Darwinism is older than space opera. The epic scales and timelines of interstellar travel and alien worlds with their own unique forms of life gave writers and artists the opportunity to depict different evolutionary paths than life took on Earth. How different environments shaped and nurtured these extraterrestrial forms of life. From the rubber-forehead aliens of Star Trek and Star Wars to more non-humanoid lifeforms of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) or Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama (1973).
Social Darwinism and eugenics are also older than space opera, and the idea emerged that survival-of-the-fittest and particularly challenging environments would lead to hardier organisms. The thinking went that the harsh conditions would weed out the weak and force the survivors to be toughened up. To many, this might seem self-evident: wild animals are often leaner and more ferocious than domesticated pets and farm animals; rural people who work physically demanding jobs are often stronger and physically fit than city folk working office jobs. In practice, this is a misconception: survival of the fittest doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest or the toughest, and the forces that shape an individual over their lifetime aren’t necessarily passed down to the next generation (Lamarkism).
However, the idea had legs in science fiction.
“But every report on Salusa Secundus says S.S. is a hell world!”
“Undoubtedly. But if you were going to raise tough, strong, ferocious men, what environmental conditions would you impose on them?” —Frank Herbert, Dune(1965)
Earth is a diverse world with many biomes, and evolution has made plenty of weird stuff on our own planet. Some of them are harsher than others, and the same basic idea that science fiction authors applied to “hell worlds” in their space opera could also be applied (jocularly) to, say, Australia.
POSSIBLY IT WOULD BE SIMPLER IF I ASKED FOR A LIST OF THE HARMLESS CREATURES OF THE AFORESAID CONTINENT?
They waited.
IT WOULD APPEAR THAT—
“No, wait, master. Here it comes.”
Albert pointed to something white zigzagging lazily through the air. Finally Death reached up and caught the single sheet of paper.
He read it carefully and then turned it over briefly just in case anything was written on the other side.
“May I?” said Albert. Death handed him the paper.
“Some of the sheep,” Albert read aloud. —Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent (1998)
The ideas came together online in a series of Tumbr posts in 2016 in a thread titled “Humans Are Weird,” which started out with unusual traits of human beings as a species and then transitioned to Earth is Australia. The basic idea is a Star Trek or Star Wars-style universe with multiple intelligent, technologically advanced species, and they come across Earth…and compared to the rest of the inhabitable planets in the universe, Earth is a deathworld.
Which would make humans, as those who survive and thrive on said deathworld, incomparably awesome compared to the rest of the galaxy.
The idea has legs, and has inspired several memes, microfiction on social media sites, fanart, and entire novels and audiobooks. Variations and spinoffs include “Humans Are Space Orcs,” “Space Australia,” and “HFY” (Humanity, Fuck Yeah!). While initially light-hearted and at least mildly grounded in real-world science, as the ideas have developed and spread different themes have emerged—often involving environmentalism, military conflicts, morality, ethics, and above all human ingenuity and determination. Strong insirpirations from military science fiction are evident, with humans often being depicted with unshakeable resolve, peaceful unless provoked, relentless when provoked, and alternately surprisingly passionate or unstoppable horrors depending on the tone of the story.
Enterprising creators are commercializing these themes; one such endeavor is Starbound HFY, which might be most politely described as a fiction factory. Writers are solicited to submit stories that meet certain guidelines, get paid for their work; the stories are then read by voice actors, who are also paid; and the resulting audiobooks are posted online, usually accompanied by AI-generated artwork to lend some visual clutter to the production.
The use of generative AI has led to speculation about whether the audio productions use AI-generated text or are read by AI, or whether they plagiarize the stories of other creators. Part of the problem is that the titles for the stories are very clickbait-y, authors are rarely credited (although this has been getting better lately), and the voice actors who read the stories are often completely uncredited, although they usually appear at the beginning of the videos to confirm that yes, real human beings were involved in this production (though it appears they might have used narration software on the early videos). Competition in the field for clicks and views has led to a lot of imitation; how often this results in actual plagiarism or bots scraping content and repackaging it on different channels isn’t clear.
The whole process reminds me weirdly of the ultra-competitive nature of science fiction pulp magazines circa 1940, when there was an explosion of titles on the stands, all competing for the same dimes and quarters, often using the same writers or riffing on the same themes. Robots, bug-eyed aliens, women in distress, etc. were the order of the day. In the 2020s, the HFY-themes tend toward militarism, cultural exchange, and an elevated sense of how badass and cool humans are. In that respect, it reminds me of the men’s adventure fiction magazines of the 1950s. The emphasis on human strength, durability, and ingenuity over extraterrestrials—and the humans almost always being well-meaning, peaceful unless provoked, and utterly terrifying when not—tends to put human failings and weaknesses in the past tense, as cultural traits that have been overcome.
To be fair, this isn’t exactly a new idea. Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars that began in 1966 and David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammersin 1979 was almost exactly this kind of quasi-hard-sci fi where humanity turns out to be very good at war and is surprisingly effective against alien species when conflict breaks out. Unlike those works, humans are usually depicted in HFY stories as possessing innate advantages thanks to evolving on a deathworld, including greater strength, ability to sustain and heal injuries, and quick reflexes—although sometimes the ability to metabolize oxygen and liquid water or exist at room temperature is enough to impress some alien species.
The story itself is very much Delta Green or the SCP Foundation in a space opera setting. The HFY setting elements are a balance between popular conceptions of the Mythos (e.g. looking at a shoggoth or other Mythos entity drives someone insane). There very little taken directly from Lovecraft in the script compared to other Mythos-inflected space operas like the Boojumverse series by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette (“Boojum” (2008),“Mongoose” (2009), “The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward” (2012)) or La Planète aux Cauchemars (2019) by Mathieu Sapin & Patrick Pion, but the emphasis of the danger and difficulty of dealing with the Mythos does balance out the “humans are awesome” elements a little bit, which can get ludicrous at times.
