Hi there. This website gets hundreds of visits every day, and while I know some of you, I’m sure I don’t know most of you. And while the main focus of this website is the magazine issues, another benefit is getting to know others who share your love of H.P. Lovecraft’s works.
So… who are you? How did you become interested in Lovecraft? Which of his stories is your favorite? What are your thoughts on the themes in Lovecraft’s work? Etc., etc., etc. Comment below!
(By the way — the June issue will be online on the 9th, and as promised will include two stories featuring Sherlock Holmes!)
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The Lovecraft eZine 
It was 40 odd years ago that a copy of Lancer’s The Dunwich Horror wlth that glorious watercolor cover of Wilber jumped off the shelf at Anderson’s Books and told me to read it. I was hooked. When I eventually read The Temple I realized that I had actually read it before when I was about 10.
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I’m the compiler of the Cthulhu Mythos Bibliography and Concordance and a regular visitor at, and patron of, http://www.yog-sothoth.com.
First HPL exposure was through Wise and Fraser’s classic 1944 antho, Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, found in the local library; had both “The Rats in the Walls” and “The Dunwich Horror”. It sent me to the librarians to find more stories by this author. We didn’t have any of the Arkham House books, so I hunted down individual stories in scattered collections — obvious training for my future project.
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I’m oddly shaped fruit that enjoys the mythos.
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I first became aware of HPL early in 1959, when I was in the 8th grade. One night, my father brought home a paperback collection called CRY HORROR, which contained eleven of the master’s tales, and he made a big thing about how great the writer was. I wasn’t quite ready for it at the time — I managed to read through “The Lurking Fear,” but it was not until the spring of 1961 that I picked up the book again, and this time, I read all the stories through — and wanted more! Of those in the book, the ones that “grabbed” me the most were “The Shunned House,” “The Hound,” “The Nameless City,” “Pickman’s Model,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” and especially “The Colour Out of Space.”
Unfortunately, much of HPL’s work was out of print then and hard to find, and one’s best bet was to check out anthologies which might reprint one or two of the stories. In this way, over the next few years, I got to read “The Rats in the Walls,” “The Dunwich Horror,” and “The Shadow Out of Time.” Also, I acquired a copy of the Arkham House collection entitled THE SHUTTERED ROOM AND OTHERS, and thus I read “The Outsider,” “Dagon,” and one or two others. That same book contained some critical articles with references to a number of other yarns, and I despaired of ever being able to read them.
At last, in the early 60s, Arkham House began to bring out new editions of HPL’s works, and when I bought THE DUNWICH HORROR AND OTHERS, I was finally able to read such masterpieces as “The Whisperer in Darkness,” “The Haunter of the Dark,” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth.” Within a few years, I had the other two omnibus volumes that the publisher put out, and thus for the first time I had all of the master’s work at my disposal.
It’s hard to make a balanced evaluation of his work as a whole, since that is such a subjective matter. I never warmed up to the short Dunsanian stories, but I found THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH quite absorbing, though not particularly horrifying. Of the other novels, AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS, though well written, did not appeal to me much, but I love THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, despite a few problems with some of the details of the story. Of course, I like all the other stories that I mentioned in the paragraphs above. It is good to see that HPL has acquired ever greater significance in the past few decades, and I hope his reputation remains as high as ever.
By the way, while I admit that he was clearly a voluminous letter-writer, I don’t believe he wrote anything near the 100,000 of them that some people have claimed. Of course, if a huge stash of them should turn up some day and the count is somewhere near that, I might change my opinion, but for the moment — highly unlikely!
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Well, I read Lovecraft avidly as a young’un, but only became interested again these last few years when I started collecting audio files of Lovecraft’s stories. There have been hundreds of readings throughout the years, many of them public domain, plus a handful of (usually very well done) radio plays and dramatizations. It’s astonishing how much Lovecraft enthusiasts have done with the authors works over the years.
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Hello Mike you are already aware of the content of the last two paragraphs.
Ray Harryhausen’s Ymir and a teenage werewolf stalked the silver screen. Jim Warren had published a little magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland. And me, in addition to watching said films and reading said magazine I was also reading Science Fiction and Horror stories.
In one particular anthology of horror fiction I came across a story called the “The Thing on the Doorstep”. So it was that sometime in the late 50s I became acquainted with the work of H P Lovecraft.
This tale had obviously made a deep impression on my adolescent mind, for it was then that I began to deliberately seek out more of HPL’s stories. Without being aware of any connection with Lovecraft I was also drawn to the works of Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, and Fritz Leiber.
It would not be until the early 70s that I, like many others, became aware of the writings of Robert E Howard firstly through reprints of the Conan stories and then somewhat later through anthologies of his other tales. It would not be until later in that decade that I became aware of the links between these authors.
Like many others At the Mountains of Madness is high on my list. But I still find some of the short stories more gripping. I particularly like old standards such as the Dunwich Horror, Dreams in the Witch House, and the afore mentioned Thing on the Doorstep. The shame is that like Howard he probably died before realising his full potential, which most annoyingly leaves us with a good deal of frustrating conjecture as to how is work would develop.
