Lovecraft eZine

If you’re looking for Lovecraft audios, you’re in the right place!

Readers of this website know that I have a large Lovecraft audio collection, and as time permits, I post them to this website.  From now on, every audio I upload will also be listed below.  My goal is for this webpage to be the definitive source for free Lovecraft audios on the web.  (And no, not everything I have is here yet — it takes time — but if you sign up for email updates, you’ll know when I post new Lovecraftian audios.  Sign up at the top right of this page.)

The audios are divided into 4 categories: Lovecraft audio stories, Lovecraft audio dramas, Lovecraft-influenced audios, and Lovecraft non-fiction audios.  Let me explain:

• Lovecraft audio stories are straight-up readings of his fiction.  Most of these are high quality recordings done by excellent readers.
• Lovecraft audio dramas are stories by H.P. Lovecraft that have been converted into audio plays (aka audio drama).  An audio drama is different from an audio book; an audio drama has different actors for each character in the story, it has sound effects, music, etc.  One company calls audio drama “a movie in your mind”, and that’s a great way to think of it.
• Lovecraft-influenced audios are (for the purposes of this website) stories based on Lovecraftian themes, but not by H.P. Lovecraft himself.  You will find both audio stories and audio dramas in this category.
• Lovecraft non-fiction audios are essays, biographies, and anything else to do with Lovecraft that is not a story.

NOTE: This Lovecraft Audio page will be updated frequently.  If you want to be notified when I post new audios, then please do one or all of the following:

• Sign up for email updates (top right side of this page)
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(I have taken care to not offer anything for free that is a product for sale (such as HPLHS audios) and to give creators their due; however, if you see an audio here that you created, and you do not want it here, or want credit, please let me know by emailing me at michaeldaviswriter@gmail.com.  My goal with this webpage is simply to provide a service to my fellow Lovecraftians.)

(Also, many Lovecraft eZine stories now have audio versions.  They are not yet listed on this page; to listen to them, simply browse Lovecraft eZine issues.  If a story has an audio version, there will be a download link before each story’s text.)

Last, it’s important to note that most links below will lead to my online collection, but a few links will lead to other websites.  All Lovecraft audios are free unless otherwise indicated.

Without further ado, here are the Lovecraft audios!

LOVECRAFT AUDIO STORIES

Call of Cthulhu, The – [free download: The Call of Cthulhu, part 1 -The Call of Cthulhu, part 2]The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age…

Beyond the Wall of Sleep – [free download: Beyond the Wall of Sleep] 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—Freud to the contrary with his puerile symbolism—there are still a certain remainder whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier…

Dagon – [free download: Dagon] 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 window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death…

Haunter of the Dark, The – [free download: The Haunter of the Dark] Cautious investigators will hesitate to challenge the common belief that Robert Blake was killed by lightning, or by some profound nervous shock derived from an electrical discharge. It is true that the window he faced was unbroken, but nature has shown herself capable of many freakish performances. The expression on his face may easily have arisen from some obscure muscular source unrelated to anything he saw, while the entries in his diary are clearly the result of a fantastic imagination aroused by certain local superstitions…

Horror at Red Hook, The – [free download: The Horror at Red Hook] To Malone the sense of latent mystery in existence was always present. In youth he had felt the hidden beauty and ecstasy of things, and had been a poet; but poverty and sorrow and exile had turned his gaze in darker directions, and he had thrilled at the imputations of evil in the world around. Daily life had fur him come to be a phantasmagoria of macabre shadow-studies; now glittering and leering with concealed rottenness as in Beardsley’s best manner, now hinting terrors behind the commonest shapes and objects as in the subtler and less obvious work of Gustave Doré. He would often regard it as merciful that most persons of high Intelligence jeer at the inmost mysteries; for, he argued, if superior minds were ever placed in fullest contact with the secrets preserved by ancient and lowly cults, the resultant abnormalities would soon not only wreck the world, but threaten the very integrity of the universe. All this reflection was no doubt morbid, but keen logic and a deep sense of humour ably offset it. Malone was satisfied to let his notions remain as half-spied and forbidden visions to be lightly played with; and hysteria came only when duty flung him into a hell of revelation too sudden and insidious to escape… 

Hound, The – [free download: The Hound, part 1 - The Hound, part 2] 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.  St John is a mangled corpse; I alone know why, and such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldrith phantasy sweeps the black, shapeless Nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation…

Lurking Fear, The – [free download: The Lurking Fear, part 1 - The Lurking Fear, part 2] 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 my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in life…

Music of Erich Zann, The – [free download: The Music of Erich Zann] 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, and have personally explored every region, of whatever name, which could possibly answer to the street I knew as the Rue d’Auseil. But despite all I have done, it remains an humiliating fact that I cannot find the house, the street, or even the locality, where, during the last months of my impoverished life as a student of metaphysics at the university, I heard the music of Erich Zann… (Original recording by Yog-Sothoth)

Nameless City, The – [free download: The Nameless City] 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 deluge, this great-grandfather of the eldest pyramid; and a viewless aura repelled me and bade me retreat from antique and sinister secrets that no man should see, and no man else had dared to see…

Night Ocean, The – [free download: Download THE NIGHT OCEAN, part 1 - Download THE NIGHT OCEAN, part 2 - Download THE NIGHT OCEAN, part 3 - Download THE NIGHT OCEAN, part 4 - Download THE NIGHT OCEAN, part 5]  The Night Ocean is one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, so I asked The Lovecraft eZine audio talent if any of them would mind recording it for me.  Justin Zimmer was kind enough to record it, and I want to share it with all of you.  Justin has a great voice, and it’s a nice quality recording: In those days my mind was a place of shadowed cliffs and dark moving figures, like the ancient unsuspected realm which the fairy-tale recalled to me. I felt, in brief agonies of disillusionment, the gigantic blackness of this overwhelming universe, in which my days and the days of my race were as nothing to the shattered stars; a universe in which each action is vain and even the emotion of grief a wasted thing…