A large part of the effectiveness for the audio narration is due to the voice actor, Chikondi C, who does an admirable job of trying to render R’lyehian as well as the different voices of the characters and the over all narration. The emphasis and emotion that come through in his reading goes a long way to bring alive a competent story. I highly doubt that the prose story by itself would be nearly as effective without Chikondi’s careful and clear narration and effective emoting.
“Earth is a Breeding Ground For Monstrous Creatures” (2024) is, effectively, a contemporary pulp story. In an era when print magazines are increasingly less relevant in the fiction publishing landscape, the edge of popular publishing has moved online, into spaces like Tumblr, Reddit, TikTok, and Youtube. Listen to it like that and you might know what it was like, back in the 40s or 50s, when a sci fi fan picked a magazine off the rack of the local newsstand, never know what might be a silly potboiler with bug-eyed aliens—or an early work by a writer destined to be a big name in science fiction in the future.
Update (15 Jan 2025): As of this writing the StarboundHFY Youtube channel has been removed and their content banned from the r/HFY subreddit following claims of stealing content, using generative AI when they claimed they weren’t, and basically unethically content farming. When or if it ever returns is ever unknown.
Hanukkah is an ancient holiday, but a modest one. The holiday of the Hasmoneans is new, yet it is full of spiritual exaltation and national joy. What was Hanukkah forty years ago? ‘Al ha-nissim’ and Hallel; a short reading in the synagogue; lighting the tiny, slender wax candles or oil lights; at home, levivot [latkes–potato pancakes], cards for the older children, and sevivonim [dreidels–spinning tops] for the little ones. But what is Hanukkah today? The holiday of the Hasmoneans. A holiday of salvation. A great national holiday, celebrated in all the countries of the Diaspora with dances and speeches, melody and song, outings and parades, as if a new soul has been breathed into the ancient holiday, another spirit renewed within it. One thing is clear: if those tiny, modest candles had been extinguished in Diaspora times, if our grandparents had not preserved the traditions of Hanukkah in the synagogue and at home . . . , the holiday of the Hasmoneans could never have been created. There would have been nothing to change, nothing to renew. The new soul of our times would not have found a body in which to envelop itself. —Chaim Harrari, Sefer ha-Mo’adim, Sefer Hanukkah (1938), quoted in “Zionist Awareness of the Jewish Past: Inventing Tradition or Renewing the Ethnic Past?” (2012) by Yitzhak Conforti
On the 25th day of Kislev in the Hebrew calendar is the feast of Hanukkah. Originally a very minor holiday in the Jewish holy calendar, Hanukkah gained increasing prominence during the 20th and 21st centuries as it was embraced as a nationalist holiday by Zionists, and because Hanukkah often occurred near the major Christian holiday of Christmas. The massive increase of secular pop culture surrounding Christmas, especially in English-speaking countries, has led to the increased awareness of Hanukkah, and sometimes its depiction as an equivalent holiday among both religiously observant and secular Jews.
In some cases, elements of secular Christmas celebration have influenced or been adapted for Hanukkah, a process sometimes referred to as Chrismukkah. Jewish families might put up a Hanukkah Bush, or watch Hanukkah-themed movies and animated specials like A Rugrats Chanukah (1996) or Eight Crazy Nights(2002). The influence of Christmas pop-culture on secular Hanukkah media is often very notable. Even when things get a little weird and Lovecraftian.
To be fair, Shvartsman and Riera are very aware of it. In fact, that’s quite the point. The book gets very meta very fast, directly addressing how much Hanukkah has played second-fiddle to Christmas in pop culture. Cthulhu is just the catalyst for an ongoing dilemma about the cultural footprint of Hanukkah in a world dominated by Christmas. So with a mix of Yiddishisms and Lovecraftian references, Hanukkah Harry goes off to save Hanukkah from the apocalypse of Cthulhu.
Riera’s heart is lovely, a soft-focus blend of stylized and detailed that could easily serve as the basis for an animated short. The colors in particular strike a fine balance between the traditional greens and purples favored for eldritch horrors and the more subdued coloring of Harry’s mother and father’s modest dress, while Harry himself favors blue and white. Implicit details of dress suggest the family are probably Reform Jewish, since Harry lacks the payot and none of them wear the typical clothing associated with the hasidim (whose distinct garb Lovecraft noted and commented on in New York City).
It is not a very long book, and thematically it’s not a very deep book. Cthulhu goes down without devouring so much as a latke. Cosmic horror takes a back seat to wanting to sort things about before Christmas comes for Cthulhu. While suitable for and probably geared toward a young adult audience, the youngster would have to be perspicacious enough to be aware of the cultural references for both Hanukkah and Cthulhu to really grok it—and maybe get a chuckle at some of the jokes.
Dreidel of Dread: The Very Cthulhu Hanukkah(2024) is a fun little book, but readers looking for something a little more serious or action-packed might want to check out Edward M. Erdelac’s Merkabah Rider or “The Chabad of Innsmouth” (2014) by Marsha Morman. As Jewish/Cthulhu Mythos mash-ups go, this is distinctly light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek, less concerned with either the details of Lovecraft’s Mythos or the origins of the holiday.
It’s about Hanukkah Harry saving Hanukkah from Cthulhu. Which is, really, all it claims or needs to be.
