The Masks of Lovecraft (part 3) - Report on the Miskatonic Expedition

"...The things once rearing and dwelling in this frightfull masonary in the age of dinosaurs were not indeed dinosaurs, but far worse. Mere dinosaurs were new and almost brainless objects - but the builders of the city were wise and old, and had left certain traces in rocks, even then laid down well nigh a thousand million years - rocks laid down before the true life of earth had advanced beyond plasmic groups of cells ¹ - rocks laid down before the true life of the life of earth had exsisted at all. They were the makers and enslavers of that life, and above all doubt the orignals of the fiendish elder myths which things like the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Necronomican offrightlingly hint about.

At the Mountians of Madness, and other tales of terror, H.P. Lovecraft, 1939.

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¹ Cells Classified by Sub-Cellular Materials ("-plasmic")In a broader structural sense, groups of cells or tissues are often grouped and named by the type of cellular material ("-plasm") they dominate in or how they develop:

• Cytoplasmic / Protoplasmic Groups: Living cell matter containing the cytosol and organelles.
• Neoplasms: A group of abnormal cells forming a tumor or new tissue growth (cancerous or benign).
• Sarcoplasm: A term used specifically for the specialized cytoplasm found within groups of skeletal muscle cells.

AI overview

The Masks of Lovecraft (part 2) - The Testament of the Shuttered Room

“Destroy every living thing in that room – every living thing, no matter how small. Abner Whately’s grandfather wrote in the strange letter he left after his death.

Abner did not understand until he saw the prints in the dust of the shuttered room – prints of tiny, webbed human hands and feet. Hundreds of them.”

The Shuttered Room and Other Tales of Horror, H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth

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The Masks of Cthulhu & the Cthulhu Mythos, first part

Ubbo-Sathla

“For Ubbo-Sathla is the source and the end. Before the coming of Zhothaqquah or Yok- Zothoth or Kthulhut from the stars; Ubbo-Sathla dwelt in the steaming fens of the new-made Earth: a mass without head or members, spawning the gray, formless efts of the prime and the grisly prototypes of terrene life...And all earthly life, it is told, shall go back at last through the great circle of time to Ubbo-Sathla.”

The Book of Eibon

“The Book of Eibon, that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes ... is said to have come down through a series of manifold translations from a prehistoric original written in the lost language of Hyperborea. „

Clark Ashton Smith, "Ubbo-Sathla"

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Ubbo-Sathla, Clark Ashton Smith

Tall and Crooked Trees

“You know how tall all the trees are in Mulligan Wood. You can’t see the tops of some of them from the wagon-road on a clear day. And you know how crooked and queer-looking some of them are.

It’s funny, but I’ve always thought of them as old men-tall old men, you understand, tall and crooked and very evil. I’ve always thought of them as wanting to work mischief. There’s something unwholesome about trees that grow very close together and grow crooked.

...Through swirling clouds of fog we saw the scaly, gnarled boles of the trees, and every bole resembled the twisted body of an evil old man."

Tales of Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1, H.P. Lovercraft & Others, The Space Eaters, Frank Belknap Long

It has been a long while since I made a tree post,

H.P. Lovecraft, The Thing

“The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bow-spit of the sturdy yacht…

There was bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand open graves, and a sound that the chronicler would not put on paper.

For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething...”

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Vol. 1

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The Thing

The Much Discussed Couplet

“No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much discussed couplet:

‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange eons even death may die.’

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft

The Unexplainable Couplet

“In a point of time, the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, was the first character of the Cthulhu Mythos to the make his appearance; this was in strongly Dunsanian tale, The Nameless City (1921), fashioned about the unexplainable couplet.”

‘That is not dead which can eternal lie,
and with strange eons even death may die.’

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1, The Call of Cthulhu, H.P. Lovecraft

The Masks of Cthulhu & the Cthulhu Mythos

"The vast, terrible enity from beyound time and sapce who waits brooding in his cyclopean home in sunken R'lyeh symbol and actuality of inimaginable nightmare - the greatest creation of H.P. Lovecraft.

The Cthulhu Mythos inspired many authors to write storoes using it as a theme - and thie anthology contains the best of these, together with key Cthulhu stories by Lovecraft. Some of these authors are: August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard, Frank Belknap Long , J. Vernon Shea".

The Masks of Lovecraft – The Al Azif Texts

“In brief, the book, originally entitled Al Azif, was written circa AD. 730 at Damascus by Abdul Alhazred, “a mad poet of Sana, in Yemen, who is said to have flourished during the period of the Ommiade Caliphs.”

