London Lovecraft: Volume I (2023) by TL Wiswell

Festival shows are, sadly, an ephemeral lot. While some lead to full length plays, TV shows, or even films, most of them rise and fall with their creators, and said creators’ energy and willingness to sacrifice time and money getting their works on stage. This is especially sad for fans of Lovecraft, who are most receptive to works that expand the canon. It is hoped that this slim book of scripts can in some way help these plays reach a larger audience that they were able to when they were originally performed.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 4

The London Lovecraft Festival has been running since 2018, though the annual festivities were interrupted by the Covid 19 pandemic. A key part of the festivities are the dramatic or theatrical presentations, which expand on or re-cast Lovecraft’s familiar works in a new light. In 2023, four of these brief plays by LLF founding producer TL Wiswell were collected into an independently-published book by Vulcanello Productions.

Each of the four works is a specific riff off a familiar Lovecraft story, condensed and adapted into short plays with typically 2 or 3 main characters. The connecting theme is that the stories are altered to focus on the female characters, either expanding on the roles and thoughts of existing characters or by gender-flipping characters (so Herbert West may become Albertina, for example).

Other writers have had similar ideas, such as in HPL 1920 (2020) by Nick O’Gorman & Tales from the Cthulhuverse #1 (2020) by Zee Romero & Luca Cicognola, but the play as a format shifts how a story can be told, and tends to zero in on the relationship between the characters portrayed by the actors. It actually works rather well for Lovecraft’s fiction as passages of expository narration in his work can be just that, whereas in comics or film they tend to cutaway into flashbacks.

Much of the stories also have to be removed, the plot boiled down and simplified to what can feasibly be acted or narrated on a small stage at a budget. That kind of condensation is an art unto itself, and as adaptations go, Wiswell treads the fine line between faithfulness, practicality, and originality.

Mountains of Madness

CHARACTERS:
Dr Willa Dyer – Geologist
Dr Pomona Peabodie – Engineering
Frances Danforth – graduate student, engineering

Setting: 1928. A lecture hall at Miskatonic University, set up with a film projector and a gramophone. WILLA DYER is behind the podium addressing the audience as if they are the audience of her lecture. All people referred to are substantially only present in her memories: Peabodie is dead; Danforth has gone mad.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 10

The Miskatonic University expedition to Antarctica in Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness was implicitly all white men; the reimagined expedition of Wiswell’s play took place in the decade prior. The all-female expedition raises no more comment than the all-male one did for the bulk of readers. Much of the grand cosmic backstory of the Old Ones is truncated in summation—as it would be, during a lecture—and neatly bypassed Dyer’s exclamation “They were men!” in Lovecraft’s version.

Much of this short play consists of long monologues by Dyer and Peabodie, with brief interjections by Danforth; shifts in light and focus emphasize when one character is speaking from the past (as when a recording of the dead Peabodie “plays” on the gramophone). It is an effective truncation, and shows how gender need not shape every role in one of Lovecraft’s stories.

Asenath’s Tale

CHARACTERS:
Viola Danforth
Asenath Waite Derby

Setting: New England, 1962

Suggested stage setup: two armchairs with a table between them, upon which rests a phone.
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 28

“The Thing on the Doorstep” features one of the more famous of Lovecraft’s women characters, Asenath Waite—but the depiction is somewhat married because of the unique gender dynamics of Waite in that story, as discussed by Joe Koch in Must I Wear This Corpse For You?: H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep” (1937), among others. Wiswell doesn’t shy away from this; rather, she puts Asenath’s identity as a woman, and her friendship with Viola Danforth, at the center of the story.

Reading about Asenath Waite as a child in Innsmouth, her relationship with her father and with the other children, an insight into her heritage in Innsmouth, provides a humanizing perspective that is completely absent in Lovecraft’s story—where the reader never “meets” Asenath as she was in youth, but only later, as an adult, with all that implies. Wiswell makes the most of the sexism expressed by Ephraim Waite in Lovecraft’s story to frame a contentious relationship between father and daughter that goes all too badly wrong.

There is something more poignant about “Asenath’s Tale” than “The Thing on the Doorstep.” Edward Derby is almost a born victim in Lovecraft’s story, and his final act of rebellion is late in the game. Wiswell’s story with its light-hearted banter becomes something more like a tragedy; the events unfold, unstoppable, and though the players on the stage can only read their parts, those who know in the audience can see their brief, fleeting happiness and friendship for what it is: the prelude to horror.

Albertina West: Reanimator

CHARACTERS:
Dr Albertina West
Dr Isabel Milburn
The Undead: The animated corpses of Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee and others.

All scenes set in a laboratory with a dissecting table and a sitting room in front, in Scotland and France (or maybe Belgium)

Time: 1890-1922
—Introduction, London Lovecraft: Volume I, 50

From a narrative standpoint, “Herbert West—Reanimator” is really six brief episodes strung out like an old film serial; it’s why each individual episode ends with a mini-climax, and might be separated by months or years in time. Adapting that to the stage or screen is tricky; when Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon put together the screenplay for Re-Animator (1985), they ended up jettisoning entire episodes while burning through the plot to fit a tightly-paced 86-minute runtime.

Wiswell’s approach rearranges the episodes in favor of focusing on a narrower thread of plot: the friendship of West and her assistant Milburn, and reanimation of Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee during World War I, and the aftermath. Zeroing-in on this particular plotline has a lot of benefit, because it gives West an effective antagonist to play against, a monster of her own creation, not unlike Frankenstein‘s Adam.

More than that, though, it gives Bertie West’s usually nameless, gormless, and racist assistant (and the narrator of the story in Lovecraft’s version) an identity. The fact that they’re women medical doctors during the late 19th and early 20th century actually gets a bit of attention, which is nice; while these are stories to address the gender gap in Lovecraft rather than historical societal trends to misogyny as a whole, Bertie’s nod to the National Society for Women’s Suffrage and the restrictions of women in higher education and medical practice is appropriate for the character and the setting.

Period prejudice with regard to race, on the other hand, is out. Much as with “Kanye West—Reanimator” (2015) by Joshua Chaplinsky vs. “Herburt East: Refuckinator” (2012) by Lula Lisbon, we get a version of the seen of a reanimated corpse with a baby’s arm dangling out of its mouth, but the race of the reanimated is not explicitly mentioned. Horror is mixed with bathos at this point, as Milburn and West trade quips and bon mots in a style that owes a bit more to a deranged P. G. Wodehouse than H. P. Lovecraft.

More than pretty much any other of Lovecraft’s stories “Herbert West—Reanimator” seems hard to play straight; the potential for over-the-top gore and dark humor has been made too apparent.

The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath

Unlike the others, this adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was done in collaboration with experimental musician Shivers (Sam Enthoven) and takes the form of a puppet show, narrated and accompanied by music. An audio production of the production is available on Bandcamp.

Randolph Carter has become Miranda Carter, but the gist of the plot and the character are the same as in Lovecraft’s story—albeit with a little more humor.

As she turned to go, Carter wondered why the Zoogs had stopped pursuing her. Then she noticed all the complacent cats of Ulthar licking their chops. She recalled, too, the hungry way a young Zoog had regarded a small black kitten in the street outside. And because she loved nothing on Earth more than small black kittens, she did not mourn the Zoogs.
—London Lovecraft: Volume I, 68

Puppetry, especially shadow puppetry, can be singularly evocative; action that could not be feasibly acted out can be implied, with the audience’s imagination filling in the gaps. As with most of the other stories, Carter’s gender plays little role in how the events play out; it’s a change of face, but the core of Lovecraft’s tale and characterization remains intact.

While all of these plays are competently written and I’d like to see them performed sometime, the best are doubtless “Asenath’s Tale” and “Albertina West: Reanimator” specifically because those are the two stories that diverge most from Lovecraft’s characterization, while keeping true to his plots, and thus add some new dimension to the old stories.

At the moment there does not appear to be any way to purchase copies of London Lovecraft: Volume I (2023) except directly from the author. TL Wiswell was kind enough to sell me a copy during their visit to NecronomiCon Providence 2024, and I appreciate the chance to add to my small store of Lovecraftian plays, alongside works like Lovecraft’s Follies (1971).

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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“The Things We Did in the Dark” (2024) by Julia Darcey

My uncles sold me in the morning, and by the afternoon I stood in the grave of the Long-Sleeping God, fouling the second of the twelve sacred rites.
—Julia Darcey, “The Things We Did in the Dark” in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror 87

Christianity is a patriarchal religion. For most of its history in most of its sects, the priesthood has been exclusively male; so have most prophets and saints. The dogma of Christianity and the social norms of Christian cultures tend to circumscribe women’s place and sexuality in religion and society. H. P. Lovecraft was a materialist, but he was raised in a Baptist household, and many elements of Protestant culture remained with him throughout his life, despite his disbelief in the specifics of the Bible—or the Qur’an, Talmud, Book of Mormon, or any other religious text.

Which is why, perhaps, the gender dynamics of Lovecraft’s cults is a bit patriarchal. We never see the full rites of the Esoteric Order of Dagon in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” or the cult of Cthulhu in “The Call of Cthulhu,” yet the members of those sects we do see are explicitly male. Lovecraft did not show a priestess of Cthulhu or Mother Hydra, did not show female worshippers among the orgiasts in the swamp about Cthulhu’s idol. The witch-cult is a little different; Keziah Mason was definitely a member of that old religion, women members of the de la Poer family were apparently party to goings-on in “The Rats in the Walls,” and Lavinia Whateley apparently participated in rites and celebrations in “The Dunwich Horror”—at least, before she was shut out. Yet for the most part, Lovecraft seems to have not been overly concerned about depicting or defining the role of women in these cults of eldritch worship.

On the other hand, Lovecraft also seldom had virgin girls sacrificed on altars to sate the lust (for blood or sex) of a god. When Ghatanathoa was placated in “Out of the Æons” (1935) by Hazel Heald & H. P. Lovecraft, it was a rather egalitarian sacrifice of twelve young men and twelve maidens. While Lovecraft was not exactly equal-opportunity in his depiction of these cults and sects, neither did he succumb completely to popular tropes.

Later writers have begun to explore the possibilities of what women would actually be like inside these religions. “A Coven in Essex County” (2016) by J. M. Yales looks at women trapped in the patriarchal culture of Innsmouth; “Mail Order Bride” (1999) by Ann K. Schwader plays with the idea of a all-women fertility cult devoted to Mother Hydra; “The Book of Fhtagn” (2021) by Jamie Lackey gives a glimpse of who would choose to go full cultist in such a community; Innsmouth (2019) by Megan James touches on bake sales and all the ways people keep a church going with thankless, unpaid, often unacknowledged labor of women.

