The Works of Lovecraftedited by Jim HawleyThis page lists the known works of H.P. Lovecraft, along with a short synopsis of each story as it becomes available. If you have a synopsis you think should be included, let me know. In the near future, I plan to start linking each story to those books on the market that include that story. |
 |
(: The summaries below are not that great. As time goes by, I will update them and get them in better shape. If you have a better summary and want to post it, let me know. Additionally, if there are works missing (and I know there are) let me know so I can list them, too.)
Lost in the depths of Mammoth Cave, the narrator confronts his deepest fears as a creature of the darkness stalks him as its next victim.
A family curse finds its final culmination as the last of the line discovers the terrible secret behind Charles le Sorcier and the elixir of life.
Who says inanimate objects own no soul? The street witnesses the course of history and doles out its own brand of justice to those who would sully its surface.
Taken prisoner by a German battle ship during World War I, the narrator escapes, only to discover a nightmare land of mud and horror in the midst of the Pacific.
Jervas Dudley learns that solitude is not so bad, when shared with the ghosts of the Hyde family in the hidden crypt near his home.
While working the gold mines in the Cactus Mountains, the narrator befriends a strange Mexican worker named Juan Romero. When a vast cavern is discovered which seems to have no bottom, Juan and the narrator discover hidden horrors no man was meant to see.
The story recounts how the founders of Sarnath destroyed the neighboring city of Ib, casting the bulbous corpses and ancient monoliths into a nearby lake. All that is kept, to symbolize their conquest, is a statue of the Ibian god, Bokrug; one night this vanishes and the high priest is found dead, ‘doom’ scrawled on his altar. A thousand years later Sarnath rules the whole land of Mnar and the opulent city celebrates a millennia since the fall of Ib. As the lake rises, and mists fall, Bokrug brings his promised doom to Sarnath.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
Randolph Carter insists to the police that his recollection of the night when Harley Warren disappeared is correct. The pair traveled to an ancient swampland cemetery and, after uncovering a tunnel that led into the earth, Warren descended in search of horrors he claimed were beyond Carter’s comprehension. They kept in contact via a set of connected telephones, but what Carter heard drove him temporarily insane.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
Beckoned by a bearded man, Basil Elton boards the White Ship and travels to many wondrous places, including Thalarion, the daemon haunted City of a Thousand Wonders. Finally docking at Sona-Nyl, Basil stays for aeons in this place of utmost beauty, before once again boarding the White Ship in search of Cathuria. Yet Basil has rejected Sona-Nyl, and thus finds only a hole in the world where he plummets back to his lighthouse, the secrets of the oceans lost to him forever.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
An unholy matrimony is consummated in the deepest jungles of the Congo by Arthur Jermyn's ancestor and is hidden from the descendants. When Arthur decides to investigate his past and locates the mummified corpse of the ape-princess of the Congo, he discovers just how much he and the princess really have in common.
The origins of the law in Ulthar, that no cats may be killed. An old couple lived in the town; they hated cats and killed all those that entered their land. On one occasion they took a kitten belonging to a group of strange wanderers, who then said unknown prayers and quickly left. For a night all the cats of Ulthar disappeared, before returning unharmed. It took several weeks for the townspeople to miss the old couple; all that was found were skeletons.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
A man returns in a dream to a city that he once visited as a sleeping child; the place is Celephais, and there his name is Kuranes. Upon awakening he wishes to return, and so travels to many places in his dreams, eventually turning to drugs, and then into destitution, in search of Celephais. Eventually the city invites Kuranes back, to remain forever as God, and he casts his earthly body aside.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
Through the use of a special machine, Crawford Tillinghast discovers an alter dimension which exists just beyond the human realm of comprehension. A plan of revenge against a former colleague backfires, exposing Tillinghast to his own horrible discovery.
An unnamed genealogist, researching in the Miskatonic Valley, is driven by rain into an old farmhouse. Here, he finds a copy of Pigafetta’s Regnum Congo, but is perturbed by the volume’s habit of falling open upon the same page, the gruesome Plate XII. The inhabitant of the house, an unkempt yokel, happens upon the man and is overjoyed that the newcomer can translate the Latin; previously he had been able to focus only on the pictures.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
The commander of the German submarine U-29 discovers Atlantis as his ship lists crippled beneath the waves of the Atlantic. His crew all dead, he succumbs to the call of the dead city and the temple therein.
