by Donald Tyson
The Horror in the Museum (with Hazel Heald)-written 1932; published 1933.
The occult enthusiast George Rogers brings to his wax museum in London the frozen corpse of a monstrous creature discovered in northern Alaska. He proceeds to nourish it back to life with freshly spilled blood, and worships it as a god.
The Hound-written 1922; published 1924.
Two decadent English dilatants who amuse themselves by robbing graves steal a jade amulet in the shape of a crouching hound from the tomb of a fifteenth-century Dutch necromancer. They are haunted by the ghost of the dead man, and stalked by the shadow of an enormous black hound.
Hypnos-written 1922; published 1923.
A mad sculptor who is also a dreamer embarks on a dream quest for knowledge and power with the aid of strong drugs, but what he finds in the realm of nightmares so terrifies him that for the remainder of his life he shuns sleep.
Imprisoned with the Pharaohs (with Harry Houdini)-written 1924; published 1924.
The escape artist Harry Houdini commissioned Lovecraft to ghostwrite this story of Houdini's adventure in the catacombs beneath the Pyramids, where Houdini encounters the enormous beast that was the model for the original Sphinx. It was originally titled Under the Pyramids by Lovecraft.
In the Walls of Eryx (with Kenneth Sterling)-written 1936; published 1939.
This science fiction story concerns a mysterious transparent maze built on Venus by a lost civilization that had once flourished on that planet. The degenerate remnants of that race take fiendish pleasure in watching the suffering of a human prospector who wanders into the maze, but finds it easier to enter than to leave.
In the Vault-written 1925; published 1925.
The undertaker George Birch inadvertently locks himself into the receiving tomb at Peck Valley Cemetery, where he has stored eight coffins over the winter awaiting burial in the spring when the frost has left the ground. Not all the dead are resting peacefully.
The Invisible Monster: see The Horror at Martin's Beach
The Last Test (with Adolphe de Castro)-written 1927; published 1928.
Doctor Alfred Clarendon, a research scientist who is made medical director of San Quentin Penitentiary, begins to infect the prisoners with an excruciating plague, so that he can test the effects of the disease and of the various treatments he devises.
The Loved Dead (with Clifford Martin Eddy Jr.)-written 1923; published 1924.
A man who discovers that being near the corpse at a funeral energizes him and gives him pleasure begins to commit murders, and takes a job in a funeral home in order to gain access to even more corpses.
The Lurking Fear-written 1922; published 1923.
The deserted Martense mansion on top of Tempest Mountain in the Catskills yields its grisly secret to a reporter who visits the mansion to investigate its history of uncanny events. He discovers that the Martense clan has not died out, as everyone assumes, but has multiplied and degenerated due to inbreeding, and lurks in the tunnels beneath the old house and the surrounding countryside.
The Man of Stone (with Hazel Heald)-written 1932; published 1932.
Mad Dan Morris, a descendant of the Van Kauran clan of wizards of the upper Adirondacks, seeks a fitting revenge on the stone sculptor Arthur Wheeler in the belief that Wheeler is having an affair with his wife. He finds a spell in the Book of Eibon that will turn a man to stone.
Medusa's Coil (with Zealia Bishop)-written 1930; published 1939.
The son of a southern plantation owner marries a strange woman in Paris and brings her home to the plantation, only to discover that her practice of ancient pagan rituals is based on more than an interest in the occult. She is the reincarnation of a dark goddess whose presence and power manifests itself through her long coil of midnight black hair, which seems to possess a life of its own.
Memory-written 1919; published 1919.
This brief prose poem describes the valley of Nis, in which lie the stone ruins of a nameless ancient city of human beings, long abandoned and overgrown by the jungle.
The Moon-Bog-written 1921; published 1926.
The American millionaire Denys Berry buys a castle beside a bog at Kilderry, County Meath, Ireland. When Berry prepares to have the bog drained, strange wraithlike creatures from the island in its midst exact a terrible vengeance.
The Mound (with Zealia Bishop)-written 1929-30; published 1940.