“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Darcey is another exploration in the same vein, although this is not specifically Lovecraftian, it plays with the tropes of eldritch horror while also picking at themes of virgin sacrifice, cloistering women into religious roles, using religion as a means to dispose of young women in a socially acceptable manner (cf. Magdalene laundries). There is, too, an aspect of the SCP wiki or The Cabin in the Woods: she is part of the special containment procedures, and she is the D-class personnel whose very lives are acceptable losses to keep the greater evil contained.

The language is straightforward, stark, and grim. There’s an implication that the family structure has broken down; the unnamed protagonist speaks of uncles but not mother or father, implying her parents are dead and she is at the mercy of male authority figures. Physical abuse is taken as a matter of course. Treated as a commodity to be bought and sold.

That is the setup, and it takes the unnamed protagonist the length of the short story to work out some of the harsh truths of the world and her situation—and finally, to realize her own empowerment. There is something dark and alluring about that final sentence in this story. Darcey has not painted a picture of a lovely and thriving culture; we see it only by how it treats its most unvalued prisoners, who did nothing wrong except being born women in a society that does not value women.

Something to think about.

“The Things We Did in the Dark” by Julia Dacey was published in Beyond the Bounds of Infinity: An Anthology of Diverse Horror (2024) by Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).

Lettres d’Arkham (1975) by H. P. Lovecraft & François Rivière

H. P. Lovecraft appartient corps et âme à la grande familie des écrivains puritans de Nouvelle-Angleterre.

Névropathe exemplaire, il vécut à Providence—Arkham pour tes initiés—une existence tout entière vouée à l’exorcisme des démons de son imaginaire.

D’où l’œuvre fantastique que l’on sait.

Sa correspondance participle de façon à la fois ironique et passionnée à ce douloureux mais aussi fascinant combat : pour la première fois, les lecteurs français sont à même de pénetrer dans le labyrinthe le plus intime du créateur magique de Démons et merveilles et di La coouleur tombée du ciel.

Ces Lettres d’Arkham les y invitent…

H. P. Lovecraft belongs body and soul to the great family of New England Puritan writers.

Exemplary neurotic, he lived in Providence—Arkham for the initiates—a life entirely devoted to exorcising the demons of his imagination.

Hence the fantastic work we all know.

His correspondence is an ironic and passionate contribution to this painful but fascinating struggle: for the first time, French readers are able to penetrate the most intimate labyrinth of the magical creator of Démons et merveilles and La coouleur tombée du ciel.

These Letters from Arkham invite them to do so…

Back cover copy

English translation

French audiences may have been aware of H. P. Lovecraft as early as the 1930s, when English-language books and periodicals made it to European shores; Jacques Bergier even claimed to have carried on a brief correspondence with Lovecraft, and he certainly had two letters published in the pages of Weird Tales despite living in France at the time.

Lovecraft’s major introduction to French audiences came in the 1950s with collections like La couleur tombée du ciel (“The Color from the sky”/”The Colour Out of Space”) [1954, Denoël], and Démons et merveilles (“Demons and Marvels”) [1955, Deux Rives] that translated Lovecraft’s prose into French. Both of included introductions from Bergier, who provided many readers with their first insight into Lovecraft himself—who he was, and where he came from. Both books went through many reprints and editions.

In 1964, Arkham House published the first volume of Lovecraft’s Selected Letters. This project had begun shortly after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, as August Derleth and Donald Wandrei had begun contacting Lovecraft’s correspondents and requesting letters to transcribe for future publication. The scope and cost of the project soon made actual publication of the Arkham House Transcripts—at least in their entirety—impractical; war time paper rationing and rising post-war costs delayed the project further. The first three volumes, released under the editorship of Derleth and Wandrei, represent a compromise to their original vision—but also a tremendous effort, and one nearly unique.

Lovecraft had died broke and was far from a popular or mainstream author; the publication of his letters not only kick-started real Lovecraft biographical scholarship and literary criticism, but it helped center Lovecraft himself as an individual worth reading. More of Lovecraft’s letters would be published than those of Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, or dozens of other much more popular authors.

Of course the French had to get in on the action.

Early translations of Lovecraft’s letters into French began piecemeal, in literary and fan periodicals; the biography is a bit opaque to English-language readers living in the United States, but a special issue of L’Herne dedicated to Lovecraft in 1969 stands out for translating a few letters, amid a mass of literary and biographical material that marks the first major critical publication on Lovecraft in any language. The 1970s in France would see growing interest in Lovecraft, especially in the field of Franco-Belgian comics; the contributors of Metal Hurlant (“Howling Metal,” translated into English markets as Heavy Metal magazine), which began in 1974, was founded by Jean Giraud (Mœbius) and Philippe Druillet, both of whom would go on to fame…and through Metal Hurlant, many graphic adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories, and stories inspired by Lovecraft and his creations, would be published in the pages of Metal Hurlant and Heavy Metal, to audiences around the world.

Lettres d’Arkham (1975, Jacques Glénat), translated by François Rivière, is a slim booklet of 80 pages, counting all the introductory material. The cover is by Mœbius, and plays to Lovecraft’s legend: seated at a table, writing with a quill pen, a row of antique volumes behind him, against a starry landscape, a tail or tentacle discreetly emerging from beneath the table cloth.

Jacques Glénat had founded Glénat Éditions in 1972; it is now a major publisher of bandes dessinées, and also publishes French translations of manga and nonfiction periodicals. But this was early days, and Lettres d’Arkham was the second entry in a series titled Marginalia; the first was a reprint of Les clefs mystérieuses (“The Mysterious Keys”) by Maurice Leblanc, the creator of Arsène Lupin. This was apparently an experiment in shorter-form material, mostly fiction reprints, with Rivière as overall editor of the series. Lettres d’Arkham appears to be the sole non-fiction entry.

Given the short format, Yves Rivière apparently opted against trying to translate entire letters. Instead, after a brief initial essay (“Lovecraft, un cauchemar Américan”/”Lovecraft, an American nightmare”) and chronology of his life, Rivière presents a series of excerpts from the first two volumes of the Selected Letters, divided into individual topics.

The initial letters, reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts, were created by the artist Floc’h (Jean-Claude Floch), who would become known for his many collaborations with François Rivière.

Most of the translations don’t specify date or even the recipient of the letter, so from a scholastic viewpoint Lettres d’Arkham wasn’t ideal—but translating one of Lovecraft’s letters is more difficult than translating one of his stories or poems. There is no guiding narrative, the letters are full of quirky language, obscure topical and geographic references, callbacks to previous correspondence. Even though Derleth and Wandrei had already edited and censored Lovecraft’s letters to give the excerpts in the Selected Letters volumes better readability (and to remove or downplay some of Lovecraft’s more racist sentiments), Rivière was trying to translate some pretty tricky material for an entirely new audience.

Generally speaking, Rivière seems to have done a pretty decent job of the translations. The most egregious errors are (and this might be expected), geographical. For example, the entry for Salem places it in New York instead of Massachusetts. Still, for a Lovecraft fan in 1970s France, how else were you going to read any of Lovecraft’s letters at all?

For francophone readers, that is still an issue. The vast majority of Lovecraft’s letters have never been translated into French, and might never be (one can only imagine the difficulty of trying to translate some of Lovecraft’s slang-filled letters or stream-of-consciousness sections into French). Some further attempts have been made to present a part of Lovecraft’s correspondence to a French audiences: in 1978 there was Lettres Tome 1 (1914-1936), translated by Jacques Parson, for example, but there was no Lettres 2 forthcoming. Several other collections of part of Lovecraft’s letters have been published, especially in recent years, much of the correspondence from Lovecraft’s later years, and with friends like Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, E. Hoffmann Price, and Robert E. Howard, remains untranslated.

There are people working on that last one, however. A translation of the correspondence of Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft into French by David Camus and Patrice Louinet was successfully crowdfunded, and although health issues have delayed the project, it still looks fantastic.

It has to be emphasized what a labor of love translation is; it is never simply a matter of translating word-for-word, but always trying to capture the essence of what is being communicated. English-language readers have an advantage over the French in that we have practically every word that Lovecraft has written published, but as he wrote them; French readers and scholars face not only a limited amount of such material, but have to deal with multiple translations of those same stories and letters in various formats.

Considering that the whole of Arkham House’s Selected Letters has never been translated, much less any of the later, more complete volumes of letters by Necronomicon Press or Hippocampus Press, Lettres d’Arkham remained relevant in France long past the point where most Lovecraft scholarship had superseded the Arkham House Selected Letters.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard & Others (2019) and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos (2014).

“Never Threaten A Spider” (2024) by Sara Century

Giant spiders are traditional. The square-cube law be damned.

In “The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save For Sacnoth” (1908), the hero Leothric deals with an oversized arachnid. In “The Tower of the Elephant” (1933) by Robert E. Howard, a young Cimmerian faced eight-legged death. In “The Seven Geases” (1934) by Clark Ashton Smith, Atlach-Nacha spins their web endlessly in the dark. In “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” H. P. Lovecraft wrote of the bloated purple spiders that warred with the almost-men of Leng, and in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937), the giant spiders of Mirkwood nearly put an end to Bilbo and his party—and they’re nothing compared to Shelob, who guards the threshold of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings (1955).

Spiders work on many levels. They are first and foremost predators, not scavengers or placid eaters of vegetables or waste. Alien in outline, fascinating in their anatomy and habits. Some leap, some spin, some are venomous. Fantasy spiders tend to all three; like the giant serpents of Sword & Sorcery, they combine and maximize the attributes and horrors of everyday attercops and exaggerate them past any natural bound. A normal spider, if scared, may bite; their venom may hurt, but few spiders are a serious threat to humans. A human need not fear being wrapped up in their web like a fly, their fluids sucked out, until a mummified corpse is left trapped forever.

In a Sword & Sorcery setting? Well, the human might be the fly. But the fly might also have a sword.

“Never Threaten A Spider” (2024) by Sara Century advertises to the readers what is about to come. It’s right there in the title. Readers who pick up a copy of Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery will not be disappointed by false advertising. Yet the giant spider in this story isn’t quite a box-tick on some giant list of Sword & Sorcery tropes, either.

