History Literature / TheHound1924

->'' Extinguishing all lights, we proceeded to the door and threw it suddenly open; whereupon we felt an unaccountable rush of air, and heard as if receding far away a queer combination of rustling, tittering, and articulate chatter. Whether we were mad, dreaming, or in our senses, we did not try to determine. We only realised, with the blackest of apprehensions, that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt ''in the Dutch language''.''

* ItAmusedMe: Motivated by boredom, the narrator and St. John dive deep into a decadent life style focused entirely on robbing graves, sometimes of objects and sometimes of body parts, and keeping a museum of their loot. As with kleptomania, they know it isn't right, but that's what makes it addicting. When their activities lead to them getting hunted by a supernatural entity, St. John gets offed quickly while the narrator in his suicide note expresses "shame and timidity" for how far they they went in their pursuits.

* MysticalJade: The amulet that belonged to a cult operating in or from Leng, that was acquired through grave-theft by the Dutchman, and that was in turn stolen from the Dutchman's grave by the protagonists is carved from a piece of green jade. Its design betrays it's an ancient ornament of Oriental origin, likely specifically from Central Asia. The carving resembles what is either a winged hound or a canine-esque sphinx and includes an unidentified inscription as well as a skull as what may be a maker’s seal.

%%* OneToMillionToOne:
* OurSphinxesAreDifferent: The creature depicted on the amulet is described by the narrator as a "crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face." As per the ''Necronomicon'', it is the symbol of the corpse-eating cult of Leng in Central Asia. It is likely the form of the hound whose baying haunts the protagonists from the moment they set foot in the Dutch graveyard, but the creature is never directly observed to confirm.
* PlatonicLifePartners: The narrator and St. John live together in an ancient manor on the moors without any servants and with as good as never a visitor. They have each other and that is all they need, but despite their many shared interests and activities they aren't romantically involved. Aside from there being nothing romantic about their interactions, they explicitly sleep in different rooms.
* RiddleForTheAges: As the narrator is digging for the Dutchman a second time, he is joined by a vulture that starts frantically pecking the gravesite soil. The narrator kills it by hitting it with his shovel. The oddity of a vulture flying around in the Netherlands aside, this entire encounter takes place in only one sentence and despite attention-grabbers like "queer interruption" and "frantically", there's nothing to connect it to anything else in the story. The vulture's behavior resembles that of the bats just after the protagonists had stolen the Dutchman's amulet, but while a connection between the Dutchman and the bats is established, there's nothing between him and vultures. Just as well, the vulture may have been an enemy of the Dutchman in his own right. The narrator doesn't motivate why he felt the need to kill the vulture either.
* RobbingTheDead: The narrator and St. John are two prolific graverobbers and corpse-snatchers whose ill-gotten gains are plentiful enough to fill up a small and absolutely secret museum. The collection consists of ancient headstones and a variety of tomb-loot so bad that the narrator refuses to elaborate despite being fine with describing all manner of body parts they've got on display too. The last item added to the collection is the amulet they'd taken from the 500-year old grave of a Dutchman who also looted graves in his time. As an undead, the Dutchman comes after them, which necessitates the narrator to burn and bury the museum's contents and to return the amulet.