Yesterday I completely rewrote ye just-publish’d story, “The Quickening of Ursula Sphinx,” as I am nigh unhappy with the version that has been publish’d in STRANGE VERSUS LOVECRAFT and wanted to improve the story and then use it in the book I am writing with David Barker. —W. H. Pugmire’s Blog, 12 July 2013
Whoever compiles the full and complete bibliography of W. H. Pugmire will have their work cut out for them. Not only because much of Pugmire’s work is distributed in scarce fanzines and limited editions, but because Wilum had a penchant for re-writing that went beyond cleaning up a bit of purple prose or updating references that had aged unpleasantly. When Pugmire re-wrote a story, he could completely transform it in only a few sentences—and did.
“The Quickening of Ursula Sphinx” was published twice; the first time in the now-scarce Strange versus Lovecraft(2013) bizarro anthology, and then re-written for inclusion in the also-scarce In the Gulfs of Dream and Other Lovecraftian Tales(2015), written with David Barker. Finding either will be a hunt; but to truly appreciate how Pugmire could rework a story would require access to both.
The context of the publishing makes an interesting contrast. Strange versus Lovecraft is a collection of Lovecraftian bizarro fiction, and Pugmire is in the odd position of having not just the first story in the anthology, but the most straitlaced one—or perhaps more accurately, in a gathering of grindcore, anti-folk, and crust punks, Pugmire is the OG horror punk who sets the bar against which everything else is measured. Meanwhile in In the Gulfs of Dream, “The Quickening of Ursula Sphinx” is buried deep in the two-author collection, not an afterthought but also not a standout. Among a collection of other less experimental and irreverent Lovecraftian tales, the story finds its place more in relation to the shared characters and ideas of Pugmire and Barker’s other works.
The story by itself is a slight one, only about six pages long, and centers about one of Pugmire’s characters, Ephraim Kant, who has unearthed the thought-lost “talkie” film of silent film actress Ursula Sphinx—who has arrived at the viewing party. The atmosphere and mood opens with the Lovecraftian equivalent of The House on Haunted Hill (1959), just a smorgasbord of Lovecraftian and horror images, tropes, and in-jokes, all in a good-natured fun but marked by Pugmire’s love for the outré and decadent, the sensual and the surreal.
The first changes in the story are minor, mere tweaks on the language:
“Have you not read Ephraim’s second novel, In the Valley of Shoggoth? He mentions these Outer Ones there, in the third chapter, wherein his narrator discusses the queer influence of mortal blood upon cosmic daemons of an alternative dimension?”
“Have you not read Ephraim’s second novel, In the Vale of Shoggoth? He mentions these Outer Ones there, in the third chapter, wherein his narrator discusses the queer influence of mortal blood upon cosmic daemons of alien dimension.”
Strange versus Lovecraft 8
In the Gulfs of Dream 217
Later, the changes become more pronounced and impactful. The language refined, the ideas more clearly expressed—the equivalent of another draft.
I waved my hand to the others who milled about the room. “Have we all done time for lunacy? Are any of your evening guests slaves to sanity?”
“My dear, what a wicked imagination you have. Ah—but here is our Living Legend.”
Waving my hand to the others in the room, I continued. “We’ve all done time for lunacy, yes? We are none of us slaves to dull sanity.”
“He licked his lips. “I promised you that tonight would be a mad affair.” The babble in the room suddenly ceased, and when our host looked up an element of rare wonder entered into his eyes. “Here is our Living Legend,” he whispered.
Strange versus Lovecraft 10
In the Gulfs of Dream 219
The climax of the story though, is where the story fundamentally pivots. Pugmire plays another variation of the magic of the silver screen, like “Pickman’s Other Model (1929)” (2008) by Caitlín R. Kiernan. There is the promise of something captured in the film as it begins to play. In another writer’s hands, this could have been drawn out into a full-blown novella, a legend of what happened that night, a la Fury of the Demon. Pugmire, though, doesn’t look away. Let’s the reader see what happens.
Ephraim took hold of my arm and guided me out of my chair, out of the row in which I had sat, toward the flickering image on the pale wall. I watched the image of the youthful Ursula Sphinx, that semi-human priestess, open her mouth, and I thought that she would buzz again; but instead, she sucked at aether, and the blurred bloody blotch fell, so as to encase her. I saw that cosmic essence sink into the texture of the young woman’s flesh, into her ears and nose and mouth. She stepped out of the screen, toward us. She stopped just before me, her fantastic eyes shimmering, and with the sweetest buzzing tone, she spoke my name with a mouth that wore one little stain of gore. Tilting to her, I kissed the blood from off her mouth.
I sensed our host beside me and allowed him to help me to my feet. I liked the way his buzzing voice poured laughter into my ear as the young woman floated toward us. Ursula Sphinx stopped just before me, her fantastic eyes on fire, as in the sweetest droning purr she spoke my name, with that mouth that wore one little stain of my bloodshed. Tilting to her, I kissed my crimson liquid from her lips.
Strange versus Lovecraft 14
In the Gulfs of Dream 222-223
The bloody mouth is a recurring image in Pugmire’s fiction, one he liked to return to, at once carnal and horrific. It’s easy to see why Pugmire cut down this paragraph a bit, as it is more effective to move Ursula Sphinx’s quickening to a little earlier—yet the key points, the big change between the two versions of the story is that in the second one, the strange actress tastes the blood of the protagonist. And so, the narrator becomes a part of the proceedings, not just a witness but a celebrant in the climax of the rite, partially captured on film.
For those most interested in the Mythos as setting and stories as sources of lore, this little piece would probably be classed as a minor work. Compared to many of Pugmire’s stories, it is; but it is a little gem of its kind. A look at how and why an author could revise a story, the way a few words’ difference can change the meaning so completely, while retaining the core of both texts.