Writers and readers of Sword & Sorcery (or Heroic Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, or however you chose to label that squirming grey cross-genre where fantasy, horror, and adventure fiction have mixed and mingled) today face a different problem than Robert E. Howard & co. did in the 1930s. Howard’s Conan basically defined a genre; peers like C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry, Clifford Ball’s Duar the Accursed and Rand the Rogue, Fritz Leiber Jr.’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, Manly Wade Wellman’s Kardios, Joanna Russ’ Alyx…a whole chain of swordsmen, swordswomen, and sorcerers have entrenched expectations of what an S&S tale is, can, and must be.

Robert E. Howard and C. L. Moore didn’t have to worry so much. They were inventing, not imitating. Tolkien’s major competition at novel-length were works like The Worm Ouroboros (1922) by E. R. Eddison and The Broken Sword (1954) by Poul Anderson. There were no Tolkienian imitators; his readers had few expectations. They were allowed to be awed, excited, amused, and entertained.

Several decades and hundreds of fantasy stories, novels, roleplaying games, comics, cartoons, and films later, and readers tend to be a bit more jaded. They’ve seen it all before. They recognize the tropes. Writers have to struggle against expectations. What should be in a fantasy adventure story? What’s too old-fashioned? How to buck expectations?

“Never Threaten A Spider” feels like it tiptoes on those questions. At a straight read, it is a straightforward adventure yarn, with a thin skein of worldbuilding, a little horror, a little action, not too heavy on the sorcery, and perhaps with a slightly unfinished feel. Not everything is explained and not all of the names are a random conglomeration of syllables, both of which are endearing. Not everything has to be explained. Writers are allowed a little mystery, to hint instead of explaining every detail. We don’t need three thousand years of history about the dead queen and the jewel of the nameless spider-god.

On deeper consideration, however, this almost by-the-numbers S&S tale is anything but. It is a subtle subversion of expectations: a swordswoman who loses her sword early on. A thief who doesn’t really want to steal anything, and ultimately doesn’t. A hardboiled protagonist saved by a cute little bunny rabbit.

The hero of the story, a woman named Viy, isn’t some thinly-reskinned version of Conan, or Jirel of Joiry, Red Sonja, or Alyx. Warrior, thief, and outlaw, yes, but not her cynicism is balanced with homesickness, her rage by kindness. The readers don’t see her at her best in terms of skill and accomplishment: sans sword and thieve’s tools, she spends much of the story half-naked and wet, and she resorts at the penultimate struggle to picking up a club and to try and beat her foes to death.

Yet she’s smart enough to know when to run. That some fights aren’t winnable. That murder isn’t the job. For a genre that can sometimes exult in the murder hobo lifestyle, there is a real subversion in having a protagonist that doesn’t need to be a barbarian hero slaying all gods and monsters and macking on the nearest princess. There is something much more realistic about Viy’s failures, her flaws, and at last her triumphant escape with life and a jewel, even if it isn’t the one she came to the god-haunted swamp to steal.

Perhaps, if we’re lucky, we’ll read more of Viy’s adventures in the years to come.

“Never Threaten A Spider” by Sara Century was published in Profane Altars: Weird Sword & Sorcery (2024, Weirdpunk Books).

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

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El Otro Necronomicón (1992) by Antonio Segura & Brocal Remohi

Eldritch Fappenings

This review deals with a horror comic intended for adult audiences. As part of this review, selected images with cartoon depictions of genitalia and graphic violence will be displayed as the work is discussed.
As such, please be advised before reading further.

Antonio Segura (1947-2012) was a Spanish comics writer, and Jaime Brocal Remohi (1936-2002) was a Spanish comics artist. Both were natives of Valencia, and both achieved recognition for their work, and though neither quite broke through to fame in the English-speaking comics world, Jaime (as Jaime Brocal) was one of the stable of Spanish artists that found work with Warren Publishing in horror magazines like Eerie and Creepy.

In the 1979, the situation inverted somewhat:

A Spanish version of Creepy, wearing the name on the cover, finally appeared in March 1979. Published by Toutain until issue # 79 (Jan. 1986), this series offered a mix of stories. The mix, this time, was not the result of putting together stories from different publishers—all the stories were not from Warren—but by grouping, under the same cover, reprints from American authors and illustrators with original stories by Spanish artists and writers.

The quality was high and the magazine a success. The artistic styles varied froms Tory to story and from nationality to nationality, but the tales were genuinely interesting, provoking, and, fittingly, creepy. Yet, a stark difference can be spotted between the American stories and the Spanish ones.. While American authors favored the supernatural monsters of lore and Hollywood cinema such as zombies and vampires, SPanish creators were more inclined to human monsters and realistic grounding. Supernatural horrors were mostly absent—except in beautiful adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s works—in the Spanish stories, the horror rather being born from alienation and human cruelty.
—Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns, “Spanish Creepy: Historical Amnesia in ‘Las mil caras de Jack El destripador’ in Critical Approaches to Comic Books (2023) 50

The Lovecraft adaptations included “La maldición del amuleto” (Creepy #73, Jul 1985) by Joan Boix; “La Sombra sobre Innsmouth” (Creepy #63, Sep 1984) and “La casa en el umbral” (Creepy #64, Oct 1984) by Norberto Buscaglia and Alberto Breccia, the latter an Argentinan comics artist who achieved fame for his adaptations of Lovecraft, translated in several languages—his work in the French comics magazine Métal Hurlant was translated into English in the Heavy Metal Lovecraft special issue in Oct 1979. The letters-to-the-editor page for Spanish Creepy was “Consultas al Necronomicón,” and the replies were signed “Alhazred.”

The Spanish Creepy was revived in 1990-1991 and ran for 19 issues, and the publisher Toutain tapped some of the same great Spanish talents from the first run. A series of seven original Lovecraftian horror comics, written by Antonio Segura and illustrated by Jaime Brocal Remohi.

El Otro Necronomicón (“The Other Necronomicon“) followed the sensibility of European comics rather than mainstream English or British comics; violence, gore, and nudity could be graphic, but also the approach to the subject could be vividly intelligent, aesthetic, and intellectual, with metafictional flourishes. These stories of El Otro Necronomicon were never translated or published in English-language markets, and remain relatively obscure. Even the 1992 softcover album that collects the seven stories is now quite scarce.

Alberto Breccia explained the origin of the series in his foreword to the album:

Mi amigo, mi hermano Jaime, generosamente me ha pedido que prologue su libro sobre guiones de Antonio Segura, «EL OTRO NECRONOMICÓN». Mi cierta habilidad para el dibujo no es la misma que para la escritura. Pero no puedo rehusarme y escribiré entonces una’s lineas. Hablaré de nuestro entrañable amistad de tantos años, de nuestras interminables charlas sobre dibujo y libros. Nuestras correrías por Barcelona y Valencia por librerías de viejo revolviendo, buscando y hallando antiguos cronicones, polverientos folletines y regrasando felices con nuestros trofeos a tomar unos mates en su casa en compañia de su encantadora esposa Conchín y sus hijos, a los cuales he visto crecer. ¿Qué es un prólogo? ¿Una introducción al contenido del libro? ¿Una presentación de sus autores? ¿Mi opinion sobre la obra? . . . un poco de todo eso. Es de sobra conocido que nunca he leído comics, ni siquiera de niño. Lo cual no habla mal de los comics, sino de mí. Pero estos que tengo sobre mi mesa he tenido que leerlos. En principio como un gesto de lealtad hacia al amigo y porque debía hablar sobre ellos. Poco a poco su lectura me fue atrapando hasta lamentar su término. Ese manuscrito que hallé en el viejo puesto de revistas y libros viejos de mi amigo Yoel Novoa, escultor y demonólogo, ha encontrado en Antonio Segura y Jaime Brocal los intérpretes ideales. Hace unos años, en Barcelona, Jaime me manifestó su interés en volver a dibujar una historia fantástica. Frankenstein fue la elegida. Durante unas semanas discutimos cómo pensaba encararla, discutimos bocetos; hasta su hijo Jaime confeccionó en plastilina un possible rostro del monstruo.

Luego yo debí partir a Italia para regresar posteriormente a la Argentina. Pasado un tiempo, Jaime me escribió diciéndome que había desechado el proyecto. En Valencia, en Octubre de 1988 volvimos sobre el tema. Un año después, en Buenos Aires, doy con el manuscrito. En un siguiente viaje a España, me reúno con Jaime y Antonio en Valencia y les doy con cierto pesar el manuscrito. Hoy escribo estas lineas frente al resultado de estas inquietudes. He contado el origen de la obra. He dado mi opinión sobre ella. Los autores, a través de la excelencia del trabajo pueden prescindir de mí presentación. Ahora resta la opinión de los lectores.

Alberto Breccia.

Buenos Aires, 25 de Noviembre de 1991

My friend, my brother Jaime, has generously asked me to write the prologue to his book written by Antonio Segura, “THE OTHER NECRONOMICON.” My ability to draw is not the same as my ability to write. But I can’t refuse and I’ll write a few lines. I will talk about our close friendship of so many years, about our endless conversations about drawing and books. Our trips to Barcelona and Valencia through old bookstores rummaging, searching and finding old chronicles, dusty pamphlets and returning happy with our trophies to drink some mate at his house in the company of his lovely wife Conchín and his children, whom I have seen grow up. What is a prologue? An introduction to the content of the book? An introduction of its authors? My opinion on the work? . . . a bit of all that. It is well known that I have never read comics, not even as a child. Which does not speak badly of comics, but of me. But these I have on my desk I had to read. In principle as a gesture of loyalty towards my friend and because I had to talk about them. Little by little, its reading captivated me until I regretted its end. That manuscript that I found in the old stand of magazines and old books of my friend Yoel Novoa, sculptor and demonologist, has found in Antonio Segura and Jaime Brocal the ideal interpreters. A few years ago, in Barcelona, Jaime expressed his interest in drawing a fantasy story again. Frankenstein was the chosen one. For a few weeks we discussed how he intended to approach it, we discussed sketches; even his son Jaime made a possible face of the monster in plasticine.

Then I had to leave for Italy and later return to Argentina. After some time, Jaime wrote to tell me that he had abandoned the project. In Valencia, in October 1988, we returned to the subject. A year later, in Buenos Aires, I found the manuscript. On a subsequent trip to Spain, I met Jaime and Antonio in Valencia and, with some regret, gave them the manuscript. Today I am writing these lines as a result of these concerns. I have told the origin of the work. I have given my opinion on it. The authors, thanks to the excellence of their work, can dispense with my introduction. Now all that remains is for the readers to give their opinion.

Alberto Breccia.