* SinisterScrapingSound: On September 28th, the narrator and St. John are in their illicit museum when they perceive a "low, cautious scratching at the single door which led to the secret library staircase." They are doubly afraid, for whatever causes it could be the entity haunting them but it could also be officers of the law that somehow have gotten wind of the museum. Upon opening the door, the cause of the scratching turns out to be the former.
* TaxidermyTerror: One category of objects the protagonists have on display in their macabre museum is taxidermy. Many "life-like bodies" are to be found there "perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermist's art". It is ambiguous if the taxidermied bodies are those of humans or those of animals.
* TomesOfEldritchLore: The narrator and St. John possess a copy of the ''Necronomicon''. In its pages they find information about the jade amulet they stole from the grave of the Dutchman. It isn't mentioned whether the tome is among the artifacts the narrator burned or those he buried or if perhaps it was left undamaged in the manor-house.
* TheUndead: The Dutchman as the eponymous hound plays fast and loose with pseudo-folkloric literary conventions without coming to any answers what he is or how his undead powers work. What is clear is that the Dutchman five hundred years ago was a graverobber who got "torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast" while at work. This attack in conjunction with a mystical jade amulet he's taken from a "mighty sepulchre" turned him into another unspeakable beast. The amulet depicts "a crouching winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face" and is identified as "the soul-symbol of the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng". The Dutchman was buried with the amulet and for five hundred years seems to have laid aware but inactive, his flesh rotting away while his mangled skeleton and teeth remained pristine. It is in this state that the protagonists steal the amulet from him, leading him to hunt them down. When next his coffin is dug up and opened, he's already killed several people involved in the theft of the amulet and no longer is a supine clean human skeleton, but a human skeleton crouching and covered in scraps of flesh, hair, and blood. His eye sockets glow and his baying betrays him to be the enigmatic hound that has stalked the protagonists all this time. Because of the human form of the skeleton, the form of the hound is hinted to be the result of shapeshifting, although it's never directly observed by the narrator to confirm its existence and appearance. The closest are a series of footprints the protagonists discover that are "utterly impossible to describe." As an undead, the Dutchman also appears to control many abnormally large bats that normally dwell around his gravesite but accompany him when he comes out. The second time the narrator opens the Dutchman's grave, the skeleton is "embraced by a close-packed nightmare retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats."
* UnseenEvil: The undead Dutchman has two forms: that of human skeleton with somewhat prominent teeth and what is implied to be a bat-winged hound. The skeleton form is seen twice when his coffin gets dug up; it isn't clear it's anything but an ordinary skeleton the first time but it's clearly animate the second time. The form of the hound, however, is never observed. The Dutchman uses this form to go out and terrorize those who've stolen his amulet. All they manage to glimpse is a "large, opaque body", a "vague black cloudy thing", a "wide nebulous shadow", and a "black shape", and they also find footprints near their manor that are "utterly impossible to describe". The only reasons to believe that the Dutchman can take the form of a bat-winged hound is because that's the image depicted on his amulet and because his presence is made clear by ominous baying and the whirring of wings.

* HellHound: The undead Dutchman, when not resting in his grave in skeletal human form, is implied to take the form of a "winged hound, or sphinx with a semi-canine face." This is the image on the amulet the Dutchman has with him in his coffin, but the hound is never clearly observed by the protagonists or described in the narrative. The hound's presence is first established when the protagonists enter the Holland churchyard and hear the faint baying of a hound. Once they steal the Dutchman's amulet, the baying sticks with them, indicating that the hound is after them for the theft, although it takes the protagonists long to accept the connection between the baying and the amulet. Another sound associated with the entity is the whirring of wings like those of a bat, but this is only heard when the hound is nearby while the baying is heard at many distances. The hound, after months of haunting, tears St. John to shreds when he's walking home one night and about a week later slaughters an entire family when they in turn steal the amulet from the narrator. The only reason the narrator may escape this fate is because he resolves to commit suicide before the hound gets him.

* ItAmusedMe: Motivated by boredom, the narrator and St. John dive deep into a decadent life style focused entirely on robbing graves, sometimes of objects and sometimes of body parts, and keeping a museum of their loot. As with kleptomania, they know it isn't right, but that only makes it harder to stop. When their activities lead to them getting hunted by a supernatural entity, St. John gets offed quickly while the narrator in his suicide note expresses "shame and timidity" for how far they they went in their pursuits.

* MacGuffin: The Dutchman's amulet is the driving force that brings the protagonists and the undead into contact. The narrator and St. John steal it from the Dutchman's grave aware that it is something special but unaware of what makes it special. The narrative does not fill in the gaps either. It's implied that the amulet played a role in the Dutchman becoming undead, but what it did in addition to him getting mauled by another undead is unclear. The Dutchman, in any case, doesn't need the amulet to sustain himself or his powers, because he's perfectly capable of coming for any thief regardless if that thief has the amulet in their direct possession or has already lost it.