The account of a Spanish conquistador concerning a great cavern beneath the Indian mounds of the Oklahoma plains. The cavern, called blue-litten K'n-yan by the race of aliens who inhabit it due to the bluish light that pervades it, is a self-contained world, but is not unique, for two other similar vast caverns exist deeper beneath it.
The Music of Erich Zann-written 1921; published 1922.
A university student of metaphysics takes an inexpensive room in an old boarding house on the Rue d'Auseil, and becomes fascinated by the nightly viol music of a tenant in an attic room, an elderly German who improvises wild and unearthly harmonies on his viol that are unlike any the student has ever heard.
The Nameless City-written 1921; published 1921.
An archaeologist excavates a nameless and accursed city that is obliquely alluded to in the Necronomicon, digging his way beneath the desert sand to tunnels and rooms that reveal by their proportions and wall murals the inhuman nature of the city's inhabitants. He descends far beneath the ruins, and discovers to his horror that the city is not deserted after all.
The Night Ocean (with R. H. Barlow)-written 1936; published 1936.
This collaborative effort is unusual in that most of it was written by Barlow, not by Lovecraft. An artist goes to Ellston Beach for a seaside vacation, and is frightened by figures moving on the beach who do not seem entirely human.
Nyarlathotep-written 1920; published 1920.
This story is the transcription of one of Lovecraft's recurring nightmares. An Egyptian showman comes to town and puts on a strange display of mingled mysticism and electrical science in the local theater, enthralling his American audience, who find themselves completely under his spell and compelled to follow where he leads them.
The Other Gods-written 1921; published 1933.
A tale of the dreamlands concerning the quest of Barzai the Wise to glimpse the dancing gods of Earth atop the mountain Hatheg-Kla, and of how he was punished for his transgression by the pitiless Other Gods.
Out of the Aeons (with Hazel Heald)-written 1933; published 1935.
The mystery surrounding a strange mummy in the Cabot Museum of Boston, and the undecipherable hieroglyphics on the scroll in the iridescent metal cylinder that accompanied the mummy, which concern Ghatanothoa, a horrifying demon-god of the lost continent of Mu.
The Outsider-written 1921; published 1926.
The lonely inhabitant of a dark castle in an impenetrable forest longs to see the light of the sky above the canopy of trees, and climbs to the top of a black tower of the castle, but upon pushing open a trapdoor in the roof, and ascending through a marblewalled chamber, finds himself standing on the solid surface of the open ground.
Pickman's Model-written 1926; published 1927.
The oil paintings of artist Richard Upton Pickman of Boston shock the art world, not merely because of their horrifying subject matter-ghouls feeding upon the corpses of the dead-but because they have such an uncanny lifelike quality.
The Picture in the House-written 1920; published 1921.
A genealogical researcher traveling by bicycle on a lonely road to Arkham is forced to seek shelter from the rain in an ancient farm house, the owner of which has enjoyed an unnaturally long life due to his peculiar diet.
Polaris-written 1918; published 1920.
A man is tormented by persistent dreams that in the distant past, in another life, he was a resident of the marble city of Olathoe, in the northern land of Lomar, and that he betrayed his city by falling asleep at his post while on watch against the attack of the Inutos, a race of squat yellow fiends who
had appeared out of the west to ravage the land.
The Quest of Iranon-written 1921; published 1935.
A youth calling himself Iranon claims to be the son of a king, and says he is seeking to find his lost city of Aira, where he will be crowned king. He wanders from city to city singing songs about the beauty of Aira, city of marble and beryl, but is regarded with scorn or amusement by most the people.
The Rats in the Walls-written 1923; published 1924.
A wealthy American descended from the noble family of the de la Poers returns to England to restore to its former eminence Exham Priory, the baronial mansion of his forefathers, only to discover that his bloodline is tainted by a horrifying legacy that lies hidden in caverns deep beneath the foundations of the ancient house.
The Shadow Out of Time-written 1934-5; published 1936.
Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, a professor of political economy at Miskatonic University in Arkham, suffers for five years from amnesia, coupled with a strange personality disorder. He gradually recovers the lost memories of that period, and learns to his horror that he has been the victim of a mind exchange with a member of the time-spanning Great Race of Yith that inhabited our earth millions of years in the past.
The Shadow Over Innsmouth-written 1931; published 1936.
While on a sightseeing tour of New England, a young man is drawn to the decaying port of Innsmouth. There he learns its horrifying history-the town is cursed by a pact its inhabitants made in the previous century with the Deep Ones, a race of sea-dwelling amphibians who gave the town wealth in exchange for sacrifices, and the freedom to intermarry and produce hybrid offspring with the townspeople.
The Shunned House-written 1924; published 1928.
The deserted old house on Benefit Street in the city of Providence has stood empty for sixty years due to the unnaturally large number of deaths among its previous tenants. The source of the poisonous influence emanates from beneath the earthen floor of the cellar, where something evil and old lies buried.
The Silver Key-written 1926; published 1929.
Randolph Carter, who has gradually lost the ability to dream under the grinding weight of the banality and materialism of the world, regains it when he discovers a silver key that unlocks the gateways between dimensions of time and space.
The Statement of Randolph Carter-written 1919; published 1920.
An account given to the police by Randolph Carter concerning the disappearance of his fellow occultist Harley Warren, who descended down a flight of stone steps beneath an ancient sepulcher in Big Cypress Swamp late one night, and did not emerge.
The Strange High House in the Mist-written 1926; published 1931.
A man on holiday with his family in Kingsport is drawn to investigate a strange old house perched on the edge of a high sea cliff.
The Temple-written 1920; published 1925.
When a German U-boat sinks a British freighter in the Atlantic in 1917, the first officer takes from one of the dead sailors a small carved ivory head as a keepsake. Bad luck befalls the boat, which the crew attribute to the carving.
The Terrible Old Man-written 1920; published 1921.
The Terrible Old Man is a quaint fixture of Kingsport. A retired sea captain of immemorial years, he lives in a cottage on Water Street, where he keeps a curious collection of bottles from which he receives communications in the form of the tapping of suspended lead weights against the sides of the glass.
The Thing in the Moonlight (with J. Chapman Miske)-written 1927; published 1941.
The description by Lovecraft of one of his weird dreams, to which Miske added a few paragraphs at the beginning and end to turn it into a short story. In the dream, Lovecraft climbs the cleft in a lichen-crusted cliff as the Sun sets behind him, and finds at its top an endless plateau with an antique electric trolley car on a rusting track. He boards the car and waits for the conductor and the motorman, who he watches approach across the plateau under the light of the rising Moon, but to his horror discovers that they are not human.
The Thing on the Doorstep-written 1933; published 1937.
The poet and son of a wealthy family of Arkham, Edward Derby, marries Asenath Waite, of the Innsmouth Waites. Soon after the marriage, his personality changeswhereas before he was timid and vague, he has now become willful and self-assured. His face assumes a characteristic expression that is identical to the expression of Asenath's dead father, Ephraim Waite, who was rumored to have dabbled in black magic.
Through the Gates of the Silver Key (with E. Hoffmann Price)-written 1932-3; published 1934.
A sequel to The Silver Key, it explains what happened to the dreamer Randolph Carter after he used his silver key to pass through the Ultimate Gate.
The Tomb-written 1917; published 1922.
Jervas Dudley, a young man of a wealthy New England family, forms an obsession for the ancestral tomb of the Hyde family, to which he is distantly related. He begins to take on the mannerisms of Jervas Hyde, who a century ago was burned to ashes in the Hyde mansion when it was struck by lightning, and so never laid to rest in the family mausoleum.
The Transition of Juan Romero-written 1919; published 1944.
In 1894, gold miners in the American southwest open the dome of a vast cavern that seems to have no bottom. In the night, a rhythmic drumming is heard to emanate from the cavern, similar to the sound of a pagan ceremony. One of the miners and his Mexican servant, Juan Romero, are drawn by the sound to the opening of the cavern, which is lit with redness from below.
