History NightmareFuel / HPLovecraft

* Late in his life, Lovecraft wrote [[CapitalismIsBad some critiques regarding the laissez-faire capitalist system]], and even warned ''everyone'' about [[PlayedForHorror the horrors of it]]. While the very same man had radically different political shift during [=1930s=], his signature writing style of Cosmic Horror has retained in his critiques on the very system widespread in his societies. However, Lovecraft became an IgnoredExpert regarding politics throughout history, and most who known about Lovecraft didn't ever try to check out what's going in his later life.

* "Herbert West-Reanimator." It's not that Mr. West reanimates the dead; [[CameBackWrong it's what he reanimates them]] ''as.''

** After awakening, the narrator can find no trace that what he saw really happened... except no one else seems to remember the treacherous guide who had led him into the ambush in the first place. The same guide who possessed an unsettling likeness to Pharao Khephren...

* Similarly, we have ''Under the Pyramids'', listed here as "Imprisoned with the Pharaos," a Lovecraft story that relates Creator/HarryHoudini's (fictional) experience in UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}. After being lowered into a pit near the Giza pyramids and Art/TheSphinx, Houdini finds a large procession of undead led by Pharao Khephren, the king who remodeled the Sphinx after himself, and though he cannot bring himself to look directly at the members of the procession, the shadows that flicker on the wall brings to his mind the stories he had heard from Bedouins about blasphemous priestly experiments, with mummies constructed to look like the Egyptian gods, with the bodies of men, and the heads of animals, rejected by all sane divine forces and erased from all historical accounts. He then watches an elaborate ceremony that eventually reveals... something which has 5 heads and tentacles sprouting from its mouths. Except these are actually the toes and the claws of the creature; the narrator simply mistakes the being's single paw for the creature itself. Then, just as he's managed to nearly escape the ceremony, the [[EldritchAbomination creature]] fully reveals itself. The thing's true face, which is supposed to have been the Sphinx's original image, is [[NothingIsScarier left completely to the reader's imagination]].

* Or "The Thing on the Doorstep," or "Literature/TheMusicOfErichZann". Lovecraft was a master of horror. "The Music of Erich Zann" has some of the best examples of NothingIsScarier ever devised.
** FridgeHorror in "Literature/TheThingOnTheDoorstep:" Asenath Waite is really her father Ephraim's consciousness switching bodies. When he/she possesses Edward after Asenath's body's death, his consciousness is [[AndIMustScream stuck in Asenath's corpse]]. That means Asenath's consciousness was stuck in Ephraim's corpse for years by the end of the story and probably not as able to do stuff with it as Edward was with Asenath's corpse.
** The main character of "Erich Zann" never managed to find his way back to the house he rented from... or the street... or the ''NEIGHBORHOOD''. Was it AllJustADream? Or somewhere out there, is there some spatial anomaly just waiting to draw in another victim to some bizarre, crumbling neighborhood, where otherwordly music echoes through the air?

** The real FridgeHorror comes in the form of an unmarked footnote written by the unknown presenter of this manuscript, at the beginning: [[PosthumousNarration "Found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston."]] The cult got him for knowing too much. They're still around. And now that ''you've'' read Thurston's piecing together of this insane story, ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou you know too much too]]''.
* ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' because of one thing: When the village drunk tells the protagonist the tale about the reason the people of Innsmouth are part-fish. Some real {{Squick}} and FridgeHorror (or NightmareFuel, if you are particularly awake when you read it) when he mentions that the sailors ''mated with some strange-looking fish!'' That isn't the worst of it: The protagonist is also part of the Innsmouth folk and, upon learning this, he decides to invite his family to swim in the water in a manner that is seriously creepy.

** The real FridgeHorror comes in the form of an unmarked footnote written by the unknown presenter of this manuscript, at the beginning: "Found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston." The cult got him for knowing too much. They're still around. And now that ''you've'' read Thurston's piecing together of this insane story, ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou you know too much too]]''.

** The real FridgeHorror comes in the form of an unmarked footnote written by the unknown presenter of this manuscript, at the beginning: "Found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston." The cult got him for knowing too much. They're still around. And now that ''you've'' read Thurston's piecing together of this insane story, [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou ''you know too much too'']].

** Though, overlapping with HarsherInHindsight, more recent generations are gradually [[CapitalismIsBad losing faith in capitalism altogether]], and questioning of the very system is becoming increasingly common. The man who wrote Nyarlathotep and other cosmis horrors provided [[RealismInducedHorror an eerily-accurate prediction on the bleak sociopolitical environment in the real-world future]].

* "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/pickmansmodel.htm Pickman's Model]]" takes the cake. It's about a painter who draws horrifying, nightmarish portraits... and then it turns out he wasn't using his imagination.

* Try reading "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thestatementofrandolph.htm The Statement of Randolph Carter]]." Randolph Carter and his friend Harley Warren go digging in an ancient cemetery. Warren goes alone into its depths, only to discover... [[NothingIsScarier something]] so horrible he pleads with Carter to seal the tomb up and leave him before it gets out. Eventually, he stops responding, even as Carter begs him to respond. And then he ''gets'' a response, but it's not Warren...

%%* Or "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thefestival.htm The Festival.]]"

* Or "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thewhispererindarkness.htm The Whisperer in Darkness]]" -- ''never'' look at those "lonely woods" the same way again.

