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.

A Dream, or so it may Seem?

Screenshot of image was found here.

“Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten thousand generations.”

Chuang Tse: II

Krank is Juiced up

Krank is all juiced up after samplying the dreams of a child.

Screenshot from The City of Lost Children.

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The City of Lost Children, The Steampunk Wiki

The Geography of Lovecraft’s Dreamlands

"The Dreamlands is divided into four continental regions, each named for its cardinal direction.

The West is the most well-known region of the Dreamlands and is probably the most peopled as well. It is where dreamers emerge from the Steps of Deeper Slumber. The port of Dylath-Leen, the largest city of the Dreamlands, lies on its coast. The town of Ulthar, where no man may kill a cat, is also located here. Other important cities are Hlanith (a coastal jungle city) and Ilarnek (a desert trade capital). The land of Mnar and the ruins of Sarnath are found at the southern border. The Enchanted Wood of the Zoogs is also found here. It joins the South.

The South is the southern coastal region of the continent shared by the West along with the islands of the Southern Sea, including the isle of Oriab, the largest. The South's land-locked regions and its coastal areas are known as the Fantastic Realms, because they contain nightmarish and sometimes incomprehensible zones. Otherwise, the islands of the Southern Sea are fairly normal.

The East is a continent that is largely uninhabited, except for Ooth-Nargai. The city of Celephaïs is the capital of Ooth-Nargai and was created from whole cloth by its monarch King Kuranes, the greatest of all recorded dreamers. Beyond Ooth-Nargai are The Forbidden Lands, dangerous realms into which travel is interdicted.

The North is a cold, mountainous continent notorious for its Plateau of Leng, a violent region shared by man-eating spiders and satyr-like beings known as the "Men of Leng". The North also has a number of friendlier places, such as the city of Inganok, famous for its onyx quarries. The deepest reaches of the North are said to hold Unknown Kadath, the home of the Great Ones.

In addition to these regions, the Dreamlands has a few other locales that defy conventional description.

The Underworld is a subterranean region that runs beneath the whole of the Dreamlands. Its principle inhabitants are ghouls, who can physically enter the waking world through crypts. The Underworld is also home to the Gugs, monstrous giants banished from the surface for untold blasphemies. The Underworld's deepest realm is the Vale of Pnath, a dangerous lightless chasm inhabited by enormous unseen beasts called bholes. Bholes are likely the ancestors of the dholes of Yaddith.

The Moon has a parallel in the Dreamlands and is inhabited by the dreaded moon-beasts, amorphous frog-like creatures allied with Nyarlathotep. Interestingly, it is possible for a ship to sail off the edge of the Dreamlands and travel through space to the moon.”

Yog-Sothoth Wiki

Map of Lovecraft's Dreamlands

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Lovecraft's Dreamlands Literature

Sweet Yellow Wine - Journey into the Unknown

But for me the captain poured into a little glass some heavy yellow wine from a small jar which he kept apart among his sacred things. Thick and sweet it was, even like honey, yet there was in its heart a mighty, ardent fire which had authority over souls of men. It was made, the captain told me, with great subtlety by the secret craft of a family of six who lived in a hut on the mountains of Hian Min. Once in these mountains, he said, he followed the spoor of a bear, and he came suddenly on a man of that family who had hunted the same bear, and he was at the end of a narrow way with precipice all about him, and his spear was sticking in the bear, and the wound not fatal, and he had no other weapon. And the bear was walking towards the man, very slowly because his wound irked him—yet he was now very close. And what the captain did he would not say, but every year as soon as the snows are hard, and travelling is easy on the Hian Min, that man comes down to the market in the plains, and always leaves for the captain in the gate of fair Belzoond a vessel of that priceless secret wine.

Have all of England’s Magicians been trained by Other Magicians?

“There have been very few of England’s magicians that have not learned from another magician. Gilbert Norrel and Jonathan Strange are examples of magicians that were self-made. Mr. Gilbert Norrel being what you may call an academic magician, spent years locked away with his books and spells. Although Jonathan Strange’s only text was a copy of the Raven King he seems to have a natural inclination toward magic.