This miscellany includes excerpts from period newspapers, one of which (“Iwo Jima & Innsmouth”) contains historical racism and racist language. As such, please be advised before reading further.
Any tool is also a toy. The only question is whether you’re using it for work or for play. When it comes to online newspaper archives, they are a wonderful tool that has made available a vast amount of minute detail of the past that would otherwise be inaccessible to the average researcher. They are also, however, vast fun if you’re in the right mindset—because newspaper writers are inherently creative, highly literate, hungry for content, and often have a wonderful sense of humor. The result is bits and pieces that are often bizarre or brilliant, though sometimes sober and horrific.
Most of them are effectively noise when considered in terms of “serious” research into Lovecraft’s life, but as a reflection of the growing popularity of Lovecraft and the influence of his work, they stand out as tide water marks: examples of the spread of awareness of Lovecraft and his work. They are sometimes incredibly fun, if only because of how weird they are. I’ve culled out a dozen of the best clippings to showcase the wacky and sometimes fascinating Lovecraftian oddities that have appeared in newspapers over the past century.
Quick links for readers who want to jump to a particular clipping:
“Are strange stories ever enacted in the North woods? repeated an old-time lumberman from the Ashland district, who has been spending a few weeks in Bangor. “Well, I know one—as weird a yarn as ever was told. If you print it, people will say either that I tried to ‘kid’ you or I should be examined by an alienist; and yet, in my own mind, I believe it true.
“I can’t say from personal experience, for it happened at least 75 years ago. but it’s a tradition among some of the old lumbermen, and it’s been handed down from father to son. Personally, I’m not imaginative, and I don’t believe in any kind of ghosts. I never read Edgar Allen [sic] Poe or Ambrose Bearce [sic] or Harold [sic] Lovecraft. Yet here, as I heard it from many lips, was a tale like Bearce’s [sic] ‘Damned Thing’ and Lovecraft’s ‘Dunwich Horror’ rolled into one.
“Seventy-five years ago, then, in the lumber camps of the great woods and on lonely, outlying farms, hroses and cattle were being slaughtered in considerable numbers. Always it was done in the same way—their throats were ripped open, as though from the teeth of some savage dog or wild animal. And yet gradually, through the countryside, there spread a belief that it was not an animal at all. Tracks sometimes were left near the stables or tie-ups—tracks something like those of a man’s bare foot, and yet were not a man’s. Sometimes a shadowy form, ape-like and hairy, was seen gliding through the darkness—or so imaginative persons said. But the cries of the cattle were real and tangible; and the following morning—for few dared venture out in the dark—always disclosed that the ‘wood demon’, as some called him, had been at his deadly work.
“Finally there arose one who loudly announced he didn’t care for man or devil; he was going to get to the bottom of the mystery, if it was the last thing he did in the world. I don’t recall just what led this man to suppose that, on a certain night, he was due for a visit from the strange marauder. But the story goes that he insisted on staying in the tie-up, and so became the one human witness of the horror that followed.
“The hours passed; nature had never been more placid or calm. And the man was about to return to camp, laughing at himself for having believed in old wives’ tales, when—the thing happened.
“It was a clear night, and a ray of moonlight fell through a hole chopped in the roof that the steam rising from the cattle might escape—a crude but popular system of ventilation in those days. And through this hole, filtering through the moonlight and the shadows, came as strange an object as ever found its way from the Inferno. It was like a huge ape, yet the man swore it was not an ape; it was like a man yet it was not a man; it had hairy, strangely contorted limbs, and cruel teeth that gleamed in the darkness—for the man had put a burlap bag over the lantern he carried.
“It sprang upon the cattle, ripped open their throats, drank of their blood, and disappeared through the roof—as an ape might have done. But, as I have told you, it was not an ape. And the man who had said that he feared nothing in the world just stood there in a corner, a high powered rifle in his hand, too paralyzed by fright to so much as stir. He said afterward that, even had the Thing turned and attacked him, he couldn’t have moved a muscle.
“What was the thing? I don’t know! I never heard how the story ended; but I believe the mystery was never solved. if there is any moral, it is simply that it points the truth of what Hamlet said: ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.'”
One seldom thinks of vampiric sasquatch as having anything to do with H. P. Lovecraft. Yet vampirism of animals is a key plot point of “The Dunwich Horror” Weird Tales (Apr 1929); just as an orangutan formed an essential feature of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), and an unseen menace is the key to Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” (1893). One suspects that the errors in the names of Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft are probably intentional, to give an air of rusticity to a tale that is probably fabricated out of whole cloth. No name is given for the author of the piece, and it may have been a friend or friend-of-a-friend of Lovecraft. Whoever it was had at least a modest affection for weird fiction.
Abdul Alhazred, the mad Arab of Lovecraft fame, once wrote in the “Necro[no]micon”—”Science and fact, as seen by our little minds, are but dew-spangled cobwebs that catch the light of a tiny candle; and the resulting glitter [b]linds us to the horrible expanse of black doom behind the puny light.
“For that cobweb and that candle are instable as a breath. The breeze can make them tremble, a wind will rend them. And afar, even now, I hear the trampling of a mighty storm.”
The Knob Noster Gem was a small local paper; Dan Saults was the publisher, editor, and probably wrote a good chunk of the daily output. Judging by this little space-filler figment, he was also a Lovecraft fan.
Robin Hood, Bran Mak Morn, and Cthulhu (1937)
Friar Haw Foresees The Twentieth Century
As Robin Hood’s Prophet Might Have Outlined The Ills Of Our Day
by L. W. S., Eaton, O.