* Or "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thethingonthedoorstep.htm The Thing on the Doorstep]]," or "Literature/TheMusicOfErichZann". Lovecraft was a master of horror. "The Music of Erich Zann" has some of the best examples of NothingIsScarier ever devised.

* "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thepictureinthehouse.htm The Picture in the House]]." Unusual for Lovecraft, as it does not involve CosmicHorrorStory tropes or even the supernatural, and it actually has fairly effective dialogue. Just a nearly 200-year old cannibal. Also, the single scariest use of ''italics,'' ever.

* ''Literature/TheColourOutOfSpace'': It's a story about a goddamned ''color'' that will give you nightmares. [[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecolouroutofspace.htm Lovecraft was just that good]]. Imagine something so abstract that you can never comprehend it slowly eating you and the entire landscape around you alive over the course of months, and being even unable to flee. And considering that the dam project mentioned in the story was real, one has to wonder how many contemporary readers [[ParanoiaFuel got really uncomfortable about drinking tap water]].

* ''Literature/TheDunwichHorror''. [[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thedunwichhorror.htm See it here.]]
** One of the worst things about this one is that, for once, Lovecraft didn't [[TakeOurWordForIt skimp on the descriptions]]. The titular Horror was only visible for a second, but... Well, how about we just let the witness explain:

* "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/dreamswitchhouse.htm The Dreams in the Witch House]]" is particularly scary due to the protagonist's sheer confusion. You may be afraid of raccoon tracks for about a month afterward because of the witch's {{familiar}} Brown Jenkin, whose paws -- like raccoons' -- resemble tiny human hands.

* "Literature/TheCallOfCthulhu," which can be read [[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecallofcthulhu.htm here]], the most famous of all things Lovecraft and the birthing place of the horrid thing itself.

* ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth'' [[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theshadowoverinnsmouth.htm (available here)]] because of one thing: When the village drunk tells the protagonist the tale about the reason the people of Innsmouth are part-fish. Some real {{Squick}} and FridgeHorror (or NightmareFuel, if you are particularly awake when you read it) when he mentions that the sailors ''mated with some strange-looking fish!'' That isn't the worst of it: The protagonist is also part of the Innsmouth folk and, upon learning this, he decides to invite his family to swim in the water in a manner that is seriously creepy.

* "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/thecaseofcharlesdexterward.htm The Case of Charles Dexter Ward]]." Even if you see the twist that Curwen had come back to life and killed Ward to assume his identity coming from a mile away, the storytelling is so good, and the writing so skin-crawlingly creepy, that ''it doesn't matter.'' Now that is some damned effective horror.

* Similarly, we have ''Under the Pyramids'', listed here as "[[http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/imprisonedwithpharaos.htm Imprisoned with the Pharaos]]," a Lovecraft story that relates Creator/HarryHoudini's (fictional) experience in UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}. After being lowered into a pit near the Giza pyramids and Art/TheSphinx, Houdini finds a large procession of undead led by Pharao Khephren, the king who remodeled the Sphinx after himself, and though he cannot bring himself to look directly at the members of the procession, the shadows that flicker on the wall brings to his mind the stories he had heard from Bedouins about blasphemous priestly experiments, with mummies constructed to look like the Egyptian gods, with the bodies of men, and the heads of animals, rejected by all sane divine forces and erased from all historical accounts. He then watches an elaborate ceremony that eventually reveals... something which has 5 heads and tentacles sprouting from its mouths. Except these are actually the toes and the claws of the creature; the narrator simply mistakes the being's single paw for the creature itself. Then, just as he's managed to nearly escape the ceremony, the [[EldritchAbomination creature]] fully reveals itself. The thing's true face, which is supposed to have been the Sphinx's original image, is [[NothingIsScarier left completely to the reader's imagination]].

--> "They say meat makes blood an' flesh, an' gives ye new life, so I wondered ef 'twudn't make a man live ''longer an' longer ef 'twas more the same-''"

* After reading about the horrors that Lovecraft's universe has to offer, you might be wondering who the TopGod is. The answer is Azathoth, the Daemon Sultan who resides at the very center of the Universe and is the creator of all things. What sort of deity would create a universe overflowing with horrifying monsters, aliens, and unspeakable things? The UltimateEvil? Some horrifying MadGod? Nope. The answer is [[AlmightyIdiot a Blind Idiot]]. Azathoth is a completely mindless embodiment of PrimordialChaos, with no personality, autonomy, or even solid physical form. The universe and all of its residents, including the other Outer Gods, are part of one vast dream that {{the omnipotent}} being is having while it sleeps. The instant that it wakes up, which is just a matter of ''when'', [[DreamApocalypse everything will cease to exist]], and Azathoth will be completely oblivious that anything was ever there at all.

* [[https://quintacapa.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HP-Lovecraft.jpg This]] photo of H.P Lovecraft, [[FaceFramedInShadow the shadow covering his eyes]], Lovecraft [[TheStoic isn't showing any emotion]] and the fact that he looks like [[DeathGlare he's staring directly at you]] suits perfectly with the types of stories he wrote.

* [[https://quintacapa.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HP-Lovecraft.jpg This]] photo of H.P Lovecraft, [[FaceFramedInShadow the shadow covering his eyes]]

** In a subtly eerie bit of foreshadowing, one of Akeley's letters briefly slips into the first person when describing the anatomy of the Mi-Go, before going back to third person as though nothing happened. Albert Wilmarth doesn't seem to notice the discrepancy, and if the reader is skimming this section, they might miss it too.