A trio of thieves think the old man who talks to jars in his living room is easy prey, but find out differently when the old man calls upon a few old friends to aid him in his time of need.
An account of the final work and deaths of Kalos and Musides, fabled sculptures in Arcadia. The pair accept a commission from the Tyrant of Syracuse, but Kalos falls ill, and before dying expresses a wish that Musides bury him with olive twigs at his head. Grief stricken, Musides finishes the Tyrant’s work, but the olive twigs grow prodigiously.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
A short, dreamlike story often described as a prose poem. The world seemed to change demonically before the man called Nyarlathotep journeyed out of Egypt, giving talks in each city on electricity, prophecy and other sciences, leaving disturbed minds in his wake. The narrator visits such a lesson and, as the crowd flees, the city slowly decays into a void of confusion, and the narrator floats through the beating half-seen universe beyond time to where the blind gods dance.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
The narrator recounts how his friend Denys Barry, having purchased an old castle in Ireland, plans to drain the surrounding bog. The locals flee, muttering about submerged secrets, and so Barry, lonely in the midst of his hired laborers, invites the narrator to stay. The guest witnesses, not land reclamation, but the denizens of the great bog.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
A deaf mute German plays a different sort of concert against the forces of the universe in a nightly battle which costs much more than his soul.
The narrator recalls how, upon reaching the half-buried and nameless city that so inspired Abdul Alhazred, he proceeded to explore the strangely proportioned buildings. In doing so he discovered a tunnel that led deep underground, to the remains of an ancient civilization who were fixated by lizardmen. Then, behind a giant metal door, the narrator found not only a vast hollow in the earth, but that these beings were neither as extinct, nor as human, as he first thought.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
Driven from earth by man, the gods often return from Kadath to dance on mountain summits. Barzai, a learned man from Ulthar, proceeds to climb Hatheg-Kla in order to meet these gods; he believes the lore contained in the Pnakotic Manuscripts will protect him. Accompanied by Atal, his disciple, Barzai succeeds in climbing the great mountain on the night of an eclipse; he has, however, fatally misjudged which gods he will meet.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
In an old castle he has lived all his life and remembers little of the people who must have been there before and taken care of him as a child. One day he manages to get out and finds not only the people, but also a horrifying truth about himself. Maybe something of an autobiography?— Contributed by Magnus Aaberg of Sweden
From the halls of Miskatonic University to the battle fields of France during World War I, Herbert West attempts his theory of reanimation on fresh victims, producing an army of ghoulish creatures, not quite dead, and certain not human.
The dreamlike and descriptive text recounts a man who, living and working in a walled place where the windows look out onto only more walls, spends years watching the stars. Over time he joins with them, and then flows through a world of dreams. The eponymous deity is not mentioned.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
In their search for the darkest of reality's horror, two grave robbers steal the Amulet of the Hound and discover why some things are better left buried till the end of time.
The Martenese family of Tempest Mountain, long dead and gone, have left a disturbing legacy which rears its ugly head, destroying an entire community of squatters and throwing the area into terror. The narrator finds that the Martenese family aren't as dead as everyone thought they were.
Fulfilling a family destiny is much more than the narrator bargained for. An ancient Yule-tide tradition turns to a parade of horror and terror.
The descendant of the family de la Poer returns to Exham Priory and discovers the grisly secret of the family palate.
Carter and a life-long friend discuss the possibility of a creature being so hideous, so alien, so indescribable that it can truly be considered unnamable.
Harry Houdini must escape from the most deadliest of traps he has ever faced, the catacombs beneath the pyramids in Egypt. In this game, though, he stands to lose more than his life, he must also save his soul. (Ghost-written by Lovecraft for Houdini.)
Through the magic acquired from the Indians he lives forever, until the natives he stole the magic from return to collect their due.