* MeaningfulEcho: When the narrator and St. John first enter the churchyard in or near Rotterdam, they are in high spirits about the treasure waiting for them and elated about the aesthetic circumstances of the night they've picked to go graverobbing. They delight in "the pale autumnal moon over the graves, casting long horrible shadows; the grotesque trees, drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs; the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon; the antique ivied church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky; the phosphorescent insects that danced like death-fires under the yews in a distant corner; the odours of mould, vegetation, and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the night-wind from over far swamps and seas; and worst of all, the faint deep-toned baying of some gigantic hound which we could neither see nor definitely place." Nearly three months later, the undead owner of the treasure has killed St. John and the narrator has returned to the Dutch churchyard to appease them in low hopes of escaping the same fate. Now alone, for him there is only trepidation in the "unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows, and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered, frosty grass and cracking slabs, and the ivied church pointed a jeering finger at the unfriendly sky, and the night-wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas. The baying was very faint now, and it ceased altogether as I approached the ancient grave I had once violated, and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had been hovering curiously around it."

* MustBeInvited: One night, the narrator hears a knock at his chamber door. Assuming it is St. John, because that's the only other person in the house, he tells the knocker to enter, but no one does. Instead, the invitation is answered by shrill laughter. Later, the protagonists are in their underground museum when they hear scratching at the door. They open it only to feel a strong wind gushing into the room. Although no conclusions are attached to these events, the entity on their trail appears to be working to more and more access into the manor by being let in.

* BarrageOfBats: The narrator and St. John encounter vast legions of strangely colossal bats in the Holland churchyard, but think little of them until they leave with an amulet stolen from a grave. In the faint moonlight, they perceive a great number of bats descending to the grave. Back home in England, they find their manor-house suddenly beset by an unprecedented and increasing amount of great bats. It may be these bats that are the "vague black cloudy thing" producing a sound like the whirring of wings that kills St. John. The narrator eventually returns to the Holland churchyard in a bid for mercy from the amulet's original owner and spots "an abnormally large horde of bats" hovering suspiciously around the gravesite. Any doubts that the bats are in league with the amulet's owner are cleared away when the narrator digs the grave open again, this time finding it filled with a "retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats" surrounding the corpse.

* DesecratingTheDead: A good portion of the protagonists' repulsive collection of objects they themselves have taken from graves are human body parts. Mentioned are "skulls of all shapes, and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution" as well as "the rotting, bald pates of famous noblemen, and the fresh and radiantly golden heads of new-buried children." There are also taxidermied "comely, life-like bodies", but it's ambiguous if these bodies are of humans or animals and in that same boat how the protagonists acquired them. Also present are antique mummies and a portfolio that is bound in tanned human skin, which the protagonists acquired from elsewhere. And all of these aren't even the worst the collection contains according to the narrator; it's not unlikely that the stuff he refuses to speak of are more body parts.
* DestroyTheEvidence: After the murder of St. John, the narrator is afraid to continue to live in their ancient house on the moor by himself and moves to London. He burns down and buries the grave goods and body parts he and his companion had stolen over the years as well as any other evidence of the sinister museum they maintained before he goes.

* DueToTheDead: Two men are given a burial as events unfold and they die.
** Five hundred years ago, the Dutch graverobber was mauled to death in the graveyard. The locals, who may or may not have known about his illicit activities and may or may not have known him to begin with, buried him in a coffin in that same graveyard.

* FullMoonSilhouette: Three times do disturbing entities come into the protagonist's sight against the backdrop of the moon. First there are the many huge bats in the Dutch graveyard the protagonists perceive best when they fly in front of the moon. Thereafter, back in their home in England, an early haunting they experience is the sight of a "large, opaque body" that darkens an otherwise moonlight-bathed window. This is lastly followed some months later by the death of St. John, at whose side the narrator perceives a "vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon."