Rats In the Walls, The – [free download: The Rats In the Walls part 1 - The Rats In the Walls part 2] 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 been inhabited since the reign of James the First, when a tragedy of intensely hideous, though largely unexplained, nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants…

Thing On the Doorstep, The – [free download: The Thing On the Doorstep, part 1 - The Thing On the Doorstep, part 2] 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 will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that horror–that thing on the doorstep…

LOVECRAFT AUDIO DRAMAS

At the Mountains of Madness – [free download, At the Mountains of Madness, by ARTC - $10 download, At the Mountains of Madness, by HPLHS] I know that we’re all disappointed that the Guillermo del Toro movie has been canceled.  However, there are two audio drama versions of this story currently available, and both are very high quality.  One is free, and the other is only $10.  The free version was done by the awesome Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, and the other is done by The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

Colour Out of Space, The – [free download, The Colour Out of Space] 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. On the gentle slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs…

Chillin’ (An adaption of Cool Air) – [free download, Chillin', by 19 Nocturne Boulevard]  When eccentric recluse Simon Strong, who lives in a perpetually chilled state, vanishes (leaving some rather suspicious remains behind), his only known associate—a teenage delivery girl—is interviewed by the police!

Dunwich Horror, The – [free download, The Dunwich Horror by Suspense radio show, 1945 - $10 download, The Dunwich Horror, by HPLHS - free download, The Dunwich Horror, by 19 Nocturne Boulevard] In 1945, the radio show Suspense aired a version of The Dunwich Horror, and it’s pretty good.  You’ll also great enjoy The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society‘s awesome version, available for only $10, and 19 Nocturne Boulevard‘s version for free.

Outsider, The – [free download: The Outsider] I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, The Outsider.  The Black Mass did it as an audio drama (not simply reading the story, but with sound effects, etc.) in the 1960s, and it is fantastic.  Even if you’ve read the story, this version has an added dimension that you’ll enjoy.

Pickman’s Model – [free download, Pickman's Model]  An audio drama based on the story by H.P. Lovecraft.

Rats in the Walls, The – [free download, The Rats in the Walls] The best audio version of this story that I have ever heard — from the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company.

Shadow Over Innsmouth, The – [free download: The Shadow Over Innsmouth part 1, The Shadow Over Innsmouth part 2, by ARTC - $10 download, The Shadow Over Innsmouth by HPLHS] As with AtMoM, there are two audio drama versions of this story currently available, and both are very high quality.  One is free, and the other is only $10.  The free version was done by the awesome Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, and the other is done by The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

Temple, The – [free download: The Temple, by 19 Nocturne Boulevard]  The crew of a WWI U-boat finds that some danger runs…. very deep.

Thing on the Doorstep, The – [free download, The Thing on the Doorstep, by 19 Nocturne Boulevard] A man marries a woman who really wants his body.

Within the Walls of Eryx – [free download, Within the Walls of Eryx, by 19 Nocturne Boulevard]  A young man joins the crystal prospectors on the steamy jungle planet we know as Venus – only to find that things are not always what they look like.

LOVECRAFT-INFLUENCED AUDIOS

Allure – [free download: Allure] By Josh Wagner.  This story first appeared in Lovecraft eZine issue #2.  When the creature washed up on our shore, I was among the first witnesses…

Different Morecambe, A – [free download: A Different Morecambe: part one - part two] – By Simon Kurt Unsworth, read by the awesome Morgan Scorpion.  This story first appeared in Lovecraft eZine issue #2.  “I don’t want to go to this Morecambe. I want to go to a different Morecambe…”

Horla, The – [free download: The Horla] Based on a 1887 short horror story written in the style of a journal by French writer Guy de Maupassant, and cited by some as a possible inspiration for Cthulhu.  This audio drama was done by The CBS Radio Mystery Theater in 1974.

Night in Malnéant, A – [free download at cthulhuwho1.com: A Night in Malnéant] Fritz Leiber reads this Clark Ashton Smith story at the 1977 World Fantasy Convention.

Some Unknown Gulf of Night, chapter 22 – [free download: Some Unknown Gulf of Night] Here’s a special treat from Lovecraftian author W.H. Pugmire: Voice talent Morgan Scorpion reads chapter 22 from Some Unknown Gulf of Night!  This chapter is a standalone story, so enjoy.

The Thing, AKA Who Goes There? – [free download: The Thing, AKA Who Goes There?] An audio drama version of The Thing, a story with several Lovecraftian themes.

When the Stars are Right – [free download: When the Stars are Right: part one - part two] Lovecraftian story by William Meikle.  Scientists have found a new source of energy – but why do they need a priest and a medieval historian?

LOVECRAFT NON-FICTION AUDIOS

Audio Biography of H.P. Lovecraft – [free download: H.P. Lovecraft Biography] Enjoy this excellent audio biography of H.P. Lovecraft by Geoff Ward, with commentary by Neil Gaiman and others.

Interview With S.T. Joshi – [free download: S.T. Joshi Interview] Changesurfer Radio interviews Lovecraft expert S.T. Joshi.  This is a very thought-provoking interview.

The Young Man of Providence – [free download: The Young Man of Providence] Biographical narration by Hugh Burden, quotes from Lovecraft’s letters by David March (as if spoken by Lovecraft), and excerpts from Lovecraft’s stories.