A dark alliance of foreigners in New York City's seediest burro takes Thomas Malone, a member of the New York Police Department, deep into the halls of terror as he discovers a cult older than the world under his own two feet.
The start of a tale set in England, which introduces two characters, the disturbed Lord Northam, and Williams, a young man who lodges in the same building. When Williams brings home a copy of the Necronomicon, Northam begins a tale concerning his lineage, and his own pursuit of esoteric knowledge. Gates permitting easy travel to outer depths and the beliefs of the ancient Britons are hinted at.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
A series of dreams, a strange green statue found in the depths of the swamps north of New Orleans, the sudden appearance of a horrific island in the Pacific—these are but a few of the occurrences which portend the end of human civilization at the hands of great Cthulhu. The first direct reference to the deity we all love.
A man finds the key to longer life, though this secret harbors some chilling side effects.
Richard Upton Pickman, prolific painter or ghoulish terror? Pickman's paintings are so realistic, so definitive, that most shudder at the mere thought of what they portray. Is it Pickman's imagination that festers the hellish ghouls into paint, or does he have another source from which he models?
High atop a cliff overlooking the ancient town of Kingsport is a house, a house everyone sees but no one visits. Who lives there, and what strange things happened there when the lightning comes from the sky to touch its roof and the mists touch its doorstep?
A meteor falls from the heavens, infecting a small farm and its occupants with a strange malady. What strangeness comes from the deepest of space to destroy everything it touches?
Dunwich, Massachusetts, a hidden village falling into its own decay of inbreeding and pestilence, experiences a new horror which threatens to destroy it all. Old Whateley makes a pact with Yog-Sothoth and rears a spawn from hell.
A correspondence leads to the discovery of the Mi-Go, the Fungi from Yuggoth. When the narrator goes north to investigate, he finds out first hand what these creatures are capable of.
A dark shadow hangs over the seaport of Innsmouth like a noxious cloud, spreading the poison through the generations. A unholy union between Captain Marsh and the Deep Ones in the 1800s curses the entire village to the infamous Innsmouth Look.
The ill-fated Miskatonic University Expedition discovers more than it bargains for at the base of the world. The Mountains of Madness reveals their secrets in a fury of death and terror as the Plateau of Leng divulges the history of the world. One of the two stories written by Lovecraft that documents the history of the mythos (see also The Shadow out of Time).
A student takes residence in the legendary Witch-House to discover the secrets of Keziah Mason. Instead, he's led down the corridor of interdimensional horror by the spirit of the witch and Nyarlathotep to the feet of Azathoth.
The Waites spread their magic from the cursed seaport of Innsmouth into Arkham, planning to take the soul of a poet to claim as their own. Even after death, the power still resides in this unexpected tale of terror.
A person, name, profession and age unstated, recounts how he first acquired a book containing details of gateways and transitions; over time becoming distant from this world while visiting many others. The narrator suggests he may be on the threshold of visiting dimensions of untold horror, and is afraid of being cut off from his body.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
The narrator describes how Morgan, not a literary man, wrote that his name was Howard Phillips, living at 66 College Street, in Providence, Rhode Island. Morgan, or Howard Phillips, describes his passage into a dream world that he visits every night, a twisted 1900’s inhabited by creatures unknown. The narrator considers going to the address, but is afraid.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
On the planet Venus, a miner discovers that the natives aren't as naive as he thought. A maze, invisible and insurmountable, drives the narrator to insanity, and death.
A reconstruction of the events which led to the death of writer Robert Blake who, having moved to Providence in 1934, became fascinated with an old church on Federal Hill. Upon visiting the church Blake discovered, as well as blasphemous texts, a Shining Trapezohedron left by a secret cult. He proceeded to study and translate the finds, discovering that his actions within the church had unleashed a horror contained only by light. Blake grew increasingly disturbed until his death, which occurred the same night as storms caused a blackout.
— Contributed by Robert Wilde
The narrator rents an attic room for the night, and is warned not to touch the object on the table. Curiosity overcomes him, and he manipulates the object, only to discover a few startling and horrible surprises....— Contributed by HypaDermic