Buenos Aires, 25 November 1991

Prólogo de Alberto Breccia, El Otro Necronomicon

Prologue by Alberto Breccia, English translation

Breccia’s prologue makes a little more sense as an extension of the comic prologue to the stories, where a comic version of Alberto Breccia relates to comic versions of Antonio Segura & Brocal Remohi to adapt stories from a secret manuscript that H. P. Lovecraft wrote. The results are the seven stories in this collection.

Hechos que no se atrevió a novelar…. ni quiso hacer llegar al lector, abominaciones que ni el se atrevió a divulgar.

Para mí, este manuscrito es como el otro Necronomicon.

Facts that he did not dare to novelize …. and did not want to make them known to the reader, abominations that he did not dare to divulge.

For me, this manuscript is like the other Necronomicon.

“La Voz de la Bestia sin Nombre”

“The Voice of the Nameless Beast” opens in a rural setting where animals have begun to attack humans. A repairman comes to the small, insular community…

…and discovers a cult.

Tres veces hemos pronunciado tu nombre secreto… ven a nosotros… ayúdanos una vez más a vengarnos de quienes nos desprécian y humillan… trikk’kliki… og’giduuuu… haj’jdoei*	Three times we have pronounced your secret name… come to us… help us once again to take revenge on those who despise and humiliate us… trikk’kliki… og’giduuuu… haj’jdoei*
Nota: *Desaconsejamos leer estas sílabas en voz alta. Nunca see sabe…	Footnote: *We advise against reading these syllables aloud. You never know…

Without being explicitly connected to Lovecraft’s stories, the brief story is very Lovecraftian in outline, albeit able to depict explicitly on the page the kind of naked cultists at their ceremonies which Lovecraft could not.

“Bloody Blues”

Titled in English, this story is implicitly set in the Southern United States of a generation ago; like Robert Johnson’s “Hellhound on My Trail” (1937), it combines the Blues with supernatural horror…and, in this case, borrows a couple of licks from Lovecraft’s “The Hound.”

Los autores dedican está historia a John Lee Hooker.

The authors dedicate this story to John Lee Hooker.

To the credit of Seguna and Brocal Remohi, not only are the majority of characters in this story African-American, but they are not depicted as racial stereotypes. Unfortunately, this is slightly offset by the fact that this is one of the grislier of the tales in this volume, with an infernal blues song sending the Black audience into a literal orgy of rape, murder, and cannibalism worthy of Emaneulle and the Last Cannibals (1977) or Cannibal Holocaust (1980).

In a footnote at the end of the tale, it is explained that one of the survivors had traveled to Providence to tell H. P. Lovecraft a strange story.

“El Shoggoths”

The first story with an explicitly Lovecraftian connection features a “Mr. Howard” from Providence dealing with a rare book dealer named Solomon over an obscure volume, and wants to know the author of certain annotations in the margins. The dealer says he bought it from a little person who runs a circus. This gives Brocal Remohi the chance to draw several very special people, some of whom have a distinct resemblance to various characters that appeared in Creepy.

The annotator, however, is no longer quite human.

“Los Hombres de Negro”

“The Men in Black” opens on a picture of the Spanish Creepy offices—imagine in 1991 opening the latest magazine and staring at a rather good rendition of the magazine editor, asking artist Jaime Brocal Remohi (pipe) and Antonio Seguna (cigarette):

¿Para cuándo tienes pensado entregarme la próxima historia del Otro Necronomicón?

When do you plan to deliver the next story of the Other Necronomicon?

Inserting themselves into the story adds a bit of metafictional framing to the tale—which is itself a nested narrative, where a woman in a wheelchair at an asylum explains to the doctor how one day her father returned from Salem with a book written in archaic Latin…and after his untimely death, two men in black come looking for it. Unwisely, Amanda decides to read the book herself, and ends up literally ravished by the dark forces unleashed.

“Jugando con Fuego”

“Playing with Fire” continues to follow the Men in Black—as well as Segura and Jaime Brocal Remohi. The creative team end up at a cemetery to confront a few corpses that don’t want to stay dead. It seems the creators of horror comics have been drawn into a horror comics themselves…literally.

Igual que nunca podré olvidar a los Hombres de Negro, a los Guardians del Libro.

Just as I will never forget the Men in Black, the Guardians of the Book.

“La Feromona”

“The Pheromone” is a return to the Lovecraftian-but-not-specifically-Lovecraft horror stories. A chemist makes a perfume that changes any male who breathes it into a mindless, sexually insatiable, incredibly strong brute.

Which leads to a scene of physical and sexual violence worth of some of the bolder French and Italian adult horror comics of the 1970s like Outre-Tombe and Satanik.

While featuring gore worthy of Re-Animator (1985), there is an odd twist at the end which is more reminiscent of Arthur Machen’s classic “The White People” (1904):

Sólo sé que sacó la receta de aquel maldito libro de brujería.

All I know is that he got the recipe from that damn book of witchcraft.

It is important at this point to appreciate what both Antonia Segura and Jaime Brocal Remohi bring to the table with this collection. The art is very Creepy-like, and the impression I get is that this is very deliberate; these were stories in the mold of the old Warren horrors. Yet the aesthetic sensibility is more a European: more sex, more violence, and a little more high brow concept to the writing, yet it never spills over into parody.

Brocal Remohi in particular uses a lot of photo-references to get the real-life characters’ faces and expressions correct, there’s a lot of work that goes into his backgrounds, and yet his page layouts are very restrained—no big splash pages, no Dutch angles, a very careful play between light and dark which gives a grounded, realistic scale to his art that helps make the horror more horrific.

“Un Mal Principio, Un Mal Final”

“A Bad Beginning, A Bad Ending” is the final tale in El Otro Necronomicón, and appropriately enough wraps back to where it all began: with Alberto Breccia.

It is almost a character study; an old man seduced by a young woman, the forces of darkness tempting and threatening and closing in—Alberto Breccia (1919-1993), he was the generation before Segura and Remohi, and this is an homage to Breccia’s legend as much as any of the homages penned by Lovecraft’s friends for the Old Gent from Providence. The difference being, Breccia was still around at the time to receive the sincere admiration.

Taken all together, the basic premise of El Otro Necronomicón has real potential: an excuse to write basically any horror story, and give it the added cachet that it supposedly came from the black book of secret tales that not even H. P. Lovecraft dared release upon the world. That basic formulae doesn’t last very long, though; Segura and Brocal Remohi kept extending the metafictional elements. It feels like the natural conclusion of the story might have to be their own destruction as the Men in Black reclaim the manuscript, but we don’t get that ending. Instead, they made a final tribute to the artist who had inspired them. The last words of the last story are:

El maestro que nos ensenó cómo contar lo que muchas veces resulta imposible de contar.

The master who taught us how to tell what is often impossible to tell.

When you think about Lovecraft’s fiction, and the difficulty that so many have faced in trying to adapt them to comics, radio, film, video games—how few seem to actually capture something of the horror in the tales—I think there is a fitting tribute to someone who did have the artistic vision and skill to not just realize adaptations of Lovecraft’s work, but to do it well. Much as we might praise Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein or Tanabe Gou’s At the Mountains of Madness for their outstanding masterworks.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Wingspan of Severed Hands (2020) by Joe Koch

My lost heart bled beneath the sands
Of distant, dead Carcosa.
My heart, once buried, fed the land
That grew the oak Carcosa.

The oak was felled and burned to light
Those dim shores of Carcosa.
Love’s but a candle. Soon I’ll die
To wander lost Carcosa.

My love’s a dream, and dreams must die
To resurrect Carcosa.
My dream is dead. My queen’s alive.
She conquers bright Carcosa.
—Joe Koch, The Wingspan of Severed Hands 79

A dry description of The Wingspan of Severed Hands might be something like: “a short novel that reimagines Robert W. Chambers’ mythology of The King in Yellow with distinct feminist themes, a nonlinear narrative, and surreal imagery.” Which would not do justice to the language or the story. This is a story with texture and attitude, occupying a grey area between cosmic horror, body horror, magical realism, surrealism, and splatterpunk. Like a gelatinous eyeball, it’s not easy to nail down; and it resists easy labeling.

Much of the effectiveness of the story lies in its deliberately ambiguous, unsettled nature. The narrative shifts from familiar scenes and scenarios to nightmarish episodes, the transition often seamless and in a condition of otherwise banal reality, so that the readers are left wondering how much is really happening and how much is undiagnosed psychotic episode or hallucination. There is a loving richness to the description of mutilation, decay, graphic violence, bodily corruption, and growth that is a stylistic hallmark of Koch’s work, an evident love and appreciation for the language and imagery of transformation.

Trying to capture in words that fascinating process of transition. From girl to woman, life to death, caterpillar to butterfly, steak to ground beef, health cell to cancerous, girlfriend to ex. Wrapped up in and around a reinterpretation of the Yellow Mythos.

There are, broadly speaking, two horizons of the Yellow Mythos. The first horizon derives directly from Robert W. Chambers’ The King in Yellow (1895) and the mythology of the same. Folks might expand on it, re-intrepret it, but it is distinctly tied to the original snippets of the play. Works of this sort include “Cordelia’s Song from The King in Yellow” (1938) by Vincent Starrett & “Evening Reflections, Carcosa” (2011) by Ann K. Schwader, “Slick Black Bones and Soft Black Stars” (2012) by Gemma Files, and Black Stars Above (2019) by Lonnie Nadler & Jenna Cha. They’re not all consistent, the authors aren’t all in communion with each other, but they’re all drawing more or less directly on Chambers.

The post-Classical horizon of Yellow Mythos stories comes to the Yellow Mythos more indirectly, usually through popular culture like the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, which popularized images like the three-limbed figure of the Yellow Sign designed by Kevin Ross in 1989, or the American Gothic sensibilities of the first season of True Detective created by Nic Pizzolatto. Post-Classical is less beholden to Chambers, more directly influenced by the imagery and ideas of what the Yellow Mythos is in the popular consciousness—which can be both very freeing and very constraining, depending on whether the creator hews close to what someone else has done or pushes outward to define their own space. A good example of this might be the Alagadda series of the SCP-wiki, which draws inspiration from the first horizon stories but is more adjacent to it than directly connected.

The Wingspan of Severed Hands is in the second horizon. It’s a post-Kevin Ross piece, the three-legged image of the Yellow Sign derived from the roleplaying game; the Queen in Yellow is similar to the Hanged King in the Alagadda series, a new riff on a familiar concept. Yet the actual references to Chambers are few; Koch draws more strongly off the mass of post-Chambers ideas than Chambers himself. There’s no play, no Cordelia, and the madness inspired by the Yellow Sign is an outbreak more in line with an RPG in mid-apocalypse.