Thereafter, its history unfolds as follows:

“Translated into Greek as the Necronomican, AD. 950 by Theodouis Philetas”
“Burnt by Patriarch Michael, AD. 1050(IE Greek text...Arabic text now lost)
“Olaus Wormius translates the Greek into Latin, AD. 1228”
“Latin and Greek editions suppressed by Pope Gregory IX, AD. 1232”
“Black letter edition- Germany – 1440?”
“Greek text printed in Italy – 1500 – 1550”
Spanish translation of Latin text – 1600?”

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft and Others

Cellar Horrows

“At last I heard the sounds from beyond those barred plates of sheet iron: the mencing padding and muttering, as of gigantic night things within.

Out of the cellar’s evil blackness they stretched, with shadowy hints of scaly wrists beyond them, and with a waving malignant will guiding their horrible groping.

I had come as a seeker-but now I knew that something was seeking me…”

The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, H. P. Lovecraft and others, August Derleth, 1970.

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A 245 page paperback novel, featuring 10 short stories. Published by Ballantine Books.

Contents

1. The Crawling Chaos, H. P. Lovecraft and Elizabeth Berkeley
2. The Green Meadow, H. P. Lovecraft and Elizabeth Berkeley
3. Winged Death, Hazel Heald
4. The Horror in the Museum, Hazel Heald
5. The Diary of Alonzo Typer, William Lumley
6. The Horror in the Burying Ground, Hazel Heald
7. The Electric Executioner, Adolphe de Castro
8. The Curse of Yig, Zealia Bishop
9. The Mound, Zealia Bishop
10. Two Black Bottles, Wilfred Blanch Talman

More Fictional Titles

Sometime ago I made my first post of "special books", those titles that were referred to in some piece of fiction. In the past I have researched the titles and have come upi empty. They prove to be fictional titles that were mentioned within the test, a figment of the authors imagination.

Here are a few more of these "made-up" titles.

"These, however, were but a prelude to his shelves of books, designated for deposit to the university library. Some appeared fabulously old, so old in fact, that they bore no dates and must have decended, to judge from their appearence and their written characters, from medieval times. The more recent of these were not dated beyound 1850:

Pnakotic Manuscripts
R'lyeh Text
Unaussprechlichen Kutten, von Jungt
The Book of Eitho
The Dhol Chants
The Seven Crypical Books of Hson
Ludvig Prumn's De Vermi's Mysteries
The Celalno Fragments
The Cultes desGoules of the Conte d'Erlette
The Book of Dzyan
Photostat copy of the Necromicon

The Table of Contents and Preface to The Survivor and Others

"Amoung the papers of the late Howard Phillip Lovecraft were various notes and or outlines for stories which he did not live to write. Of these, the most complete was the title story of this collection."

The Survivor
Wentworth's Day
The Peabody Heritage
The Gable Window
The Ancestor
The Shaddow Out of Space
The Lamp of Alhazred

"Certain houses, like certain persons, manage somehow to proclaim at once their character for evil. Perhaps it is the aroma of evil deeds committed under a particular roof, long after the actual doers have passed away, that makes the gooseflesh come and the hair rise. Something of the original passion of the evil-doer, and of the horror felt by his victim, enters the heart of the innocent watcher, and he becomes suddenly conscious of tingling nerves, creeping skin, and a chilling of the blood..."

—ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Preface from The Survivor, H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth.

Contributors to the Cthulha Mythos

Although Lovecraft may not had planned the Cthulha Mythos at the beginning, it didn't stop his contemporaries from contributing to its cause and eventual creation. These contributors using many of the same races added to the Cthulha Mythos:

Frank Belknap Long
Clark Aston Smith
August Derleth
Lin Carter
Robert W. Chambers
Robert E. Howard

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More authors and their work. Classic Mythos Online

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Added text (Mythos) to the first paragraph on 3/31/25 at 1:10PM.

Updated on 3/25/25 at 11:48. I added the link above.

The Ballantine Horror Series

I found this list of additional titles of Ballentine’s horror line of books in The Survivor and Others, by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. This volume was published in 1957 and with its yellowing and water damaged pages is not in great condition.

#377K The Sound of Hos Horn, Sarban
#380K Tales to be Told in the Dark, Basil Davenport
#431K The Doll Maker, Sarbon
#458K Some of your Blood, Theodore Sturgeon
#466K Things with Claws, edited by Whit and Hallie Burnett
#508K Night'sBlack Agents, Fritz Lieber, Jr.
#522K Tales of Love and Horror, editor Don Congdon
#574 Zackerly's Vulture Stew

In addition, there are three books featured at the bottom the back cover.