Very little is known about the Raven King’s early years, but it is assumed that the Raven King learned both magic and Kingship while at court of the King of Faerie.

Another seemingly self-made magician is Thomas Godbless (1105?-82) of Nottinghamshire. Although Godbless did spend some time with the Raven King, he had been practicing magic for years before this encounter."

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

Spells of Summoning

Over the centuries in Merry Olde England there have been thousands of spells of summoning created, but few perfected. Paris Ormskirk a schoolmaster from the village of Clerkenwell wrote several expositions on magic. He may not have brought anything new to the profession, but he was very diligent and compiled a list of thousands of spells of summoning. These spells were, to the best of Ormskirk’s ability, shifted through and attempted to cast these spells. Eventually, a spell of summoning created by Ormskirk, became very popular. It was this spell that Jonathan Strange perfected and used to bring Maria Absalom into his dream.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke.

The Ravings of Vinculus

Vinculus is the magician of Threadneedle Street, a theatrical magician. He has broken into Mr. Norrel’s home and has found his way to Mr. Norrel’s library. He startles Mr. Norrel with the following fragmented quote from the book of the Raven King.

“I reached out my hand, thought and memory flew out of my enemies heads like a flock of starlings; my enemies crumpled like empty sacks.

I came to them out of the mist and rain. I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn. When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood.”

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

A Ghoul Attacks Conan!

"Conan lay and stared, half expecting it to vanish like a figure of a dream, and then a chill of recollection crept along his spine. Half-forgotten memories surged back, of grisly tales whispered of the shapes that haunted these uninhabited forests at the foot of the hills that mark the Zingaran-Argossean border. Ghouls, men called them, eaters of human flesh, spawn of darkness, children of unholy mating's of a lost and forgotten race with the demons of the underworld. Somewhere in these primitive forests were the ruins of an ancient, accursed city, men whispered, and among its tombs slunk gray, anthropomorphic shadows—Conan shuddered strongly.

He lay staring at the malformed head that rose dimly above him, and cautiously he extended a hand toward the sword at his hip. With a horrible cry that the man involuntarily echoed, the monster was at his throat.

Conan threw up his right arm, and the dog-like jaws closed on it, driving the mail links into the hard flesh. The misshapen yet man-like hands clutched for his throat, but he evaded them with a heave and roll of his whole body, at the same time drawing his dagger with his left hand.

They tumbled over and over on the grass, smiting and tearing. The muscles coiling under that gray corpse-like skin were stringy and hard as steel wires, exceeding the strength of a man. But Conan's thews were iron too, and his mail saved him from the gnashing fangs and ripping claws long enough for him to drive home his dagger, again and again and again. The horrible vitality of the semi-human monstrosity seemed inexhaustible, and the king's skin crawled at the feel of that slick, clammy flesh. He put all his loathing and savage revulsion behind the plunging blade, and suddenly the monster heaved up convulsively beneath him as the point found its grisly heart, and then lay still.

Conan rose, shaken with nausea. He stood in the center of the glade uncertainly, sword in one hand and dagger in the other. He had not lost his instinctive sense of direction, as far as the points of the compass were concerned, but he did not know in which direction the road lay. He had no way of knowing in which direction the ghoul had dragged him. Conan glared at the silent, black, moon-dappled woods which ringed him, and felt cold moisture bead his flesh. He was without a horse and lost in these haunted woods, and that staring deformed thing at his feet was a mute evidence of the horrors that lurked in the forest. He stood almost holding his breath in his painful intensity, straining his ears for some crack of twig or rustle of grass.

When a sound did come he started violently. Suddenly out on the night air broke the scream of a terrified horse. His stallion! There were panthers in the wood—or—ghouls ate beasts as well as men."