The Yellow Mythos in this story is a kind of lifeline to the reader. Something familiar that they can keep a hold of during a narrative that changes perspective as it winds its way through time and space. Yet at the same time, it’s not Chambers’ mythos. There are surprises in store, odd pieces that might not jive with what a reader familiar with Yellow Mythos stories thinks is going on.

It is, all in all, much more personal.

Three women. One battle.

A world gone mad. Cities abandoned. Dreams invade waking minds. An invisible threat lures those who oppose its otherworldly violence to become acolytes of a nameless cult. As a teenage girl struggles for autonomy, a female weapons director in a secret research facility develops a living neuro-cognitive device that explodes into self-awareness. Discovering their hidden emotional bonds, all three unveil a common enemy through dissonant realities that intertwine in a cosmic battle across hallucinatory dreamscapes.

Time is the winning predator, and every moment spirals deeper into the heart of the beast.
—Joe Koch, The Wingspan of Severed Hands back cover copy

This is a story focused on women. There aren’t many male characters, and while the actions of the men and boys are not peripheral to the story, we don’t get their viewpoint and their actions are critical largely with regard to how they treat the women who are the viewpoint characters. We don’t see husbands, fathers, brothers, or sons; there’s an implicit matriarchial arrangement to the story. Mothers, daughters, and grandmothers are the main relationships, and that’s the emotional heart of the book. The suffering that goes into these toxic relationships, invisible to so many, that finds manifestation in so many little ways.

Yet at the same time, the relationships in the book represent a closed circle. The viewpoint characters don’t really have any women friends to turn to, no support network. They are isolated, locked in—in a trailer, in a bunker, in a cage, in a decaying body, in a cycle of expectations and recriminations, haunted by a past that they cannot escape until the climax.

The end of The Wingspan of Severed Hands is the beginning of a new life. An opportunity for at least some of the viewpoint characters to move on, out of the shadow of motherly expectations, grief, and trauma. The reward for all the gooey, gory, traumatic, painful growth and transformation in the story is…the potential for more growth. Maybe even to be happy, although the ending is not itself exactly happy.

One of the themes suggested, but not fully explored, in The Wingspan of Severed Hands is the nature of The King in Yellow itself. So many writers have focused on what Chambers did, what he wrote, the things he hinted at. Yet if one day, if you opened up a book marked with the Yellow Sign on its spine, and found it blank—how would you fill the pages? What would you write? What would The King in Yellow be in your own words?

The Wingspan of Severed Hands (2020) by Joe Koch was published by Weird Punk Books.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Message in Stone” (1956) by Muriel E. Eddy

His funeral was held at High Noon at a funeral home, and, though the little gods of fate seemed to will that we should arrive there too late for the services, we did visit Swan Point Cemetery, with its many tombs, winding lanes and exquisite monuments—and did I imagine it, or did the spirit of our late beloved friend and fellow-writer hover over us as we bowed our heads in reverence and respect to the memory of one of the finest men—yes, and greatest geniuses, who ever walked this earth? A man little-known, perhaps, by the majority, but a man who, to those who came in more than casual contact with him, exemplified all that is fine and good in a fellow human being.
—Muriel E. Eddy, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945) 21-22

From the very first, Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs of H. P. Lovecraft were fairly rose-tinted—and, occasionally, given to flights of imaginative fantasy like the above. The Eddys did not make it on time to Lovecraft’s funeral; such things happen, but they did apparently visit his grave periodically. Lovecraft’s grave, initially unmarked, was not the point of pilgrimage for fans and admirers that it is today; but he had long known and expected this to be the resting place for his mortal remains, in the family plot, and it is clear from Lovecraft’s letters to the Eddys that they were well aware of that.

H. P. Lovecraft was an atheist and materialist; he had no expectations for survival of consciousness after death. His afterlife, as it is, lay in the publication of his work, the memories of his friends, and increasingly his appearance as a fictionalized character in various works. Muriel E. Eddy was, apparently, not a materialist, and was at least open to the idea of ghosts or consciousness that survived after death. At least, she was willing to write about it for Fate Magazine, which offered $5 for tales of evidence of existence after death. This was not exactly new territory for Muriel, who had sold a “psychic experience” to The Occult Digest in 1939. So it was that in the October 1956 issue of Fate, “Message in Stone” appeared.

Message in Stone

We were greatly saddened when Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the famous Rhode Island writer of weird and uncanny tales of the unknown, died in March, 1937. Mr. Lovecraft had been a friend of the family for years. He often had brought his weird writings, still in manuscript form, to our house, reading them aloud in his sepulchral voice and awaiting our approval or disapproval. He considered the Eddy family “good critics.” I still can see him, sitting in our humble abode and reading his famous horror tale, “The Rats in the Walls,” which has been reprinted frequently since his untimely demise.

We often discussed the mystery of death and one night Lovecraft expressed the opinion that the human brain was practically indestructible. He believed that, whether or not his body was embalmed, his brain would continue to function. He said that if his brain continued to “work,” as he believed it would after death, he would send a message in some material form that we could understand.

At that time he was in excellent health and death seemed distant. However, shortly afterward Howard Phillips Lovecraft suddenly became seriously I’ll and died in Jane Brown Hospital in Providence, R.I., in March, 1937. He was only 47 years old.

After the funeral I often visited his grave and placed floral offerings there. The grave is in Swan Point Cemetery and is marked by a tall granite shaft.

One night in September, 1937, I had a very vivid dream about Howard Phillips Lovecraft. In my dream I visited his grave, now covered thickly with grass, and was on my knees, parting the grass as I hunted for something.

My dreams haunted me and early the next day, a Sunday, I drove out to the cemetery. I felt driven by an invisible force.

As I stood beside Lovecraft’s grave, I seemed to hear his sepulchral voice again, intoning the words, “If my theory is correct, if my brain continues to function after my death, I will send you a message in some material form that you can understand.”

My eyes scanned the grass on the burial plot, still wet with dew, and then I glimpsed something white shining on Lovecraft’s grave. Stooping, I parted the heavy growth with my hands and picked up a heart-shaped stone, as smooth as satin and about two inches across. It was milky white and looked oddly like a quarried stone of the translucent variety. I recalled that Lovecraft’s grandparents, long dead, had owned a stone quarry in East Providence.

How the stone happened to be lying on Lovecraft’s grave may be only a matter of conjecture. However, he had known that I collected odd-shaped natural specimens, such as unusual shells, odd bits of wood and minerals, especially stones and rocks of unusual formation.

I could find no stone in the cemetery that resembled even remotely the one I found on Lovecraft’s grave. —Providence, R. I.

[Fate Magazine (Oct 1956), 103-105

Some of the details in the piece are correct, others likely honest mistakes. The description of the grave is accurate; at the time, there was no individual marker for HPL, only the granite shaft for the family plot. Lovecraft was 46 at the time of his death, but if Muriel E. Eddy was counting by year, it’s an easy mistake to make. The Phillips did not own a quarry in Providence, but they owned a small mortgage on such a quarry, and in Lovecraft’s letters he talks about sometimes getting mineral samples from there for his friend James F. Morton, who was curator of a museum of geology in New Jersey.

As for the more imaginative part of the Fate piece—there is no account in Lovecraft’s letters or other memories of him hoping for the functioning of his brain after death. However, it is notable that several of his stories for Hazel Heald, notably “Out of the Æons” (1935) and “The Horror in the Burying-Ground” (1937) both deal with a kind of living death, with the mind functioning in a paralyzed or petrified body. Muriel E. Eddy claims to have introduced Heald to Lovecraft, and Heald features prominently in Eddy’s later memoirs, so possibly she remembered either the stories or Lovecraft writing or talking about the stories.

Another likely influence on “Message in Stone” is the magician Houdini, whom both Lovecraft and her husband C. M. Eddy, Jr. had worked with:

I remember Mr. Eddy’s painstaking revision of Houdini’s “Thoughts and Feelings of a Head Cut Off”….an experience which the master magician had undergone in his youth. Harry Houdini said in his story that somewhere in his travels he came across an ancient supersitition that if a head was severed quickly and unexpectedly from a body, the brain in the head kept on thinking for several seconds! […]

I am quite sure this story was never offered for sale by Harry Houdini, as it lacked the ring of veracity . . . perhaps it was somewhat exaggerated! When we told H.P.L. about it, he exclaimed, “Oh, what I could have done with that story, but perhaps Houdini wouldn’t have liked it if I’d changed it too much. I took a lot of liberties with his ‘Pharaoh’ story and he seemed satisfied, but this one!” And a far-away look was in his eyes. . . .

Later on, were were discussing the possibility of the truth of a brain functioning after death, and Lovecraft averred that perhaps the brain did function . . . for a few minutes after the death of one’s body. It was a weird subject, and there I ended! I sometimes wondered what Lovecraft’s true feelings regarding this matter really were. […]

My husband spent some time investigating Spiritualism at Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts, for Harry Houdini, and when he returned home with much data about some of the mediums he’d met, Lovecraft came over to see us and seemed much interested in the subject. He scoffed at the idea of communion with the dead, and said that, in his opinion, death was the absolute end.
—Muriel E. Eddy, “A Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in A Gentleman from Angell Street 20-21

The Harry Houdini Circumstantial Evidence blog relates a possible manuscript related to this story, titled “Thoughts and Visions of a Head Cut Off.” Houdini is an important connection as well because of a tradition that began after his death; his wife Bess began to hold séances annually on Hallowe’en, in an attempt to contact her husband’s spirit. Muriel was aware of this:

By the way, Houdini’s last desire was that on every Hallowe’en his resting-place should be visited by friends to see if his (Harry Houdini’s) ghost appeared. . . . he made light of ghosts and Spiritualism, you jnow. As Lovecraft was a “ghost-writer” also for Harry Houdini . . . . . . well! Mrs. Harry Houdini . . . and Harry’s brother Hardeen . . . have joined the ranks of every human’s ultimate glory . . . . could not supervise the weird visition at Houdini’s grave this Hallowe’en. I supose that trek will now be abandoned . . . . Houdini proved his own point . . . he STAYED dead! Somtimes, in a joking mood, Lovecraft used to say that . . . . . PERHAPS . . . . the human brain NEVER stopped functioning . . . . . even after death. A weird thought, and, visiting H. P. L.’s grave one day recently . . . . . your friends the Eddys . . wondered . . . just vaguely. But OF COURSE H.P.L. was just joking!
—Muriel E. Eddy to Winfield Townley Scott, 2 Nov 1945, MSS. Brown Digital Repository

Muriel’s information was a little out of date; while Bess Houdini died in 1943 and Theodore Hardeen in 1945, Bess had passed the séance tradition on to Walter B. Gibson in 1936, who in turn would ask Doroth Dietrich to carry on the tradition, which is still ongoing.