Sherwood forest was aflame with the torches of autumn, bringing all of its robust life. Robin Hood and his merry men had cast aside every care and fathered again beneath the mighty brown oaks and beeches. The silver tang of life was in the air and lusty merriness was in the hearts of Robin’s men.
Of course they were spilling great quantities of the favorite cool brown ale down their throats and singing its praises until the song rang and echoed far down the dark rows of mossy tree trunks, as jolly Friat Truck continually banged his tankard on the rough oak table, swinging his head from side to side.
And brawny Little John Arose, flinging the rumble of his deep bass into the depths of Sherwood forest:
So, laugh lads, and quaff lads ‘Twill make you stout and hale, Thro’ all my days I’ll sing the praise Of brown October ale.
Really Robin Hood had called his men together for the purpose of hearing once again the strange prophecies of Friar Haw, but he always had to allow them their little fling first, as a prelude. The men had arrived at some degree of respect for the words of Friar Haw, and they usually sat engrossed. Even the snorts of Friar Tuck had grown fewer.
Friar Haw, grim and ascetic, had been taking Robin’s men into the dream-world of the 20th century. Today he had sat oblivious of the roistering men, his face like a white autumn sickle moon. The men could see that he wasn’t going to talk today about streamlined chorus girls and elaborate movies.
He arose. “Few people,” he began, “who shall live in the 20th century shall realize fully the abysmal depths to which the world conflict in the early part of that century shall plunge the races with the blood of long centuries in theri veins. yea, dark forces of life, far more ancient than the ancient oaks of Sherwood, as ancient as the ideas of Chthulhu [sic], Yog Sothoth, Gol-goroth and the blood of the Gaelic, Cymric and Teutonic. The king of the Dark Empire of the Stone Age, covered so long by the imposition of a new god called Reason, shall break loose again in the emotional abandon of those dark years of 1914-18, and shall continue long afterwards.
“The surface of the collective civilized mind shall be torn adunder and the long-buried emotional elements of the days of a Bran Mak Morn shall break loose, and the 20th century would shall be puzzled and at a loss to understand what forces are driving men.”
“And,” interposed Little John, who had a common sense kind of mind, “what are you driving at, or trying to say? It sounds crazy to me.”
“Oh, doubtless!” said Friar Haw, his sickle face growing a shade colder. “Yet the original minds of the 20th century shall see that strange things are happening. Now, in the country called Germany, age-old psychic forces break loose again. Wotan, who is half rage and frenzy and half seer who understands ‘the runs and interprets destiny.’ Wotan shall be personified in a man named Hitler, a strange figure whose reasoning shall be guided by very, very ancient emotional forces.
“You are to remember that men taken collectively in a nation are not dominated by reason. A wise man of that century shall say: ‘Where the mass rather than the individual is in motion, human control ceases. And at at that point the archetypes begin to operate.'”
“In Germany the stormy personality of Wotan shall come to life again in the youth movement. The waking will be celebrated with the slaughter of more than one sheep. Aye, men called Nietszsche, Schuler, Stephen George and Klages shall anticipate the waking, as shall one called Richard Wagner put it into his music.
“But I have taken only Germany as one example in the Old World, where the 20th century shall see the troubled awakening on every hand of the most ancient archetypes, the most powerful emotional forces. Frightened men shall shout ‘Peace! Peace!’ where there shall be no peace. men shall come to understand somewhat the things that Wotan whispered through Mimir’s head. mean shall come to appreciate what Valhalla means, and the Valkyries and the Fylgjur.”
Whereupon Robin Hood jumped to his feet and shouted: “Engouh for today! I’d rather go and rob a bishop. This chatter makes me uneasy inside.”
“Yes,” came from the sickle autumn moon face of the prophet, “it is a far cry from your simple Sherwood forest and your October ale drinking. yet it shall be the sap in the roots of your Sherwood conflicted with a conflict of world cultures.”
This is fanfiction. Yet L.W.S. (Leonard W. Sharkey) of Eaton, Ohio must have been a serious fan indeed, to weave references to Lovecraft (Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth) and Robert E. Howard (Gol-goroth, Bran Mak Morn) into his narrative of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, on the run-up to World War II. A likely inspiration for these references is “The Children of the Night” (Weird Tales Apr-May 1931) by Robert E. Howard—which is probably the only story at the time that mentions Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Gol-goroth, and Bran Mak Morn all in the same tale. Sharkey did at least one more Robin Hood/Friar Haw tale, albeit without Mythos references (The Camp of Robin Takes A Forward Look).
Lovecraft & Whippoorwills (1945)
Whip-poor-wills will remind some readers of the stories of the late H. P. Lovecraft.
You never heard of Lovecraft?
Many persons have not, but they will, in time, and all through the affectionate remembrance of two young men in Wisconsin.
They founded a press to put his stories sold to pulp magazines into book form. Extremely limited editions have made these books collectors’ items.
Lovecraft’s tales are somewhat Poe-like in character. They are laid in New England, and bring in visitors from “the outside,” strange beings always ready to push into our own known world.
Some of the stories incorporate the whip-poor-wills, which set up a constant cry, according to legend, every time one died.
If they missed getting his soul, they screamed unusually loudly, and then died out. In this way it was possible to tell what happened to the departing soul.
In 1939, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei founded Arkham House in Wisconsin to publish the work of H. P. Lovecraft in book form. It was a beginning to establish Lovecraft’s literary legacy, and awareness of the Providence-born horror writer was slowly trickling out into public awareness, although this was slow going, and involved many misunderstandings.
Whippoorwills are a key example. They only feature in one of Lovecraft’s stories, “The Dunwich Horror”; but the idea seems to have appealed to August Derleth, who incorporated the idea of the whippoorwill as psychopomp in several Cthulhu Mythos stories, notably the novel The Lurker at the Threshold(1945). Derleth’s repetition of the idea—and articles like this one—contributed to the spread of certain basic conceptions (and misconceptions) of what Lovecraft wrote.
