H.P. Lovecraft

Is anyone else here a fan of Lovecraft novels? I know they're sort of silly but again they are also filled with so much dread and torment I find I can't stop reading and re-reading them.
Basically I was after people's input if they are aware of his work as I'm writing a story on the Cthulhu Mythos which is supposed to be a band bio for my Metal band. Basically I have a guy travelling through the north east of england studying regional Myth and Legend. He finds a small town which has an old story of a witch living there being struck by lightning and creating a large hole in the ground in which the locals have found something and turned their religion to one called the Order of Dagon.
Not realising how dangerous this is the man goes looking and throughout the trip finds 5 people all with some form of dementia making hand & face gestures.
I wont spoil it for those that don't know and will post my story up when it's done but it is going to be pretty big as far as a band bio goes thought I could package it with a demo
Either way if people know the Cthulhu stuff then they can critique on wheather or not I'm destroying something I love.

As for books that people should read (They are all short stories)

Call of Cthulhu
In The Mountains Of Madness
Shadow over Innsmouth
Dagon
The Dunwitch Horror

Sounds pretty good. I love the Lovecraft stories, and re-read them every so often. The missus is an even bigger fan though, so she'll definately be interested.
All of our band names in the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games have been based on Cthulhu references ('Men of Leng', 'Hounds of Tindalos' and 'The Life of R'lyeh').

I have read some lovecraft and really enjoyed it, shadow over insmouth was brilliant (loved the side quest in oblivion based on it)

Well Bethesda did a whole PC and XBOX (original) game based on it

And it was great!

Still haven't played Oblivion. If it's going to take me as long as Fallout 3 has so far, I might need a year off work to do it!

Just remembered that Fallout 3 also has a building called 'The Dunwich Building' too.

Yeah they must be huge fans of it.

I have a town map of Innsmouth framed in my living room

Give me a day and I'll post up the first chapter. It is going to be very sililar to shadow over innsmouth as it's covering the order of dagon and the change the humans go through in their submission to the god, but it also has an element of Cthulhu in it where an atomic bomb set of at the Bikini Atol has released a shrine from beneath the ocean previously trapped by a volcanic explosion on the sea bed

Ichi,

Yes, I am a big fan of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. I have all of his stories (including his "Supernatural Horror in Literature" treatise - "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"). Nothing at all silly about them, if you don't mind.

Also, "At the Mountains of Madness" is a novella and is currently being made into a motion picture - which I pray to Cthulhu is good...

http://www.deltorofilms.com/ProjectPage.php?projectid=9

Any Lovecraft fans should check out the Call of Cthulhu film, made by the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society.
They have made it as though it is a 1920's silent film. It's suprisingly atmospheric, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Check it out: http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/index.html

Hmmz, will have to look at this guy. Never read any of his stuff but sounds like my kinda thing. Cheers.

I've seen that film thought it was rather well done for a fan made movie.
I still haven't finished my first chapter! just haven't had time to sit and work out my ideas into consice paragraphs I have the beginning and end of the chapter just not filled out the middle yet.

It's still ponly rough and I haven't proof read this bit yet but here's the introduction:

From the Journal of Nathaniel Frankish:


Chapter 1

June 19th 1953 - It is with great sorrow and solemn regret that I reach my journal now with a fractured mind and penitent soul.
I must recount this tale as quickly as possible and hide the full extent of my findings as I know they are coming for me, I can feel them near and I don’t have much time. Hopefully someone will find this journal and be able to stop what I cannot fight any longer. I feel as though I am too weak a man and have not done my duty to God! I pray that I will not go to hell for the atrocities a have bore witness to. Not knowing for sure if the things I have seen or done were part of a dream or the nightmare I feel this world will soon come to be. The only thing that I can be certain of however is that in the days leading to me writing this I have killed my fellow man and would do so again God forgive me.

On the morning of June 1st I had decided I was going to head north by bus to a collection of villages near a small fishing town called Bridlington, which were reported to have been a major influence on my research material and the heart of most of the rumours and legends of the area. I was on my travels through the north east portion of England & had taken time out from my work at the University, where I was studying regional Myth and Folk Lore.
There was an old house specifically which I wanted to visit that had been home to a woman whom the locals believed had been struck by lightning while levitating herself over the town in an attempt to escape persecution for performing the ritual sacrifice of a small boy in the town church, the resulting crash had made a crater of substantial size.
Her house is reported in having a direct passage to the foot of the churches bell tower with which she could go to and from the building without being noticed to perform her ungodly writes and rituals. Curiously enough though almost one year to the day after this incident, in August of 1906, the church was burned down to not much more than rubble. The local inhabitants never rebuilt the wreck and with no record of a cause for the fire and seemingly no police inquiry rumours had started to spread that the people in these villages had renounced the Christian faith they once had and taken up another, much more obscure religion I had never come across before in my studies named “The Order of Dagon”.