Something said in jest would definitely be more in keeping with what we know about Lovecraft, and of course Muriel E. Eddy would have had to play up the belief in his posthumous existence to get published in FATE Magazine. Her account, minor enough as it is, caught the attention of at least one journalist, who distilled it for a fluff piece to fill a few column inches:

*The Register, Santa Ana, CA, 11 Oct 1956, p50*
This item was reprinted in other papers as well.

“Message in Stone” was never republished, and the whole incident is largely ignored in Muriel E. Eddy’s most well-known memories. Yet in H.P.L.: The Man and The Image (1969), she ends a rambling collection of memories with the note:

On one of my visits to H.P.L.’s grave, I found a heart-shaped stone. I wondered if he had seen it there, what type of storey might have been concocted by his fertile brain.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Her Letters To Lovecraft: Muriel E. Eddy

Muriel E. (Gammons) Eddy was born in Taunton, Massachusetts in 1896. She started to write poetry and fiction at a very early age. Muriel was educated in Attleboro Falls, Massachusetts; Redlands, California; and the Horace Mann School in San Jose, California, where she lived during her early teen years. Her father owned a movie theatre during that time, and it was there that she would spend many hours watching the motion picture shows, and writing stories and poems. Upon returning to Massachusetts, much of her poetry was published in her hometown newspaper, The Attleboro Sun.

Being the avid reader that she was, Muriel read all that she could, including the various magazines sold at the local newsstands. One of these held a letter to the editor from Clifford Eddy, Jr. Muriel wrote a letter to him and a correspondence ensued; they were both twenty-one. At the time, the two found they had many common interests: their love for writing, reading habits, their fertile imagination, and their almost twin birthdays (his, January 18, 1896; hers, January 19, 1896). They married the following year on February 10, 1918, eventually settling in Providence, Rhode Island.

Muriel continued writing, all the while raising three children. Her short stories in many different genres including romance, mystery, personal adventure, and suspense were published in the various magazines of the day such as Ghost Stories, Scarlet Adventuress, Complete Detective Novel Magazine, True Confessions, Midnight Magazine, and The Occult Digest. […]

Muriel and Clifford met H. P. Lovecraft and maintained a close friendship with him until his death in 1937.
—Jim Dyer, “Introduction” in In the Gray of the Dusk i-ii

A few letters from Lovecraft to Muriel, and to her husband C. M. Eddy, Jr., survive; so there is no doubt that they did correspond. Beyond that bald fact, the correspondence of Muriel E. Eddy and H. P. Lovecraft gets complicated.

The difficulty comes from the fact that Muriel, more than most of Lovecraft’s friends, memorialized her and her husband’s relationship with Lovecraft. While her major memoir is “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961), she also published “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft (1945), “Message in Stone” in Fate Magazine (Oct 1956), “Memories of H. P. L.” in The Magazine of Horror (Winter 1965-1966), “Lovecraft’s Marriage and Divorce” in Haunted (Jun 1968), and H. P. L. “The Man and the Image” (1969) (also partially reprinted as “Lovecraft: Among the Demons”), not to mention miscellaneous letters, notes, and probably a few reprints under different titles.

While that sounds substantial, most of these are relatively minor pieces, largely repetitious or filled with Muriel’s own speculation. Digging into the minutiae of what Muriel wrote and when, and trying to cross-reference her statements made through several decades versus the facts given in Lovecraft’s letters and other sources, reveals a great deal of omission, correction, and even contradictions.

To give an example, take this snippet from one of her later, self-published memoirs:

One day he walked all the way up to the top of the First Baptist Metting House in Benefit Street to sign his name in the guest book. He wrote, “H. P. Lovecraft, Esq., Gentleman.” He signed many of his letters to my husband and me with that phrase, and also “your obedient servant.”

*********

Our friendship with Howard began with letter writing, although we also lived in Providence – because he hated to use the telephone or any other mechanical device such as the typewriter. He always wrote in longhand, and later I was to type many of his manuscripts.

We wanted very much to meet him in person, and he finally came to our house one afternoon in August, 1923.
—Muriel E. Eddy, H. P. L. “The Man and the Image” (1969) 3

There is no doubt that Lovecraft did often sign his letters in just this way; we have numerous surviving examples to attest to that. So far, so good. Several of Lovecraft’s letters also attest to how much he detested typing, and his penchant for writing longhand; this is also verified by surviving manuscripts in Lovecraft’s writing. How much Muriel E. Eddy did typing for Lovecraft is more debatable; we cannot point to a typescript and say “Yes, Muriel typed this for Lovecraft.” We do have letters from Lovecraft where he mentions that C. M. Eddy, Jr. typed for him:

I gotta new way to get all my old manuscripts retyped in double-spacing, too. It’s the new local boy Eddy, what I was tellin’ ya about. I revise his stuff; and for every story I jazz up, he types one for me.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 19 Oct 1924, Letters to Maurice W. Moe 139

Does this mean Muriel E. Eddy didn’t type Lovecraft’s manuscripts? No. But it also means that without supporting evidence, we’re left to take her word on the matter. This becomes important because some of the most interesting and critical points in Muriel Eddy’s memoirs of her friendship and correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft are less well supported by outside evidence.

All of Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs agree, for example, that Lovecraft first came to visit the Eddys—who lived in Providence, Rhode Island, just a couple of miles from Lovecraft’s front door—in 1923. However, according to Muriel, they actually came into contact years earlier.

Cliff and I met Howard Philips Lovecraft in 1923. We were introduced by their mothers, who were both active in the women’s suffrage movement.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “Introduction” in Exit to Eternity (1973) iii

The 19th amendment granting women’s suffrage in the United States passed in 1919, and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft died in 1921, so this hypothetical first contact would have been c. 1918-1919. Yet there is no mention of the Eddys in Lovecraft’s correspondence before 1923, and the earliest surviving letters from Lovecraft to the Eddys dates to 1923. There is no reference in Lovecraft’s letters of his mother ever attending a suffragette meeting. However, Muriel expanded on this early contact:

Meeting Howard Phillips Lovecraft “in person” was the culmination of months of letter writing. Though we lived but a few miles apart, it had been necessary to contact H.P.L. (as we later learned to call him) by mail, during his mother’s lifetime. […] She said she preferred that we enter into correspondence with Howard, as generally speaking, he hated to talk over the ‘phone, not caring for modern-day inventions or mechanical instruments. […] So we wrote to H.P.L., and found him a willing and eager correspondent. Letters flew thick and fast between us, and he invited us to join the United Amateur Press Association, to which he belonged. He also sent us many copies of The Tryout, a small monthly booklet for amateur writers published by C. W. Smith up in New Hampshire, to which he was a faithful contributor, writing for it under various pen names, one of which was L. Theobald, Jr. We, too, were soon steady contributors to this small magazine.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 3, 4-5

While there are no letters from this period to attest to a “thick and fast” correspondence, Lovecraft was definitely keen to recruit fellow-writers to amateur journalism, and the United Amateur Press Association was his personal preference. That being said, The Tryout was associated with the rival National Amateur Press Association, and I’ve yet to find either of the Eddys on the rolls of the UAPA or NAPA. However, in 1918 Muriel E. Eddy did publish a few poems in The Tryout. That much, at least, seems to suggest that they may really have been in contact with Lovecraft as early as 1918.

August Derleth, who presumably got the data directly from C. M. Eddy, Jr. or Muriel Eddy, wrote a slightly more detailed account of Lovecraft coming into correspondence with the Eddys:

By one of those coincidences that are found so frequently in life, however much their incidence may be ridiculed in fiction, Mrs. Sarah Lovecraft and Mrs. Grace Eddy, two ladies of Providence, Rhode Island, who were allied in interest in the movement for women’s suffrage early in this century, had sons who were bending their efforts toward success at writing. Early in 1918, during a lull in a telephone conversation about the goal toward which both worked, the disclosure of their sons’ spare time activity was made, though Clifford M. Eddy Jr. was then courting and shortly married another writer, Muriel Gammons, and it was not until September of that year that Muriel Eddy sent H. P. Lovecraft a note, enclosing a poem of her own and one of her husband’s. Lovecraft responded out of his enthusiasm for fellow writers— and amateur pressdom— as he did in many other cases— with an application blank for each inviting them to join the United Amateur Press Association, and signed his note, “H. P. Lovecraft, Director.” The Eddys accepted Lovecraft’s invitation to join the association, but they did not actually meet one another until the summer of 1923.
— August Derleth, The Dark Brotherhood and other pieces (1966), 97

Muriel went on to write:

All of his letters were interesting and instructive and helped us a great deal. Then the letters became fewer and fewer, and it was evident that Howard was under some sort of stress about which he preferred not to talk. Finally, we knew the reason. His mother had become a patient at Butler Hospital, and his two aunts had taken over the running of the Lovecraft household. […] After her death, we began to hear from him again… and after over a year of intermittent writing back and forth, we had the temerity to invite him to visit us…never dreaming that he would accept the invitation!
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 5

Lovecraft’s letters after his mother’s death do show his great bereavement at her loss; at the same time, his involvement with amateur journalism and relationships with individuals like Winifred Virginia Jackson and Sonia H. Greene were undergoing a profound shift; it would not be unusual if a correspondence was allowed to lapse after a while, only to pick up again after things had settled for a period.

Two letters from H. P. Lovecraft to Muriel E. Eddy survive from this period, dated 5 September and 20 October 1923. Both of the Eddys were active writers during this period, though Muriel also had to keep house and watch the children (Clifford b. 1918, Fay b. 1920, and Ruth b. 1921—Muriel’s pregnancies might have been another reason the correspondence lapsed; it was a busy few years). C. M. Eddy, Jr. appears to have had at least occasional other employment as a theater promoter and other jobs. Still, money was obviously tight, and it was going to get tighter. There is evidence from city directories and other sources that the Eddys moved frequently in the 1920s.

The 5 September 1923 letter opens with Lovecraft enclosing several of his weird fiction manuscripts, and a discussion of the May 1923 issue of Weird Tales. This was obviously part of an ongoing discussion about pulps, because Lovecraft wrote:

I never saw The Thrill Book, & was distinctive tantalized by what you say of “The Sargasso Sea”.
—H. P. Lovecraft to Muriel E. Eddy, 5 Sep 1923, Miscellaneous Letters 156

Much of the letter is, unfortunately, not available; the partial transcription included in Miscellaneous Letters is taken from a dealer’s listing. The end of the letter, however, is a brief postscript that says simply: “P.S. Batch of new Tryouts just came—I’ll enclose a copy.” This would be another point in support of Muriel’s claim that Lovecraft had approached the Eddys about joining amateur journalism.