Iwo Jima & Innsmouth (1945)
Journalettes by Charles B. Gordon
Friday, this newspaper used a cut of three Japanese prisoners, taken on Iwo Jima, and their American guards. The three Japs were three of the most repulsive looking human beings whose faces we have ever gazed upon.
. . . — V . . . —
We think he’s dead now, but some years ago, there was a writer named H. P. Lovecraft. This voracious reader made acquaintence with his works through the current 25-cent pocket books, but it is our belief that most of his output was printed first in pulp “horror” magazines. At any rate, he was the greatest master of the “horror[“] story specializing in stories about beings, things, or whatever you might want to call them, which emerged from places under the earth, under the water, or from ages thousands of years past, but were generally possessed of at least a few human qualities, enabling them to “get by” on the earth of the present day.
. . . — V . . . —
The pictures of those Japs taken on Iwo Jima gave us for the first itme a partial realization of what the creatures of such books of Lovecraft’s as “Weird Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “The Dunwich Horror” must have resembled.
War doesn’t just breed prejudice, it encourages its expression. The enemy is described in terms that downplays or denies their humanity. As things instead of people. The bloody battle of Iwo Jima ran 19 February–26 March 1945. Casualties were horrific, especially on the Japanese side; of 20,933 troops, only 216 Japanese were taken prisoner from the main battle, with an additional 867 taken prisoner post-battle. A photo of three such prisoners was made available to the press—men who, like their counterparts in the US military, had served their country, be it right or wrong, and lived through a terrible and terrifying conflict.
The racist depiction of Japanese military and civilians was sadly common—though as far as I have found, this is the first and only instance where they were compared directly to Lovecraft’s Innsmouth folk during the conflict.
Paper shortages during World War II put a severe crimp in the publishing plans of Arkham House, but also opened up other opportunities. Bartholomew House was a small New York publisher that put out two cheap (25 cents) paperback editions of Lovecraft with the permission of Arkham House: The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth (1944) and The Dunwich Horror (1945). Another cheap paperback readily available to the military was the Armed Services Edition of The Dunwich Horror and Others (n.d., 1945?). These books helped spread the word of Lovecraft during the war years—and beyond.
Lovecraft & Hitler (1945)
Two pieces appeared in the Chicago Tribune in April 1945 which tied Lovecraft to the ongoing world war.
Werewolf Hunt
The werewolf myth, which the frenzied and frightened Nazis threaten to revive as a romantic disguise for a post-war assassination cult, has haunted hte lower levels of the human mind since the era of the cavemen. Its roots are in primitive cannibalism. The word means man-wolf; that is, a betwitched creature which has human form by day and lupine hide, teeth, and appetite by night. The superstition is one of the unwholesome ideas that have survived from pre-history among European peasants to provide material for folklorists and themes for authors who have a bent toward the weird, grotesque, and horrible.
* * *
Hitler, whose career has a werewolfish flavor, comes froma stock in which this notion was likely to breed and influence character. We quote from his best and msot objective biographer, Konrad Heiden, who says in “Der Fuehrer” while discussing his pedigree:
“The Waldviertel in lower Austria, from which both the Hitler and Pölzl families came, is a gloomy, remote, impverished section; like many such regions it has no lack of superstitions and ghost stories. The ancestors were mostly poor peasant people; ‘small cottager’ often stands in the church records.”
* * *
The myth is closely related to the vampire bugaboo, and, therefore, in the novel called “Dracula,” a veritable case book of vampirism, you will find werewolves as auxiliary phantoms. The anthologies of terror stories which ahve become quite an article of commerce in the war time book trade contain numerous examples of werewolf tales. We expect to find out in “Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft,” edited by August Derleth and new on the counters.
* * *
To kill a werewolf according to the folklore formula, yo umust use a gun that has been blessed at a shrine of St. Hubert and fire a silver bullet.
In this, the unnamed newspaper writer would be disappointed. Vampires and werewolves were not Lovecraft’s normal schtick. However, we know that they did read the new collection—and the horrors in those pages probably compared to those that came in over the news wire. U.S. forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp on 11 Apr 1945.
Powers of Darkness
The lifting of the curtain on the massive horrors of Germany’s prison and concentration camps recalls the supernatural tales of H. P. Lovecraft, a writer who was relatively unknown until August Derleth undertook his popularization. To conjure up the mood of unearthly terrors, Lovecraft invented the mythology of Cthulhu in which there are many monstrous spirits of evil, forever seeking to take possession of this planet.
* * *
Lovecraft wrote of his work: “All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on the fundamental lore or legend that this world was inahbited at one time by another race hwo, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.”
* * *
Perhaps Cthulhu has come back, thru the cracks in Hitler’s mind. Lovecraft, who died in 1937, would be staggered by the revelation.
* * *
During his lifetime, Lovecraft’s work appeared in pulp paer magazines, chiefly in Weird Tales. Arkham House of Sauk City, Wis., a publishing enterprise over which August Derleth presides, has been assembling this scattered material and putting it between covers in limited editions. A collection of 14 tales, regarded as the best of Lovecraft’s 50-odd, was recently issued by the World Publishing company. Derleth, its editor, says in his introduction:
“The weird tradition was particularly his. In the scarcely two decades of his writng life he became a master of the macabre who had neither peer nor equal in America. . . . It has been said of ‘The Outsider’ that if the manuscript had been put forward as an unpublished tale by Edgar Allan Poe, none would have challenged it.” —Chicago Tribune, 27 Apr 1945, p14
Lovecraft never wrote that “black magic” quote. The unnamed author of this little piece is drawing on The Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft(1945). To place Lovecraft’s horrors with those of Nazi Germany is understandable, journalists must have grasped for any straw of comparison. Three days after this was published, Adolf Hitler committed suicide.