It was a fair June morning a little overcast but nothing unusual and I was waiting to catch the first Bus to the town of Driffield; which was to drop me off in the marketplace by about lunch time. I had on me not much more than my wallet, a small suitcase with a change of clothes and a raincoat as it had been raining lightly that morning and I wasn’t in the mood to be caught in the open countryside if the weather should turn and whip up a storm from the nearby sea. I had found there was a single hotel in the town centre from old records, but as these records were almost 50 years old I was simply hoping it was still functioning as I would like to stay in the area for more than just the afternoon. As the bus journey would take almost 3 hours it would be an awful waste of the day to have to travel back and forth for the next week but in preparation for disappointment I had found that the last bus would leave the marketplace at 7pm returning me home by 10 just in time for a nightcap.
As the bus reached the edge of the town I could see that many of the houses had become dilapidated over time and were missing whole sections of roofing and trusses, in some cases entire walls were left to topple and the bus had to manoeuvre around the rubble. The driver made a passing comment about how it had “been like this for years” and as there had been no record of anything happening here since 1906 I felt I could believe the statement. The streets narrowed as we neared the centre of town and the buildings were better maintained but still barely habitable, although with the houses being nearer to my window it did offer up my first signs of life. As it was just nearing the middle of the day, the sun reflecting on my window obscured my view so that I couldn’t see clearly enough to describe a face or any distinguishing features. But in a few of the buildings I could see the shapes and shifting shadows of people moving, and in some houses it seemed like there were large numbers of people gathered for some occasion no doubt.
I also noticed a number of curtains fluttering and the quick retraction of hands as we passed slowly by; still navigating rubbish and rubble left in the streets the whole town gave me an odd sense of unease and I began to feel as though I was being watched.

We pulled into the town centre and I left the bus facing the old Hotel which was still standing at least. The driver retrieved my bags and wished me a safe journey reminding me the last bus was at 7pm. I didn’t think much of it at the time but his face looked worried and his tone was sombre. Looking back now I don’t think he would ever expect to see or hear from me again.

Thats well written ICHI, I am no critic or scolar of literature but I could beleive that it was done by lovecraft if i didnt know better