The 20 October 1923 letter opens “My dear Mrs. Eddy:—” and an enclosed story revision—”The Ghost-Eater” for C. M. Eddy, Jr. (which would be published in Weird Tales Apr 1924). The fact that Lovecraft is addressing this business matter through Muriel may suggest that she was the primary point of contact, at least at first, although as with the case of Fritz and Jonquil Leiber, perhaps Lovecraft alternated letters between the two, keeping up a parallel correspondence. The letter goes on to thank her for her comments related to The Poetical Works of Jonathan E. Hoag (1923), which Lovecraft had edited and written the critical preface to.

Taken together, these letters show an active and literary correspondence, mixed with a bit of revisory business. “The Ghost-Eater” is the earliest story of Eddy’s that Lovecraft is known to have touched-up, and might represent C. M. Eddy’s early attempt to crack Weird Tales as a market. Other stories Lovecraft had a greater or lesser hand in were “Ashes” (WT Mar 1924), “The Loved Dead” (WT May-Jun-Jul 1924), and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (WT Apr 1925).

There is a gap in the extant Lovecraft-Eddy correspondence; this is no doubt due in part to Lovecraft’s elopement with Sonia H. Greene to New York in March 1924. Muriel wrote that she saw the announcement in the paper where Lovecraft advertised for the typescript of “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” (for Harry Houdini), which he had lost on the trip:

I was so sorry for Lovecraft and so intrigued with the expected sight of the advertisement that, impetuously, I sat down, and clipping out the notice, I pasted it on a sheet of note-paper and drew a heavy black edge around it, writing underneath, “My deepest sympathy”.

In the very next mail came a printed announcement of Howard’s marriage to Sonia. They were married March 3, 1924, in St. Paul’s Church in New York City. Was my face red when that announcement arrived…after having just sent Lovecraft a note of sympathy! […]

[19] Lovecraft initially seemed overjoyed and exhilarated, sending us smiling snapshots of himself, also of Sonia, but not taken together. At first his letters were typical missives, then they dwindled, and finally, we did not hear from him at all.
— Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman From Angell Street (2001), 15-16, 19

The Eddys were definitely included on the list of those to be sent the engraved wedding announcement:

About the announcements—the engraved cards ought to come today, and the envelopes are already here and addressed. Of Providentians I have remembered Harold, Ronald, and Eddy—the only ones I think would be really interested.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 18 Mar 1924, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.113

The others mentioned are probably Harold Bateman Munroe and Ronald K. Upham.

We know that the correspondence with the Eddys continued during Lovecraft’s New York period (1924-1926), but also that there were gaps—understandable given Lovecraft’s often upset situation (and possibly the Eddys’ as well). For example, in his letters to his aunts, Lovecraft mentions:

I had a piquant note from Eddy today, and must answer it soon. My correspondence and amateur work, however, have had to be greatly neglected on account of this rush order for three chapters of a book of American superstition.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 30 Mar 1924, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.131

And in the opening of a letter to C. M. Eddy, Jr., Lovecraft apologizes:

Once more a prodigal adopted grandfather sues for pardon anent epistolary delinquencies!
— H. P. Lovecraft to C. M. Eddy, Jr., 21 Jul 1924, Miscellaneous Letters 158

It is clear from the surviving letters that Lovecraft continued to have a relationship with the Eddys; after he left Providence, the Eddys’ absorbed some of Lovecraft’s furniture from his aunts (as well as dozens of postcards from Sonia H. Greene, which were sadly destroyed). Lovecraft wrote a letter of introduction for C. M. Eddy to Harry Houdini, and C. M. Eddy apparently did some work for Houdini. Lovecraft certainly helped revise or amend some of C. M. Eddy’s fiction for Weird Tales, and they were to collaborate on The Cancer of Superstition for Houdini, a project cut off by the magician’s untimely demise.

There is some indication that Lovecraft may have had a falling-out with, or at least frustration with, the Eddys in late 1925/early 1926. A pair of letters suggests frustration:

Strange case—but as I just wrote A E P G on a card, I’m through with freaks & paupers & plebeians & odd fish at last. It took a long time to shew me how profitless they all are—Arthur Fredlund, Herbert Benson, Eddy, &c—but I now see how asinine it is to bother with them. They give no pleasure in the end, & become an intolerable nuisance & parasitic pest.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 22 Dec 1925, Letters to Family & Family Friends 1.520

As for me, I’m sick of Bohemians, odds & ends, freaks, & plebeians—C. M. Eddys & satellites & miscellany &c. They amuse me for a while, but begin to after a time to get frightfully on one’s nerves. People get one one’s nerves when they harbour different kinds of memories & live by different kinds of standards& cherish different kinds of goals & ideas.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lilian D. Clark, 11 Jan 1926, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.536

Without the Eddys’ end of the correspondence, we don’t really have an idea of what the problem was, but given the general impression of poverty that surrounds the Eddys from Lovecraft’s other letters of the period, it probably has to do with the straitened circumstances of the little family.

One thing we don’t get from this period, or after, is a real sense of Lovecraft’s relationship or correspondence with Muriel E. Eddy. With three kids under ten years old, she certainly had her hands full, on top of whatever other efforts she made to support the family while C. M. Eddy, Jr. tried to alternately write and work odd jobs, so it would not be surprising if C. M. Eddy, Jr. took over the bulk of the correspondence chores. We get a picture of the Eddys as a couple in a few letters from Lovecraft:

Orton is now attempting some writing—though of a popular & low-grade sort, for the Macfadden publications. (the same ones which honest Eddy’s wife writes for.)
— H. P. Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, 12 Apr 1929, Letters to Family & Family Friends 2.747

He has so far managed to keep meagrely afloat—with a wife & three children—by undertaking outside work of various sorts; but recent economic conditions have left him jobless & reduced him to such depths of want & peril that nothing short of a miracle—or a flood of fairly lucrative literary chores—can keep him & his flock from actual freezing, starvation, & eviction during the interval before he can again secure some industrial affiliation.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, 16 Jan 1930, Letters to Woodburn Harris & Others 429

I say the “House of Eddy” because C.M.E. Jr. made it clear last night that his wife does most of the adaptive revision in cases of this kind. He takes care of the grammatical & rhetorical side, while Mrs. Eddy supplies the “human-interest” hokum & blah for which the Macfadden editors are so avid. She, it seems, has produced much of this material, & has helped many beginners to develop into steady sellers. Her help, Eddy says, generally amounts to actual collaboration—although in your case, as I have just warned, you must not let it approach the status of instruction lest the results of Belknap’s lessons be undone. The rates charged by the Eddys for this collaborative revision of Macfaddenistic material would be very reasonable, & they would be glad to discuss the matter of placement with you whenever you wish to write.
— H. P. Lovecraft to Zealia Brown Reed Bishop, 29 Jan 1930, Letters to Woodburn Harris & Others 436-437

The last letter from Lovecraft to C. M. Eddy, Jr. is c. 1930, and mentions “The Mound” (1940) by Zealia Bishop. A checklist among Lovecraft’s papers suggest he was still in touch with the Eddys at least as late as 1934, as he apparently sent them postcards from St. Augustine, Charleston, and Nantucket, but these are not known to survive (Collected Essays 5. 267).

There is a notable gap in the correspondence, near the end of Lovecraft’s life. Muriel Eddy claimed that she was responsible for putting Lovecraft in contact with Hazel Heald, Lovecraft’s last major revision client. If Muriel E. Eddy did this by letter, those epistles do not appear to have survived and are not in evidence from what other correspondence we have. Then again, why would they be? Lovecraft seldom mentioned such correspondence to others.

How do we square this evidence for correspondence—solid (in the form of two letters to Muriel E. Eddy and ten to C. M. Eddy, Jr.) and circumstantial (references to the Eddys in Lovecraft’s other letters)—with Muriel’s own memoirs? Whether or not Muriel was misremembering or deliberately glossing over a few details, it seems clear that Lovecraft’s relationship with the Eddys was not quite as tight as she liked to present, and the impression given is of a friendship occasionally strained by time, distance, and business or financial matters, albeit not a friendship that was ever completely abandoned on either side.

Because so much of the surviving correspondence is between Lovecraft and her husband, it is difficult to get a bead on Muriel E. Eddy’s relationship with Lovecraft. There is a strong impression that at the beginning (c.1918-1924), Lovecraft was writing mostly to Muriel, as he would to any of a number of amateur journalists. As Lovecraft’s business with C. M. Eddy, Jr. waxes—first with revising his work and getting stuff typed, then the Houdini-stuff, and finally the Bishop revising/typing—we see less and less of Muriel.

While there are a few contradictory points in Muriel’s memoirs of Lovecraft, it’s important to point out that she was not necessarily dishonest—memory can get vague and fuzzy, and by the time Muriel was weighing in Lovecraft had been dead for years. As she told the stories over and over, they became more fixed, as evidenced by comparing the earlier memoirs to later ones; repeating narratives makes them clearer in the mind, but it also means a person teaches themself how to tell a story, sometimes adding or removing details, being informed by what other people wrote, etc. Most of Muriel’s comments on Lovecraft’s marriage, for example, are pure hearsay and speculation, and quite often wrong.

It is unfortunate that more of the Lovecraft/Eddy correspondence is not available. Muriel E. Eddy’s memoirs, even flawed, provide a fascinating insight into Lovecraft’s life and work, and also into her own life and that of her husband during this tumultuous but critical period. What drove a woman like Muriel E. Eddy to write to H. P. Lovecraft? What prompted him to write back? How long did they correspond, of and on? We do not have—will never have—all the pieces of the puzzle.

Imagine a young mother, bouncing a toddler on her knee, squinting at one of Lovecraft’s manuscripts and trying to type it out—or perhaps C. M. Eddy, Jr. was there, a rugrat at his foot, as he read aloud while she typed. Or that breathless expectation on a hot summer afternoon in Providence, as a tall man in a straw hat walked up to the door to introduce himself, with a name they had only read in letters up to that point…it’s easy to wax romantic about these relationships. Yet the whole point of tracing such correspondence and combing through these memoirs is to get a better sense of who these people were, and what their lives were like.

