Alright weird fiction fans. I've been trying to find a short story that I thought I read in a Lovecraft collection more than 20 years ago. If anyone finds it, I'd be surprised as I don't have many details.
What I recall (I think) is that there was a man riding by a horse drawn carriage through the night and he was stopped for some reason and his attention turned towards the sky.
Something he saw or felt caused him to race through the night towards home and upon arrival it was found that some kind of liquid or substance had bored a hole through his skull.
I'm hazy on all these details of course. Any ideas?
I played a game years ago that was about the call of cthulu and i loved it and then i got into the actual writings awhile back and im slowly making my way through most of them. So far dagon is my fav. Cthulu was alright but dagon felt more vivid and i had already known too much of cthulu to fully get the unknown feel. I still have a cthulu poster tho as the concept is still my favourite of any Being ive imagined. But besides those two mediums, i dont know how else i can immerse myself in the lovecraftian universe that i know has expanded a lot after his passing. What do u recommend?
Definitely not Charles Stross’s Laundry books, but similar. I remember reading one but now I can’t remember the title or author. Does this ring a bell for anybody?