His were the first supernatural horror stories I had encountered which were refreshingly free of any Judaeo-Christian overtones. The concept of reality being a mere veneer preventing humanity becoming aware of a universe inimical to its continued existence , was such a welcome change to. the traditional tales of good versus evil.
Sadly on my many moves from residence to residence the bulk of my paperback collection was lost, but I do manage to get to replace some of the losses every so often.
Then it was 1986 and I was tasked with illustrating various Mythos entities for the stats tables of the Games Workshop/Chaosium 3rd edition of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. Some I was quite happy with, others much less so. The overall verdict is OK-ish.
Some of the influence certainly found its way into GWs The Realm of Chaos game book illustrations.
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A fan in Portland,OR.
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I woke up in a Soho doorway, a policeman knew my name.
He said you can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up a walk away.
I staggered back to the underground and the breeze blew back my hair
I remember throwin punches around and preachin from my chair…
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Hello!
I’m genuinely less interested in Lovecraft than in the ways he’s currently being remixed and reused.
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I’m an aspiring writer both in books and on screen, a film director, and an actor. I deeply enjoy writing, but aim towards making millions on film sets and through movies and risiduals.
My favourite subject more than anything on Earth is that of dreams. I love everything about them. They offer the impossible.
I’m a fan of elegant, divine stories, and my favourite Lovecraftian tale is “Through The Gates of The Silver Key,” which blows my fucking mind every time I read it.
I believe in a contrast. I write both beautiful and horrible things. I embrace my humanity, my vulnerability, and thus write closely to my heart, however I’m feeling at the time.
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I’m a college student in California, with a deep-seated interest in all things horror. Since I research the things I’m interested in, I couldn’t help but find out about Lovecraft, and the massive impact he’s had on current luminaries- Stephen King and Neil Gaiman have both written some impressive Lovecraft fanfics, among others. I am impressed by the way his mythos has only continued to grow since long after he stopped writing, and, of course, I adore his unnecessarily sesquipedalian word usage. You’d think a “gibbous moon” was a terrible thing, until you realize it’s just the opposite of a crescent moon.
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AlanDP of Blogonomicon here. You left a comment on my blog a few days ago. I discovered HPL via a collection of his titled “The Shadow Over Innsmouth and Other Tales of Terror” (or something like that) published by Scholastic Book Club which was in our junior high library and which I read when I was 13 years old or so. Then I sort of rediscovered him again by accident in my mid-20’s when I came across some of his stuff in a local bookstore and thought: Hey, this is that guy I read back in 7th grade…
I’ve written some stuff, too, but I consider myself only an amateur writer and do it for fun.
Favorites are The Colour Out of Space, Innsmouth and The Outsider, the last of which blew me away when I was 13.
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Um…I’m me. I write. I do a lot of things that have to do with the internet and computers and have acronyms that most people don’t understand. I am interested in odd subjects like mathematical logic and have two degrees in philosophy, both with honors (one with high honors) that have done nothing for my career one way or the other. I got into Lovecraft when I was a kid…I bought the novelization of “Ghostbusters” at my fifth-grade book fair and in it Egon makes reference to the Necronomicon. I looked the word up, the rest was history. As a I learned of his influence on some of my favorite writers of the time (Stephen King, Clive Barker, et al), I started reading everything I could get my grubby little hands on, until I had read it all up.
Then I angsted and wailed and moaned, like Alexander upon seeing no more lands to conquer, at the lack of anything to read. Then, having been bitten by the writing bug already, I started writing my own little tales of cosmic horror. Originally awful, the years honed my work to the acceptably mediocre, so of course I chose to pursue writing as my profession. It still doesn’t pay all the bills, but it helps.
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I’m also a big fan of Clive Barker, and was surprised to recently read in his biography that he didn’t enjoy Lovecraft’s style:
” …’the turgid ornamental quality’ of Lovecraft’s prose seemed ‘pretension getting in the way of good storytelling’. ”
He does acknowledge, however, to having been affected by Lovecraft’s imagery, and I’m sure that I can sense some of the influence.
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When I was a kid in the late 70’s I would run home from school to watch Creature Features on the afternoon television so my horror fascination started early. Lovecraft made a huge impact after I found a book called Weirdies, Weirdies, Weirdies edited by Helen Hoke (Franklin Watts, Inc., New York, 1975) at a used bookstore. It contained several of Lovecraft’s poems and I was hooked immediately. Of course, the constant mention later on in some RPG’s and metal music helped as well…
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My interest in HPL’s work came via his exhaustive correspondence with Robert E. Howard (one of these days I MUST get a copy of ‘A Means to Freedom: The Letters of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard’). Howard freely dipped into the Lovecraftian mythos with horror stories like ‘The Black Stone’. If I had to choose a favourite Lovecraft tale, I suppose it would be ‘At the Mountains of Madness’.
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I have been aware of Lovecraft for about 30 some years. Read some short stories. Brian Lumley really got me back in the swing of it when I read his Necroscope series. I have pursued it off and on over the years.