Cheers Kermit here's the next bit if your interested

Chapter 2

There was only a handful of people in the town centre and they seemed to be ambling in an odd fashion; although where to could be anyone’s guess. There were no shops open and no market to speak of, I though at the time they were maybe just farm hands returning to work from their lunch at home but their presence did little to dampen the disquiet in my heart. One of these men had his face wholly covered with wrapped cloth and just enough of a gap in the front for a viewing window of sorts. He looked like a leper hiding his scars from a cruel world but as he turned to look at me his eyes seemed to shine a mucky yellow color and all the world could not be as cruel as what I imagined hid under that cowl. The man stared at me for what seemed to be hours, and I was frozen to the spot just looking back at him. He was just staring at me! Not making any form of welcoming gesture; not saying a word! Just still eyes locked onto mine almost as if deciding what to do with me, but in the end he just turned away and walked down “Exchange St” which skirted the east side of the hotel. I wasn’t holding out any hope now that the Hotel would be open still, but as I approached and reached for the door a man in a mucky green outfit with tattered top hat opened the door and welcomed me in.
He rustled me up to the counter to check in, mumbled something I didn’t quite make out, he had a raspy sort of voice and couldn’t enunciate correctly. The man then disappeared around the corner in a rush, I heard a door slam closed and moments later the man reappeared from another door behind the counter having changed his jacket to a mucky red overcoat but retaining the tatty hat, which he looked rather proud of in the way he realigned it constantly.
He had a strange look about him too and although I couldn’t have guessed his age his skin seemed young but oily with a grey tinge, his eyes were protruding out from his head; almost opposing each other in direction and when the hat totally slipped from his dome shaped crown I noticed he was rather rapidly losing his hair.
He gave me a sharp look up and down his eyes finally fixing on mine and with a grimace he quickly followed with the matter of how long I would be staying at the Hotel. Again I found it hard to understand him, but now noticing that it could be attributed to the oversized tongue, which was struggling to be housed behind his large grey lips and toothless smile.
I announced I would like to stay till the week end and asked if dinner was prepared at the hotel to which he replied that the cook was off sick but there was a bar in which I could help myself to any spirits for refreshment free of charge.
He handed me a key with the number 24 on the fob and he rushed back round the counter through the door now wearing his green jacket again motioning for me to follow him.
The whole hotel was in disrepair beyond the service desk, some areas completely devoid of carpet or with holes in the floorboards and a smell that I could only attribute to rotting fish; which thankfully seemed to only linger on the ground floor and dissipated as we climbed the stairwell to the second. As we passed the first landing I could see that no lights were on and most of the windows were covered in sheets, the whole hotel looked empty and as we walked the corridor to the very last room on the top floor I wondered why I was to be housed here as opposed to any of the other rooms we had passed on the way, I settled my mind with the fact that they were more than likely in such a bad state that they could not be stayed in without causing the guest serious injury. The man left my bag by the door and bid me good day I assumed. As he shuffled off down the corridor into the gloomy staircase I put my key in the door and prepared myself for the worst. Turning the handle I entered into a room, which wasn’t completely unpleasant but very simple, with only a bed, a dresser and an adjoining washroom, which housed a shower and basin. It was livable but lacking and had a damp feel to the air with a slight moldy smell coming from the dead daffodils sitting in stagnant water on the windowsill. My room window was large and thankfully still able to be opened by sliding the bottom half upward and locking on a latch. It looked straight out into the marketplace from which I had arrived and I had a good view over the town where I could see at the edge of the town, was a large mill or factory of sorts with one large chimney reaching for the sky pumping out large plumes of black smoke. The view of the chimney; however unsightly, was at least of some comfort and showed the possibility of some industry in an otherwise ghost of a town. It sat out just beyond some more derelict buildings, but the area was a little more sparsely laid out than the rest of the town and some of the old houses looked like they had suffered a terrible fire with a few just left as black patches of rubble. To one side of where the mill sat I could make out a canal which must have started somewhere near to my hotel and stretched south easterly into the distance. The canal was probably once the heart of the town and would have been the easiest way for people to transport local produce and import essentials but now like everything else it was overgrown and disused.
After unpacking the few clothes I brought with me I set about my lunch and decided on taking the doorman up on his offer of a free drink before I started into town and on my journey I had hoped that the extra time in the hotel would give me an opportunity to question the man about the town and the house I wished to visit but upon reaching the foyer he was nowhere to be seen.
I cautiously made my way down the corridor signposted for the bar and again found it to be empty but at least it was lit with small candles across the back of the bar and adorning at least two of the dozen or so tables and waiting for me were two whisky glasses laid out on the wooden bar top. The room also was furnished with a small upright piano in one corner that I decided not to play as it was probably frightfully out of tune and I don’t think my heart could have taken the sound of a disused instrument calling out in pain.
I grabbed a bottle of whisky from behind the bar, pulled up a stool and poured myself the first and last drink I will ever have in Driffield. From the moment the glass touched my lips and the liquid hit my tongue I wretched and convulsed with disgust and a burning pain in my throat let me know I was about to be incredibly sick.
I couldn’t see a sign for a toilet or even a kitchen and there was no bin or bucket readily available, I didn’t want to venture too far into this place I didn’t feel welcome and decided the only thing to do was to make my way back to the room.
The stomach pain increased exponentially as I held back the wrenching of my stomach muscles, each step up the staircase seemed to add extra weight to my legs and as I began to lose coherent thought I could feel the sweat on my hands slipping at the balustrade and the sweat from my brow stinging my eyes. I was at my door on my knees fumbling for the key not sure how I’d managed the journey but fully aware of the pain I was in. As I balanced myself on the door handle and tried to gain my footing again I fell ungainly into the room and had to crawl to the toilet bowl on my hands and knees. After around three hours of being slumped over the toilet I had no more to give and had spent the best part of my first day being sick. I felt drained, tired and in no state to venture out into the town. I cleaned myself up as best as possible and landed on the hard bed mattress with a thud, it was then I made a conscious decision not to eat or drink anything offered to me for the remainder of my stay and I would have to find a shop or travel back out of town for supplies in the morning. As I felt sleep take me into its soft grasp, I thought I could hear murmurings of a gathering beneath my bedroom window, still feeling uneasy, knowing that something wasn’t right with the town I couldn’t fight fatigue, I closed my eyes and drifted away.