Unlike many of these small newspaper pieces, another journalist picked up on this thread and glossed it in another paper:
Powers of Darkness
The lifting of the curtain on the massive horrors of Germany’s prison and concentration camps recalls the supernatural tales of H. P. Lovecraft, a writer who was relatively unknown until August Derleth undertook his popularization, says a Chicago Tribune column. To conjure up the mood of unearthly terrors, Lovecraft invented the mythology of Cthulhu in which there are many monstrous spirits of evil, forever seeking to take possession of this planet.
Lovecraft wrote of his work: “All my stories, unconnected as they may be, are based on teh fundamental lore or legend that this race [sic] was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside, ever ready to take possession of this earth again.”
Perhaps Othulhu [sic] has come back through the cracks in Hitler’s mind. Lovecraft, who died in 1937, would be staggered by the revelation.
It is like a telephone game, as Derleth’s jumbled quote gets increasingly jumbled with every step. Yet the tying-together of Lovecraft and Hitler in this instance shows how relevant Lovecraft’s fiction could be, how plastic and adaptable his work was to a new syntax—and how new editions helped spread knowledge of Lovecraft and the Mythos to new audiences.
Lovecraft’s Men From Pluto (1955)
Space Travel
Friday Dr. Wernher von Braun, an expert in the field of astrophysical and astronomical lore, spoke at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. he talked chiefly of efforts being made to study the areas beyond the earth’s atmosphere. he talked of artificial satellites and of space travel, topics which tickle the imagination of young and old alike in these days of scientific discussion.
Dr. von Braun asserted that there was no doubt of the capacity of man to leave earth, point toward the moon, circle it and return to earth again. As one who is an expert in the designing of rocket propellants and in all the developments in this sphere he speaks with authority. He insists that we know enough now to launch a space ship and be reasonably sure of its safe voyage moonward and its return.
To the layman all this is fantasy. How can man survive in the intense heat which must exist beyond the atmosphere? How can direction be assured where there is no air friction against which rudders can press when a craft is to be turned? We have to ahve water to direct a ship, air to direct a plane. What possiblity of management exists in the ether where every object runs free?
And to make such a voyage the start must be swift. Through the great spaces where there is no atmosphere presumably the speed would not generate sufficient heat to decompose the ship. But what about the start and the finish? How can the ship begin its flight without at least a speed of 5,000 miles an hour? And how can it be toned down to reason when it returns to the lst hundred miles of its voyage?
We are still skeptics on the whole matter. Those who say such a trip to the moon is possible are the delight of the small boy and the radical scientist. but to the down-to-earth citizen, accustomed to keep his feet on the ground or rise only moderately above it, the natural comment is a Bronx cheer. If such a voyage is possible today, as Dr. von Braun asserts, let’s get at it and stop expending our energies in talk.
The usual reply from the space scientists to such suggests is that the cost is tremendous and there is no source for the funds. That is a complete answer, the best in the world if discussion is preferable to achievement. We have heard people say you could abolish certain diseases in the world if had ten or fifteen billions to spend on them. We have noted those who think permanent peace could be achieved by the careful expenditure of a few hundred billions. The poist that there isn’t any such money so it is easy to talk about it.
If a space ship would cost a few billions there can be no space ship. it would not be worth the price. The scientists, instead of telling us such a craft is possible today, might better expend their time and energy in seeking ways of bringing their creations down to the possible range of expenditure. Otherwise space travel lies in the same domain as the weird tales of Jules Verne, Lovecraft’s story of the men from Pluto who visited earth or Wells’ novel about the coming of the Martians.
The Luna 3, the first spacecraft to manage a successful circumlunar trajectory, did so in 1959; the first manned trip in lunar orbit, however, was Apollo 8 in 1968. It turned out, probably much to the anonymous author’s chagrin, that there actually were billions of dollars to spend on the space race.
The reference to “Lovecraft’s story of the men from Pluto” is a bit bizarre; as near as I can tell this has to be a reference to “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Weird Tales Aug 1931), which featured the Fungi from Yuggoth. Who were about as far from the stereotypical 1950s humanoid aliens as one might imagine—but this is a good example of a typical misreading or misunderstanding. I wonder how many science fiction fans wondered where they could read about Lovecraft’s men from Pluto?
Man has a back, and if you beat it he works. (Alhazred Bhati Khan, 11th century despot of Samarkand).
The labor policies of Alhazred Khan are frowned upon in the more enlightened areas of the world today. But if his theories on back-beating have fallen in esteem, his basic goal of increasing production has never been held in higher regard.
The actual title of the piece was “Bosses ‘Whip’ Workers With Musical Gimmicks,” and it was about how employers use new psychological tools to manipulate the workplace and motivate their employees. However, the author Ted Smart apparently thought it needed a hook, and so created Alhazred Bhati Khan—who never existed—presumably by combining Lovecraft’s Alhazred, the Hindu word bhati (भाटी), and the Turkic or Mongolian title khan. Samarkand was a reality, however, and if anybody ever checked to see who was ruling it in the 11th century, they did more work than Ted Smart did. I have to wonder if any Lovecraft fans noticed.
Cipher puzzles are fairly common amusements in newspapers, and have been for decades. As an exercise, they’re fairly simple substitution ciphers: each letter of the alphabet is replaced by another letter, to render what appears on the surface is gibberish. However, the relationship between the letters remains; and there are only 26 letters in the alphabet. Figure out a word or two, either by frequency analysis or trial and error, and the rest of the cipher alphabet falls in place pretty easily. In this case, the puzzle designer has been a little clever: one word has been encoded as the English word FRIGHT, which gives a hint to the solution of the puzzle.