The Trap (with Henry S. Whitehead)-written 1931; published 1932.
When a student at a private school in Connecticut is drawn into the fourth dimension through a gateway in the form of an antique mirror created by a seventeenthcentury Luciferian and witch, the modern owner of the mirror, a tutor named Canevin, must attempt to free the boy.
The Tree-written 1920; published 1921.
When the Greek sculptor Kalos is murdered by a jealous rival, a strange olive tree grows with unnatural rapidity above his tomb, its roots feeding on his decaying corpse. During a great storm, a heavy limb of the tree falls upon the house of the rival, killing him and destroying his work.
The Tree on the Hill (with Duane W. Rimel)-written 1934; published 1940.
A hiker takes photographs of a strange tree. When he shows them to his friend, the renowned occultist Constantine Theunis, his friend finds a correspondence between the scene photographed and a description in the Chronicle of Nath by Rudolf Yergler, where reference is made to the periodic coming of a shadow to the earth that feeds on human souls.
Two Black Bottles (with Wilfred Blanch Talman)-written 1926; published 1927.
A young man travels to the small village of Daalbergen, in the Ramapo Mountains of New England, to receive the inheritance of his recently deceased uncle, the Reverend Johannes Vanderhoof, who was the minister of the village church. He discovers that the sinister old sexton of the church, Abel Foster, had held some hellish occult influence over his uncle's mind that turned his uncle toward evil and caused the church to be shunned.
Under the Pyramids: see Imprisoned with the Pharaohs
The Unnamable-written 1923; published 1925.
Seated on a tomb with a friend in the old burying-ground at Arkham, the writer Randolph Carter relates the history of a nearby house, in the locked attic of which had dwelt for decades a monstrously deformed hybrid, the product of a unfortunate union between a girl of the house and some unnatural, bestial thing.
The Very Old Folk-written 1927; published 1940.
One of Lovecraft's dreams, written down in a letter to Donald Wandrei dated Thursday, November 3, 1927. The fifth cohort of the Roman XIIth Legion is assaulted by a supernatural wind summoned by an ancient hill tribe of the Pyrenees during their Sabbath rites.
What the Moon Brings-written 1922; published 1923.
A prose poem in which a man walks through the moonlight to the shore of the sea, where he sees revealed by the ebbing of the tide a city
of the dead beneath the waves, and beyond it something vast and terrible that drives him to seek shelter among the dead.
The Whisperer in Darkness-written 1930; published 1931.
The alien race known as the Mi-Go maintain an outpost in the mountains of Vermont, where they gather information about the activities of humanity. They are supported by a network of human spies, drawn from the cult that worships them, and do not take kindly to the attempts of Henry Wentworth Akeley to gather evidence of their existence.
The White Ape-see Facts Concerning the Late ArthurJermyn and His Family
The White Ship-written 1919; published 1919.
Basil Elton, the keeper of the North Point lighthouse at Kingsport, dreams that he is borne away to many distant cities of the dreamlands in the White Ship.
Winged Death (with Hazel Heald)-written 1932; published 1934.
A curious tale of academic rivalry and revenge set in Africa. The sociopath Doctor Thomas Slauenwite decides to kill his former friend, Henry Sargent Moore, when Moore accuses him of having stolen the work of another researcher. Slauenwite selects as his instrument of murder a disease-carrying fly that is called the "devil fly" by the Africans.
Aikin, John & others. General Biography, or Lives Critical and Historical of the Most Eminent Persons of all Ages, Countries, Conditions and Professions. Ten volumes. London: various publishers, 1799-1815.
Agrippa, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1993.
Chambers, Robert W. The King In Yellow [1895]. New York: Ace Books, Inc., undated.
Churchward, James. The Lost Continent of Mu, Motherland of man [1926]. Kempton, Illinois: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2007.
Donnelly, Ignatius. Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Revised edition. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1949.
Grant, Kenneth. Outer Gateways. London: Skoob Books, 1994.