* HauntedHouse: The protagonists' home is an ancient manor-house standing isolated on the moors of England. It becomes haunted when the protagonists steal a mystical amulet from the grave of a Dutchman whom death hasn't stopped from doing anything. There are curious sounds, an infestation of bats, indeterminate shadows, disconcerting footprints, and more. After St. John is killed, the narrator abandons the manor and as the entity follows him for both the amulet and revenge, the building ceases to be haunted.

"The Hound" is a ShortStory that Creator/HPLovecraft wrote in October of 1922. It debuted in the February 1924 issue of ''Magazine/WeirdTales'' and was reprinted in its September 1929 issue before being collected in ''Beyond the Wall of Sleep'' in 1943. "The Hound" is one of Lovecraft's more [[GothicHorror Gothic]] works with a generous helping of Decadence and despite this tonal difference from Lovecraft's characteristic output, it is part of the Franchise/CthulhuMythos. It's been argued that the story is to be read as a StealthParody like "Literature/HerbertWestReanimator", while others compare "The Hound" to the likes of "Literature/TheOutsider1926" as an honest stylistic experiment.

The narrator and St. John are Englishmen living together in an ancient manor-house on the moors. In their struggle against boredom, they've turned to depravity as promoted by the Decadent Movement and consequently taken to collecting macabre objects the bulk of which they steal from graves. The two learn of a Dutch graverobber who five centuries ago was mangled to death by some beast and is now buried in a churchyard nearby Rotterdam along with a curious amulet he himself had stolen from a sepulchre. Desiring the heritage of a preceding peer, the protagonists travel to Holland to dig it up. The Dutchman's skeleton is indeed mangled but otherwise remarkably intact and the amulet turns out to be a jade figurine of a winged canine. Once back home, the protagonists find their manor beset by all manner of supernatural phenomena, such as the omnipresent baying of a hound and an infestation of bats. The hauntings gradually grow worse until St. John is mauled to death one night walking home. The narrator buries him privately and soon after destroys their collection but for the amulet, which he takes with him to London to be safe among people. When it's clear he isn't, he returns to Holland to rebury the amulet in the Dutchman's grave. It gets stolen on the way and with nothing to offer but apologies, the narrator continues with his plan to dig up the Dutchman. Inside the coffin, however, the skeleton is no longer alone, as many bats are sleeping inside, nor is the skeleton still believably dead. It's covered in blood, its eyes glow, and it bays. It also has the amulet back. The narrator runs, but aware that the Dutchman doesn't practice mercy, he resolves to off himself to avoid worse.

As suggested by a letter to Lillian D. Clark dated September 29, 1922, the real-life inspiration to "The Hound" is a visit Lovecraft paid to the Flatbush Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in Brooklyn in the company of his friend Rheinhart Kleiner on September 16, 1922. Lovecraft mentions that he took a piece of a gravestone home with him and that he intends to let it inspire him into writing a new story.

"The Hound" is the first story to feature the ''Necronomicon'' though the second to reference Abdul Alhazred, whose name debuted in "The Nameless City". It is also the second story, coming after "Celephaïs", to make mention of Leng. In regards to Lovecraft's suspicion towards everything outside of his own living sphere, "The Hound" is the first of three stories in which the Dutch are the monstrous other, preceding "Literature/TheLurkingFear" and "The Horror at Red Hook".

* ApocalypticLog: The story is presented as the final writings of a man who is being stalked by a supernatural entity. He is readying himself to commit suicide before the creature gets to him, leaving a recapitulation to whomever may find his writings as to how it came to this.
* BarrageOfBats: The narrator and St. John encounter vast legions of strangely colossal bats in the Holland churchyard, but think little of them until they leave with an amulet stolen from a grave. In the faint moonlight, they perceive the bats descending "in a body to the earth" from where they'd taken the amulet. Back home in England, they find their manor-house suddenly beset by "hordes of great bats" flying around "in unprecedented and increasing numbers." It may be these hordes of bats that are the "vague black cloudy thing" producing a sound like the whirring of wings that kills St. John. The narrator eventually returns to the Holland churchyard in a bid for mercy from the amulet's original owner and spots "an abnormally large horde of bats" hovering suspiciously around the gravesite. Any doubts that the bats are in league with the amulet's owner are cleared away when the narrator digs the grave open again, this time finding it filled with a "retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats" surrounding the corpse.