Chapter 12: The Fang of the Dragon, The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Green Smoke

"Again the green smoke rose and billowed. Again images unfolded before him (Conan), this time alien and seemingly irrelevant. He saw great towering black walls, pedestals half hidden in the shadows upholding images of hideous, half-bestial gods. Men moved in the shadows, dark, wiry men, clad in red, silken loincloths. They were bearing a green jade sarcophagus along a gigantic black corridor. But before he could tell much about what he saw, the scene shifted. He saw a cavern, dim, shadowy and haunted with a strange intangible horror. On an altar of black stone stood a curious golden vessel, shaped like the shell of a scallop. Into this cavern came some of the same dark, wiry men who had borne the mummy-case. They seized the golden vessel, and then the shadows swirled around them and what happened he could not say. But he saw a glimmer in a whorl of darkness, like a ball of living fire. Then the smoke was only smoke, drifting up from the fire of tamarisk chunks, thinning and fading."

Chapter 7: The Rending of the Veil, The Hour Of The Dragon, Robert E. Howard

Black Ring & the Black Lotus

"Conan's scalp prickled. In Stygia, that ancient and evil kingdom that lay far to the south, he had seen such black dust before. It was the pollen of the black lotus, which creates death-like sleep and monstrous dreams; and he knew that only the grisly wizards of the Black Ring, which is the nadir of evil, voluntarily seek the scarlet nightmares of the black lotus, to revive their necromantic powers.

The Black Ring was a fable and a lie to most folk of the western world, but Conan knew of its ghastly reality, and its grim votaries who practice their abominable sorceries amid the black vaults of Stygia and the nighted domes of accursed Sabatea."

Chapter 4: 'From What Hell Have You Crawled?', The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard

The Dreams of Harry Collins

Harry Collins is the main protagonist in Bloch's dystonian "This Crowded Earth" novel.

"In the nightmare Harry found himself looking down at the mistakes and the failures and he recognized them for what they were, and he knew then why the incinerators were kept busy and why the black smoke poured.

In the nightmare he saw the special units containing those which were not mistakes or failures, and in a way they were worse than the others. They were red and wriggling there beneath the glass, and on the glass surfaces hung the charts which gave the data. Then Harry saw the names, saw his own name repeated twice—once for Sue, once for Myrna. And he realized that he had contributed to the successful outcome or issue of the experiments (outcome? Issue? These horrors?) and that was why Manschoff must have chosen to take the risk of keeping him alive. Because he was one of the good guinea pigs, and he had spawned, spawned living, mewing abominations.

He had dreamed of these things, and now he saw that they were real, so that nightmare merged with now, and he could gaze down at it with open eyes and scream at last with open mouth.

Then, of course, an attendant came running (although he seemed to be moving ever so slowly, because everything moves so slowly in a dream) and Harry saw him coming and lifted a bell-glass and smashed it down over the man's head (slowly, ever so slowly) and then he heard the others coming and he climbed out of the window and ran.

The searchlights winked across the courtyards and the sirens vomited hysteria from metallic throats and the night was filled with shadows that pursued.

But Harry knew where to run. He ran straight through the nightmare, through all the fantastic but familiar convolutions of sight and sound, and then he came to the river and plunged in.

Now the nightmare was not sight or sound, but merely sensation. Icy cold and distilled darkness; ripples that ran, then raced and roiled and roared. But there had to be a way out of the nightmare and there had to be a way out of the canyon, and that way was the river.

Apparently no one else had thought of the river; perhaps they had considered it as a possible avenue of escape and then discarded the notion when they realized how it ripped and raged among the rocks as it finally plunged from the canyon's mouth. Obviously, no one could hope to combat that current and survive.

But strange things happen in nightmares. And you fight the numbness and the blackness and you claw and convulse and you twist and turn and toss and then you ride the crests of frenzy and plunge into the troughs of panic and despair and you sweep round and round and sink down into nothingness until you break through to the freedom which comes only with oblivion.

Somewhere beyond the canyon's moiling maw, Harry Collins found that freedom and that oblivion. He escaped from the nightmare, just as he escaped from the river.

The river itself roared on without him.

And the nightmare continued, too...."