(The nickname was gained in high school for being hairy, not scary)
I am an avid fan of horror, SF, military history and mystery.
I think the ezine has been a great expansion of my reading of the mythos. Thanks
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I was aware of Lovecraft in the early 80’s but until I watched Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator and then From Beyond, did I decide to start paying attention, and started on reading and then questing.
I’m an illustrator and painter, so the visual aspect of Lovecraft’s writing really got my interests as well as many of the other authors Lovecraft spoke of and recommends, and even now more than ever doe his work resonate with me on the more cosmic horror / existential angle. And the crafting of a good horror tale rife with effective atmosphere still raises hairs on my neck, and I find I can keep going back and re-reading Lovecraft and getting something new out of it.
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I discovered Lovecraft in an old anthology in my teens – just one story, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’, and the concept freaked me out. The term ‘cosmic horror’ was new to me, but it’s gripped me ever since.
And yet it was years later that I read ‘Shadow Over Innsmouth’ – 2005, believe it or not! The Deep Ones and Father Dagon have left an even greater impression on me than Great Cthulhu himself, and continue to inspire me.
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I’ve been a fan of Lovecraft’s work for around 6 years now. I was first introduced to his actual stories by a friend of mine who lent me a little paperback that collected various short stories. “The Call of Cthulhu” was the first such story I read, I can remember sitting out on my back patio and reading it by the light of an old oil lamp – my friend recommended candle light but I didn’t have any candles on hand. I got hooked after going through the entire paper back and sought out more and more of his works.
I think for me “Pickman’s Model” is the one Lovecraft story that’s always had a pretty powerful grip on my imagination. I’m an artist of sorts; drawing comics, illustrations, water colour painting, playing music and writing poetry (more like nursery rhymes) and short stories of my own. When I read “Pickman’s Model” for the first time I found myself sorta relating to the artist, I’ve always been one to draw on events that have happened in my dreams to fuel my creative work and I’ve had a number of vivid dreams which felt like they had touched the real world around me. The horror of finding out that Pickman was drawing / painting from a reality that he found himself in really sent shivers down my spine. I’ve always thought after reading it that it was one of the best endings ever.
One that that’s always amazed me is the influence that H.P. Lovecraft has had on other artists and writers. Long before I ever read a Lovecraft story I had read through and enjoyed all of Mike Mignola’s early Hellboy stories which when I first read them seemed so totally original and amazing (they still are amazing) but it wasn’t until I read through a number of Lovecraft’s stories that I started to see the connections and influence.
I really enjoy your eZine and have turned a couple people onto it. You put together a great product and it’s wonderful see just how far reaching Lovecraft’s influence is when I read the stories you feature. I’m really REALLY looking forward to the “Lovecraftian” Sherlock Holmes stories that are coming up. I’m a HUGE Holmes fan and have always enjoyed reading fan fiction that brings him into a world of Lovecraftian horror.
Keep up the great work!
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I’ve been a Lovecraftian since 1980 or so. My favorite stories are “The Call of Cthulhu” and
“At the Mountains of Madness”, and I enjoy the works of all of the original ‘Lovecraft Circle’ and try to keep up with as much newly published material as possible. As far as I’m concerned it’s a new Golden Age for the ‘Mythos’. I also enjoy related artwork, film, and music. Right now I’m looking forward to ‘The Whisperer In Darkness’. A few years ago I began to sculpt things Lovecraftian and sell copies of most of my works. My gallery is at – http://zombiequadrille.deviantart.com/gallery/
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I discovered Lovecraft in the late eighties when rummaging through old paperbacks at a used bookstore. The covers and titles really grabbed me and I also found Brian Lumley, whose work is greatly influenced by Lovecraft. They are both two of my very favorite writers. The beauty of Lovecraft’s style highly influences my own writing and really gets my head into writing mode. I don’t know if I can pick favorites for Lovecraft himself. I’ve absolutely loved everything I’ve read of his. It’s been some years since I last read his work cover to cover, but he’s in my queue for re-reads soon as I can get to it. 🙂
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I am afraid I have derailed this thread. To get it back on track, I became interested in Lovecraft through a combination of RPGs and Metallica, specifically “The Thing That Should Not Be” on Masters of Puppets (I don’t think they had a better album, except for maybe Kill ‘Em All). That song sent me on the quest to find Lovecraft (early 90s, at just the beginning of his spike of popularity at the turn of the century).
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I’m Spartacus.
Sometimes.
But mostly I’m a Scottish writer with a big interest in all things Lovecraftian which stems from being frightened by a squamous blob that lived in the corner of my bedroom in the ’60s.
Willie
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That was me. Sorry.
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I’m Batman!
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You can’t be Batman. I’M Batman. You can be Superman. 😉
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Awesome.
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@Bruce: I finally participated in one of those dumb online questionnaires a few months ago: A “Which DC Comics Superhero Are YOU?” Twas no surprise to anyone when it resulted in “Batman”.
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