Thanks to Donovan Loucks for his help with this one.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

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Untitled poem (1976) by William Davis Manly

In the summer of 1976, a one-shot ‘zine of of weird poetry and art emerged from 5115 South Mead St., Seattle Washington. The publisher titled it Visions of Khroyd’hon, which probably meant nothing to anyone at the time, and it was published in the spirit of good fun:

There are many interesting poetry publications popping up every now & then, and I thought it wou’d be fun if I join’d—if only for a moment—ye crowd and publish’d this first and only issue of VOK. I’ve assembled lots of good poetry here, with a number of talented youngsters contributing clever rhymes, love sonnets, and exciting verse. There’s something for everyone’ I’m sure each reader will be able to find some moments of entertainment.
—W. H. Pugmire, Visions of Khroyd’hon 1

Among the contributors were luminaries such as Brian Lumley, H. Warner Munn, J. Vernon Shea, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and William Davis Manly, the latter of whom included several untitled verses, including this one:

Weird and wonderful, these tales,
Each an eerie world reveal;
Imagination freely sails
Reaching worlds that can’t be real—
Darkened worlds of daemon-lore.

Time is but a shadow-thing,
All reality has flown;
Listen—Dagon’s children sing!,
Eerily, in tongue unknown.
Surely, I can’t ask for more.
—william davis manly

It is a poem in praise of weird fiction, from someone who loves the strange, eerie, horrific, and awesome. A paean from one Mythos fan to every other. The artist is unknown, but the subject is writer Fritz Leiber, Jr., and appears to be traced from a scene from the 1970 film Equinox.

*Equinox* has several parallels with *Evil Dead II*, including a recording of a professor (Leiber) who unwisely reads aloud an incantation from a very evil book…although the book in *Equinox* is not specifically called the *Necronomicon*.

The hidden joke is that William Davis Manly is, like Robert E. Howard’s Justin Geoffrey or H. P. Lovecraft’s Abdul Alhazred, not a flesh-and-blood poet at all, but a character in Pugmire’s stories—a staple name in what would become the Sesqua Valley stories. Pugmire had begun producing poetry under the name William Davis Manly in the 1970s, probably first “The Cryptic Power” in the ‘zine Bleak December #8. The first bit of fiction referencing Manly was “From ye Journal of William Davis Manly” (Old Bones #1, Summer 1976), and in “The Thing in the Glen” (Space and Time Sep 1977) the story begins with a poetic epigraph:

“Beneath the old narcotic moon
It preys upon mortality,
Hungry to devour hope,
And whispering to darkness.”
—William Davis Manly, Visions of Khroyd’hon
(quoted from Dreams of Lovecraftian Horror 57)

So Pugmire’s poetry ‘zine became, in the context of his Mythos fiction, a volume of poetry, much like Justin Geoffrey’s People of the Monolith in Robert E. Howard’s “The Black Stone.” William Davis Manly (or at least, his legend) would grow and develop in Pugmire’s tales, as would his slightly more diabolical counterpart, the sorcerer Simon Gregory Williams.

There is no definitive collection of W. H. Pugmire’s poetry, and maybe such a thing would be difficult to put together, given how much of it was published in ‘zines and scattered hither and yon. The quality and focus of it varies considerably, as Pugmire was equally disposed to either fulfilling some weird and fantastic corner of the Mythos or just praising his aunt in verse, but for readers who enjoy his fiction, Pugmire’s poetry is an indelible part of his larger body of work.

As far as I have yet been able to determine, the untitled poem from Visions of Khroyd’an has only ever been reprinted in the chapbook Sesqua Rising (2016) by Graeme Davis, which collects many other early Pugmire rarities.

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein uses Amazon Associate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” (2008) by The Mountain Goats

And then the girl behind the counter
She asks me how I feel today
I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn
—final chorus

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is the eighth track on Heretic Pride (2008, 4AD) the eleventh studio album by The Mountain Goats, an indie/folk-rock project by singer/songwriter John Darnielle and his collaborators. The song was written and performed by Darnielle, and produced by Scott Solter and John Vanderslice. The tense 3:49 recording is narrated by an individual in a city, expressing muted frustration and horrific fantasies. References to Lovecraft and his work are few and vague, beginning with the second chorus:

Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

And ending with a reference to what might be the Fungi from Yuggoth:

Someday something’s coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It’ll store our brains in Mason jars

…or perhaps just a paranoid ramble from an undiagnosed schizophrenic. While nothing happens in the narrative of the song, there is the implicit promise of violence about to occur, and “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is the narrator’s common reference point for how they feel, a reference that they expect others to understand.

As part of the promotion of the album, comic book artist Jeffrey Lewis produced a three-page comic illustrating Darnielle’s notes about the songs.

American horror icon H. P. Lovecraft moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved. He had never really seen any people who were not white folks from Massachusetts. Immigrants were spilling into Brooklyn from the four corners of the globe. Lovecraft’s xenophobia during his time in Brooklyn resulted in some of the weirdest, darkest images in all American literature; one must condemn Lovecraft’s ugly racism, of course, but his not-unrelated inclination toward a general suspicion of anything that’s alive is pretty fertile ground.

In a 2008 interview about the science fiction influence on his work, Darnielle was asked specifically about the song:

[Charlie Jane Anders]: Your new album includes a song about H.P. Lovecraft, “Lovecraft In Brooklyn.” Why should we identify with H.P. Lovecraft’s feelings of alienation and xenophobia during his exile in Red Hook? What about that image appeals to you? In Lovecraft’s case, that alienation leads to all his best speculative horror… do you think xenophobia creates better speculative fiction than xenophilia?

[John Darnielle]: Well the song is not really about Lovecraft — it’s sung by a guy who’s identifying with Lovecraft at his most xenophobic and terrified. Why does that appeal? I think I’m just attracted to hermits in general — to people who don’t feel like they’re part of the world, who have a hard time feeling like they’re really present in the same space as everybody else.
—Charlie Jane Anders, “The Mountain Goats Explain Why Ozzy Osbourne Is A Scifi Visionary” (Gizmodo, 27 Mar 2008)

An apocryphal account of the 22 March 2008 live session The Mountain Goats played at the Black Cat club in Washington, D.C. captures an opener John Darnielle gave before playing this song:

Once again, to express my affection for you, I’d like to play this song about a fellow who is really so filled with anger and rage that the mere sight of other human beings makes him feel even more angry. He’s angry already when he wakes up, before he remembers that there’s other people on the planet. But once he thinks of those other people, then he starts to really get going. And heaven help you if he should have to go and get some kleenex or whatever from the corner store, then he will really be filled with a special kind of contempt. Why? Because you have bodies and they make him sick. That’s what this song is about. I know everyone can relate to the tender feelings expressed in it.

John Darnielle is not a Lovecraft scholar; his understanding of Lovecraft as represented in the promotional materials, lyrics, and intra-show commentary reflects a popular depiction of Lovecraft as an angry xenophobe trapped in a place surrounded by people who weren’t like him, and it made him go crazy. “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” reflects the legend of Lovecraft’s 1924-1926 sojourn to New York, much like Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom” (2016) represents an interpretation of “The Horror at Red Hook,” one of the stories Lovecraft wrote during that period, with an emphasis on Lovecraft’s racism.

The reality was more complicated. 1924 wasn’t the first time Lovecraft had been to New York; it wasn’t the first time Lovecraft had been out of state, or seen people of color or different ethnicities. Lovecraft had experiences leading up to his 1924 elopement with Sonia H. Greene, who gave her version of their married life in The Private Life of H. P. Lovecraft (1985), which he thought prepared him for life in New York.

As it happened, Lovecraft was wrong. He failed to find employment; soon after marriage, his wife fell ill and required hospitalization and then rest. Without either of them working, money swiftly became an issue. Sonia eventually found a job out in the Midwest, but Lovecraft would not follow her there, so he was left alone, in the poor Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Largely alone, unable to make his own way, dependent on a wife he didn’t see for weeks and distant aunts, Lovecraft tried to make the best of it with his local friends.

Then thieves broke into his apartment.

Letters from Lovecraft to his aunts Lillian D. Clark and Annie Gamwell show how unhappy he was. While he never blamed the immigrants or people of color for his own failures, his letters to them during this period show how much Lovecraft’s prejudices were exacerbated during this final, stressful period in New York…until, at last, his aunts and wife prevailed upon him to return to Providence, Rhode Island, where he could be happier.

So he did.

Most of Lovecraft’s New York experiences did not make it into his fiction; not even the fiction he wrote while living in and set in the city. “The Horror at Red Hook” is unusual because through Lovecraft’s letters and various anecdotes in memoirs we can trace it back to a specific incident—overhearing some hardboiled toughs talking a little too loudly about criminal goings-on at a local cafeteria—from which Lovecraft spun out his fantasy of an immigrant gang-cum-cult involved in human trafficking, murder, and more esoteric activities.

“The Horror at Red Hook” reads pretty baldly racist; the equivalent today might be a story of an MS-13-type group that was also a survival of ancient Aztec religion that still practiced human sacrifice. That was very explicitly fiction, though—a play on contemporary prejudices, not Lovecraft just putting his own prejudices onto the paper. A fine distinction for a lot of readers who don’t always like to distinguish between what Lovecraft thought and how he portrayed things in the pages of Weird Tales.

New York-based rapper and producer Aesop Rock (Ian Matthias) did a remix of “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which at 3:31 retains all of Darnielle’s lyrics but quickens the beat and reworks the soundscape with added effects to add to the tension and air of alienation of the song, and providing a densely-packed fourth verse of his own. The added lyrics are grounded much more firmly in Brooklyn itself, and suggest a deeper understanding of Lovecraft’s time in New York (“Summer lovin’ snuck him toward the tarnished arms of liberty”), and perhaps reflect W. Paul Cook’s assessment that Lovecraft’s time in New York was pivotal toward his development as a writer (“Little Howie’s parachute has flowered down the rabbit hole”).

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” is an expression of the pop cultural phenomenon that is Lovecraft; his legend used to evoke certain ideas, attitudes, and aesthetics completely rather than any attempt to relate a distinct biographical episode from his life. It showcases how Lovecraft’s reputation as a bigot and xenophobe has become so rampant; of course, the fact that he was racist (if not always to the degree or in the way folks like Darnielle portray) cannot be ignored and shouldn’t be downplayed.

While Darnielle’s particular impression of Lovecraft may be factually incorrect, Darnielle was right in that Lovecraft’s legacy continues to be fertile ground for artists to fuel their own imaginations.

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” – The Mountain Goats (Youtube link)

“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” (remix) – The Mountain Goats / Aesop Rock (Youtube link)

Bobby Derie is the author of Weird Talers: Essays on Robert E. Howard and Others and Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos .

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