Alone by Night
Shaddows with Eyes
Nine Orro

These titles may or may not still be available, but with not posting this list these titles would be lost to most of us.

More of Lovecraft's Cthulha's Mythos

It has been almost nine years since I last posted anything Lovecraftian, however recently a came into a small cache of Lovecraftian literature and I will be making a few new posts on this topic.

Thirteen Primary Stories of the Cthulhu Mythos

The Nameless City
The Festival
The Colour out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Whisperer in Darkness
The Dreams in the Witch House
The Haunter of the Dark
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Shadow out of Time
At the Mountains of Madness
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
The Thing on the Doorstep

Although argumentatively it could be said that there are other texts associated with the mythos, these thirteen were written by the creator of the Mythos, H. P. Lovecraft.

I have read the titles that have been italicized.

The most merciful thing in the world…

“The most merciful thing in the world… is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on an island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far…”

The Shadow of of Space, H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth

Creatures from H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands

Ghasts

"That a mortal dreamer could traverse their cavern realm and leave by that door is inconceivable; for mortal dreamers were their former food, and they have legends of the toothsomeness of such dreamers even though banishment has restricted their diet to the ghasts, those repulsive beings which die in the light, and which live in the vaults of Zin and leap on long hind legs like kangaroos."

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

"Ghasts are humanoid creatures with hoofed feet and kangaroo-like legs and nose-less faces".

The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, Daniel Harms

Creatures from H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands

Moon-Beasts

"There, around a hideous fire fed by the obnoxious stems of lunar fungi, there squatted a stinking circle of the toad-like moon-beasts and their almost-human slaves. Some of these slaves were heating curious iron spears in the leaping flames, and at intervals applying their white-hot points to three tightly trussed prisoners that lay writhing before the leaders of the party. From the motions of their tentacles Carter could see that the blunt-snouted moon-beasts were enjoying the spectacle hugely, and vast was his horror when he suddenly recognised the frantic meeping and knew that the tortured ghouls were none other than the faithful trio which had guided him safely from the abyss and had thereafter set out from the enchanted wood to find Sarkomand and the gate to their native deeps."

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, H. P. Lovecraft

Moon-beasts are "pale, squat, toadlike creatures, superhumanly strong and noxious-smelling. Moon-beasts, have no eyes, but use the mass of pink tentacles at the end of their snout to sense their surroundings."

The H. P. Lovecraft Wiki

Creatures from H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands

Shantaks

"Other views shewed the gaunt grey peaks dividing Leng from Inganok, and the monstrous shantak-birds ¹ that build nests on the ledges half way up. And they shewed likewise the curious caves near the very topmost pinnacles, and how even the boldest of the shantaks fly screaming away from them."

Fourth and fifth mention of the creature "Shantaks" in Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kodath.

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¹ Shantaks are creatures that resemble large scaled birds with heads of horses . Shantaks live in the moutains near to the Plateau of Leng, in Dreamlands.

The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia

Full Text of The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kodath, H.P. Lovecraft

Creatures from H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands

Zoogs

“In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive zoogs¹.„

~ H. P. Lovecraft , The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

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¹Zoogs are a race of sentient forest-dwelling creatures that inhabit the Dreamlands of Earth. They are rodent like creatures about the size of a cat and have short tentical like appendages around their mouths and nose. Zoogs have a taste for flesh and may attack a human who wonders into the wood at night. They are mortal enemies of cats, as they prey upon their kittens, for they consider them a delicacy, and are preyed upon in return by adult cats.

Ghoulish PVC Miniatures

I really dpn't know what to make of the creatures. I thought of tagging them "Petri Dish Creatures" or creatures from the deep or perhaps they are the ghoulish creatures H.P. Lovecraft wrote about in his "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

"And yet I saw them in a limitless stream—flopping, hopping, croaking, bleating—surging inhumanly through the spectral moonlight in a grotesque, malignant saraband of fantastic nightmare. And some of them had tall tiaras of that nameless whitish-gold metal . . . and some were strangely robed . . . and one, who led the way, was clad in a ghoulishly humped black coat and striped trousers, and had a man’s felt hat perched on the shapeless thing that answered for a head. . . .

I think their predominant colour was a greyish-green, though they had white bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the sides of their necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped irregularly, sometimes on two legs and sometimes on four. I was somehow glad that they had no more than four limbs. Their croaking, baying voices, clearly used for articulate speech, held all the dark shades of expression which their staring faces lacked."

The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H. P. Lovecraft