* CampbellCountry: About half of the story takes place in the protagonists' ancient manor-house on the moors in England. They live in isolation and the lack of social control suits them to set up a museum filled with grave goods and body parts personally stolen. What they learn when they steal a supernaturally imbued grave good is that isolation also means that there is no one to stand by them when they are beset by huge bats and what may be a phantom hound. St. John gets mauled to death one night when walking home from the distant railway station and the narrator moves to London thereafter, destroying the museum before he goes.

%%* HellIsThatNoise: The hound's presence is first established when the protagonists enter the Holland churchyard and hear the faint baying of a hound. This baying follows them on the ship back to England and to their manor-house on the moors.

%%* MadArtist: "Statues and paintings there were, all of fiendish subjects and some executed by St. John and myself." "There were nauseous musical instruments, stringed, brass, and wood-wind, on which St. John and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodaemoniacal ghastliness" The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events.

%%* NightmareFetishist: The narrator and St. John spend their days collecting whatever ghastly things they can find. The objects range from mystical artifacts to personal assets to body parts mostly if not solely of human origin.

%%* RiddleForTheAges: The vulture

* CampbellCountry: Almost the entire story takes place in the protagonists' ancient manor-house on the moors in England. They live in isolation and the lack of social control suits them to set up a museum filled with grave goods and body parts personally stolen. What they learn when they steal a supernaturally imbued grave good is that isolation also means that there is no one to stand by them when they are beset by huge bats and what may be a phantom hound. St. John gets mauled to death one night when walking home from the distant railway station and the narrator moves to London thereafter, destroying the museum before he goes.

* MustBeInvited: On the night of September 24, 19––, the narrator hears a knock at his chamber door. Assuming it is St. John, because that's the only other person in the house, he tells the knocker to enter, but no one does. Instead, the invitation is answered by shrill laughter. Later, the protagonists are in their underground museum when they hear scratching at the door. They open it only to feel a strong wind gushing into the room. Although no conclusions are attached to these events, the entity on their trail appears to be working to more and more access into the manor by being let in.

%%* MysticalJade: The amulet

* TomesOfEldritchLore: The narrator and St. John possess a copy of the ''Necronomicon''. In its pages they find the information that the amulet they took originates with "the corpse-eating cult of inaccessible Leng, in Central Asia."

* BarrageOfBats: The narrator and St. John encounter vast legions of strangely colossal bats in the Holland churchyard, but think little of them until they leave with an amulet stolen from a grave. In the faint moonlight, they perceive the bats descending "in a body to the earth" from where they'd taken the amulet. Back home in England, they find their manor-house suddenly beset by "hordes of great bats" flying around "in unprecedented and increasing numbers." It may be these hordes of bats that are the "vague black cloudy thing" producing a sound like the whirring of wings that kills St. John. The narrator eventually returns to the Holland churchyard in a bid for mercy from the amulet's original owner and spots "an abnormally large horde of bats" that are "hovering curiously around" the gravesite. Any doubts that the bats are in league with the amulet's owner are cleared away when the narrator digs the grave open again, this time finding it filled with a "retinue of huge, sinewy, sleeping bats" surrounding the corpse.

%%* GraveRobbing: The antiheroes of "The Hound" are a pair of ghoulish guys who rob graves for fun.
%%* HauntedHouse:

The narrator and St. John are Englishmen living together in an ancient manor-house on the moors. In their struggle against boredom, they've turned to depravity as promoted by the Decadent Movement and consequently taken to collecting macabre objects the bulk of which they steal from graves. The two learn of a Dutch graverobber who five centuries ago was mangled to death by some beast and is now buried in a churchyard nearby Rotterdam along with a curious amulet he himself had stolen from a sepulchre. Desiring the heritage of a preceding peer, the protagonists travel to Holland to dig it up. The Dutchman's skeleton is indeed mangled but otherwise remarkably intact and the amulet turns out to be a jade figurine of a winged canine. Once back home, the protagonists find their manor beset by all manner of supernatural phenomena, such as the omnipresent baying of a hound and an infestation of bats. The hauntings gradually grow worse until St. John is mauled to death one night walking home. The narrator buries him privately and soon after destroys their collection but for the amulet, which he takes with him to London to be safe among people. When it's clear he isn't, he returns to Holland to rebury the amulet in the Dutchman's grave. It gets stolen on the way and with nothing to offer but apologies, the narrator continues with his plan to dig up the Dutchman. Inside the coffin, however, the skeleton is no longer alone, as many bats are sleeping inside, nor is the skeleton still believably dead. It's covered in blood, its eyes glow, and it bays. It also has the amulet back. The narrator runs, but aware that the Dutchman doesn't do mercy, he resolves to off himself to avoid worse.

%%* RiddleForTheAges:

The narrator and St. John are Englishmen living together in an ancient manor-house on the moors. In their struggle against boredom, they've found only depravity as promoted by the Decadent Movement to be an effective shield. This is why they've taken to collecting macabre objects the bulk of which they steal from graves. They hear of a Dutch graverobber who five centuries ago was mangled to death by some beast and is now buried in a churchyard nearby Rotterdam along with an artifact he himself had stolen from a sepulchre. Desiring the heritage of a preceding peer, the protagonists travel to Holland to dig it up. The Dutchman's skeleton is indeed mangled but otherwise remarkably intact and the artifact turns out be a curious amulet depicting a winged canine. Once back home, the protagonists find their manor beset by all manner of supernatural phenomena, which include the ominous baying of a hound they originally heard in Holland and the presence of bats. The hauntings gradually grow worse until St. John is mauled to death one night walking home. The narrator buries him privately and soon after destroys their collection but for the amulet, which he takes with him to London to be safe among people. When it's clear he isn't, he returns to Holland to rebury the amulet in the Dutchman's grave. It gets stolen on the way and with nothing to offer but apologies, the narrator continues with his plan to dig up the Dutchman. Inside the coffin, however, the skeleton is no longer alone, as many bats are sleeping inside, nor is the skeleton still believably dead. It's covered in blood, its eyes glow, and it bays. It also has the amulet back. The narrator runs, but aware that the Dutchman won't leave him alone, he resolves to off himself to avoid worse.

%%* DesecratingTheDead:

"The Hound" was adapted into comic form for ''Skull'' #4 on May 1972 and again as part of 'H.P. Lovecraft's The Hound and Other Stories'' by Gou Tanabe in 2014. The short story furthermore is the inspiration behind "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" by Creator/BillyMartin in 1990, "Some Distant Baying Sound" by W.H. Pugmire in 2009, "Houndwife" by Caitlín R. Kiernan in 2010, and "The Hound" once more by W.H. Pugmire in 2014.

"The Hound" was adapted into comic form for ''Skull'' #4 on May 1972. The short story furthermore is the inspiration behind "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood" by Creator/BillyMartin in 1990, "Some Distant Baying Sound" by W.H. Pugmire in 2009, "Houndwife" by Caitlín R. Kiernan in 2010, and "The Hound" once more by W.H. Pugmire in 2014.

%%* HellHound: "The Hound".
%%* HellIsThatNoise:

* RobbingTheDead: The narrator and St. John are two prolific graverobbers and corpse-snatchers whose ill-gotten gains are plentiful enough to fill up a small and absolutely secret museum. The collection consists of ancient headstones and a variety of tomb-loot so bad that the narrator refuses to elaborate after first mentioning all manner of body parts they've got on display too. The last item added to the collection is the amulet they'd taken from the 500-year old grave of a Dutchman who also looted graves in his time. As an undead, the Dutchman comes after them, which necessitates the narrator to burn and bury the museum's contents and to return the amulet

[[caption-width-right:350:''"Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit\\
And you ain't no friend of mine"'']]