That night I slept a thankless sleep turning and dozing in and out of coherent thought, and for the moments I settled I dreamt of a place far away on the other side of the world a dream that seemed so far removed from the events of the day but one that filled me with the same dread & unrest I had felt earlier while entering the town centre.
Atop a dark mountain reaching for the heavens beneath the ocean surface a small crustacean claws its way past the rocky depressions, which once formed the heart of this dead pathway to the planets core. The small insignificant creature is on its way to a fresh carcass it could sense was nearby.
Having expunged any decomposing gasses on the surface through a newly formed hole in the belly of the old whale it had sunk to the bottom of the North Sea and come to rest on this ancient monolith. A titan of the sea served up and sacrificed on an altar made by molten explosions and condensed air pressure beneath the sea bed millions of years prior to this chance encounter. There was still something strange about the mountain though, as if the angles and lines were made with purpose rather than by mere natural occurrence. The Whale; with one eye still ajar stared blankly into the hazy black of the distant deep, as though it was looking to this tiny scavenger coming for its banquet of blubber and dead meat. It seemed somewhat re-invigorated with life, the movement of the oceans water shifting any hanging skin and debris in a hypnotic dance. Almost like a siren calling out to any and every traveler of the sea, be it the greatest predator to the smallest opportunist beneath the waves. So hypnotic and alluring is its song, sounding so safe to fickle ears wishing to be saved. All the entire ocean can muster in return is to dish up more vessels to crash upon the treacherous cliffs below. Those cliffs; which seemed so innocuous and yet so devilish, Almost as if created by a nightmare, something inhuman and wholly inconceivable by any of mankind’s sons and daughters.
As the this tiny creature began to feast on the flesh of the giant, tearing through the skin and reveling in the succulent fat flapping outwards from the hole in this krakens stomach ‘almost like a white flag being waved in submission’ a dull thud echoed for miles around as the bomb breached the surface water far above.

Frag Kebab wrote:Any Lovecraft fans should check out the Call of Cthulhu film, made by the H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society.
They have made it as though it is a 1920's silent film. It's suprisingly atmospheric, and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Check it out: http://www.cthulhulives.org/cocmovie/index.html

Yes, I have this on disk - downloaded several years ago and burned. Great stuff that is! Best H.P.L. put to film yet!

iRoppa wrote:Hmmz, will have to look at this guy. Never read any of his stuff but sounds like my kinda thing. Cheers.

Never read H.P.L., eh? Very atmospheric and his use of language is, well, unique. But I love it! Especially the Mythos stuff.

may have to pick something up from him...

never read his stuff.

I picked up a collection of his stuff for about a tenner and although I wasnt fussed for some of the stories some are absolutley brilliant

Hey, Ichi. Just finished reading this, and really like it. The missus liked it too, and kept asking me questions about it. I told her she'd have to wait until you'd written the rest of it!
So two fans here!

Just had chance to read the second chapter

good work ICHI, I am looking forward to reading the rest

Cheers dudes i'll be making on with the rest over this week I only want it to be short about 5 or 6 chapters so I'll try and get another 2 up by the weekend at least

The Hubb is a big Lovecraft fan - he has a few rare Lovecraftian based films that haven't been issued over here on dvd and loads of books by Lovecraft and related authors. He's such a big Lovecraft geek he even played the role playing game

He has a few illustrations that are Cthulhu based up at deviant art - there are other illustrations there as well some based on Savoy - all are going to be removed next week for his extraction project so in a short time they will be gone

http://misen23.deviantart.com/art/cthulhu-m1-71560433

http://misen23.deviantart.com/art/azathoth-m1-71560120

however you may find this amusing as its a Lovecraftian band - which doesn't exist it's a part of an art project

http://bulboustorso.izorpo.co.uk/bulb29.html

As for Bethesda being Lovecraft - most definetly the clues are everywhere and The Call of Cthulhu on the xbox - absolute brilliant game - quite scary - not many games can evoke those feelings Clive Barkers The Undying was another - the old pc game play it in the dark with headphones - absolutely terrified

Love the art, and undying was fantastic.

"feel the bite of my ax" - man loved the bit where after killing the girl boss he's standing on the cliff holding her head - absolutely mad

The Hubb wooed me with The Desert - based on one of my spoken word pieces - has a very distinctive illustration styl.

The Hubb also really enjoyed it - particularly liked the nightmare of the dream - Lovecraftian atmosphere was spot on - he looks forward to reading more when it's done. He read it while I was in my session - as I mentioned he's a Cthulhu cum stain enthusiast - I haven't had a chance to read but I will. It's a shame he won't play on live but chances are he and Ichi wouldn't be playing games they would just chat about films and books.

when are you putting up the remaining chapters Ichi?