This Crowded Earth, Robert Bloch

A New Life

"One day when I was all alone I found a wondrous little stone, It lay forgotten on the road Far from the ways of man's abode. When on this stone mine eyes I cast I saw my Treasure found at last. I pressed it hard against my face, I covered it with my embrace, I hid it in a secret place. And every day I went to see This stone that was my ecstasy; And worshipped it with flowers rare, And secret words and sayings fair. O stone, so rare and red and wise O fragment of far Paradise, O Star, whose light is life! O Sea, Whose ocean is infinity! Thou art a fire that ever burns,[110] And all the world to wonder turns; And all the dust of the dull day By thee is changed and purged away, So that, where'er I look, I see A world of a Great Majesty. The sullen river rolls all gold, The desert park's a faery wold, When on the trees the wind is borne I hear the sound of Arthur's horn I see no town of grim grey ways, But a great city all ablaze With burning torches, to light up The pinnacles that shrine the Cup. Ever the magic wine is poured, Ever the Feast shines on the board, Ever the song is borne on high That chants the holy Magistry— Etc. etc. etc."

...'So I awoke from a dream of a London suburb, of daily labour, of weary, useless little things; and as my eyes were opened I saw that I was in an ancient wood, where a clear well rose into grey film and vapour beneath a misty, glimmering heat. And a form came towards me from the hidden places of the wood, and my love and I were united by the well.'

A Fragment of Life, The House of Souls, Arthur Machen

Madre Mia-"Oh mother!"

"People may say thou art no longer young
And yet, to me, thy youth was yesterday,
A yesterday that seems
Still mingled with my dreams.
Ah! how the years have o'er thee flung
Their soft mantilla, grey.
And e'en to them thou art not over old;
How could'st thou be! Thy hair
Hast scarcely lost its deep old glorious dark:
Thy face is scarcely lined. No mark
Destroys its calm serenity. Like gold
Of evening light, when winds scarce stir,
The soul-light of thy face is pure as prayer."

Preface from the The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"

Beauty in the Land of Dreams-Journey into the Unknown

“And the butterflies sung of strange and painted things, of purple orchids and of lost pink cities and the monstrous colours of the jungle's decay. And they, too, were among those whose voices are not discernible by human ears. And as they floated above the river, going from forest to forest, their splendour was matched by the inimical beauty of the birds who darted out to pursue them. Or sometimes they settled on the white and wax-like blooms of the plant that creeps and clambers about the trees of the forest; and their purple wings flashed out on the great blossoms as, when the caravans go from Nurl to Thace, the gleaming silks flash out upon the snow, where the crafty merchants spread them one by one to astonish the mountaineers of the Hills of Noor.”

Tales of Three Hemispheres, Lord Dunsany

The Yann Bore Us Onwards-Journey into the Unknown

“And so Yann River bore us magnificently onwards, for he was elate with molten snow that the Poltiades had brought him from the Hills of Hap¹, and the Marn and Migris² were swollen full with floods; and he bore us in his might past Kyph and Pir, and we saw the lights of Goolunza.”

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¹Hills of Haps are said to raise like isles above lands of Dream.

²Marn and Migris are rivers that mingled their waters with the mighty Yann.

Lovecraft Dreamlands Literature

The following Lovecraft stories either take place in or make reference to the Dreamlands:

"Polaris" (1918)
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" (1919)
"The Doom That Came to Sarnath" (1919)
"The White Ship" (1919)
"The Cats of Ulthar" (1920)
"Celephaïs" (1920)
"The Other Gods" (1921)
"Hypnos" (1922)
"The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (1926)
"The Silver Key" (1926)
"The Strange High House in the Mist" (1926)
"Through the Gates of the Silver Key" (1932)

Texts can be read from here:

The Dreamlands is a fictional location in the Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft. It is also the setting for a number of pastiches written by other authors.

Lovecraft’s Dreamlands is an alternative dimension that is accessible, at will, by young dreamers. Once a person reaches adulthood accessing Dreamlands is more difficult and can be accessed through the use of certain narcotics.

Once a dreamer enters into the Dreamlands they must walk down the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber. Once at the bottom of the stairs they will face the judgment of Nasht and Kaman the gatekeepers of Dreamlands. If these gatekeepers find the dreamer worthy the dreamer is allowed to descend the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber and emerges in to the Enchanted Wood.