The answer, on the other hand, is a bit of a cheat:
The answer is a cheat because this isn’t a real Lovecraft quote, but a highly abridged version of a line from Lovecraft’s “Supernatural Horror in Literature”:
Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.
The reason why the full quote isn’t used is pretty obvious: space. While not intellectually any more challenger than the briefer text to decipher, 59 words is a lot more daunting in terms of sheer volume of words to be deciphered. On the plus side, at least Lovecraft wasn’t reminding the readers of the San Francisco Examiner to drink their Ovaltine.
Tucked in at the end of a column of classifieds ads, just above a threat from the Mafia against a fratboy, this is one of a number of ads for a copy of the Necronomicon for sale that have cropped up here and there. Such hoaxes are classics of fan-activity, and vary from carefully-constructed and believable to error-ridden and silly. This one is fairly restrained and detailed, and the writer probably was familiar with Lovecraft’s “History of the Necronomicon,” which had been most recently republished in The Necronomicon: A Study(1967).
Such ads seem to have become rare after the first widely-available commercial Necronomicons began to hit the market in the 1970s.
Old Ben Lovecraft (1978)
Mulligan’s Stew by Hugh A. Mulligan AP Special Correspondent
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. (AP)—My old aunt used to say you never really know who your neighbors are until one day you read about them in the paper being appointed to the White House transportation staff or taken off in the patrol wagon for wife-beating or graduating with high honors from welding school.
And, by George, she was right.
This town, for instance, is chock full of interesting people, what you might call real characters just waiting to be discovered by some sharp-eyed reporter or a playwright in search of a sequel to “Our Town.”
Over on Ludlow Hill there’s a man who never in all his born days has seen a flying saucer. Old Ben Lovecraft has lived in these rocky, rolling hills of Connecticut for nigh onto half a century, since moving up from the Bronx, without catching so much as a glimmer of an outer world touchdown on his two acre zoned spread there behind the town dump.
The other night he thought he saw an eerie light reflecting from an elliptical shaped object in his driveway that wasn’t there when he took in the cat and turned off the carriage lamps. he put on his new Christmas cardigan, grabbed a flash light from the hall closet and made his way stealthily along the hedges bordering the garage. he could hear chattering and the sound of equipment being unloaded.
There in the moonlight, he saw five tiny creatures no bigger than a breadbox with enormous shiny eyes filing out of an aluminum cylinder. They fled in panic the instant his beam hit them.
“You know how racoons scamper after they’ve tipped over a garbage can to get at a turkey carcass,” Ben drawled in his matter of fact way. “I called the Air Force and they didn’t want to hear about it. They already had four people on hold with positive sightings.”
Fascinating fellow, Ben. A real skeptic. He’s seen “Star Wars” twice and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” three times and doesn’t believe a word of either of them. […]
At the time of this writing, there are 91 hits for “Old Ben Lovecraft” on newspapers.com. The Associated Press spread the “Mulligan’s Stew” humor column far and wide. While some of the other bits and pieces mentioned above are diamonds in the rough, this is closer to what constitutes noise in search results. Half the country might have read about “Old Ben Lovecraft” between March and April 1978, when the article ran. Perhaps a few had a chuckle; the flying saucer craze of the 50s had given birth to the impressive big box-office sci fi spectacles of Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). No doubt a lot of the country had no idea why some folks got so excited.
Why Lovecraft? I suspect it was simply because Lovecraft was still known as a science fiction writer, and the “Old Ben” part was borrowed from “Old Ben” Kenobi in Star Wars. It’s also possible that the author simply wanted a distinctive name and typed out the first that came to mind; certainly a fan would probably have added a reference to Cthulhu in there at some point.
Lovecraft, C. M. Eddy, Jr., and Dark Swamp (1995)
What happened that night in the swamp?
Editors: I am in my 75th year of life as I write this, and I do not wish to allow a few things to pass unnoticed before I go. My mother, Muriel Eddy, was a gifted author; for several years she was the poet laureate of Rhode Island, the state in which we lived.
My father was also an author—of uncanny horror stories. he had a buddie named H. P. Lovecraft, the famous author of many books about strange things.
Lovecraft was a night person, and back in 1922 and 1923 he and my father would often walk through Providence’s Chinatown at midnight. One night they decided to go into the woods of the “great swamp” of Chepatchet, R.I., because they had heard that “It” (a ghost or monster) had been seen there.
Nobody knows whether or not they encounted the “It” being; they did survive their night in the great swamp, but neither would talk about it. I wonder to this day what they saw.
Perhaps that telephone-game is why his facts are slightly garbled. For while Lovecraft and C. M. Eddy, Jr. did certainly survive the Dark Swamp in Chepatchet, they weren’t exactly silent about it. We have first-hand accounts from Lovecraft’s letters, a memoir by C. M. Eddy, Jr., and memoirs from Muriel E. Eddy, who would have had the facts from her husband. Unfortunately, the accounts do not all agree.
Lovecraft’s Version In four letters written c. Oct-Dec 1923, Lovecraft mentions Eddy and Dark Swamp. These are the only accounts that were published at the time of the trip, and Lovecraft goes into some considerable detail.
I find Eddy rather a delight—I wish I had known him before. Next Sunday we are going on a trip which may bring you echoes in the form of horror-tales from both participants. In the northwestern part of Rhode Island there is a remote village called Chepachet, reached by a single car line with only a few cars a day. Last week Eddy was there for the first time, and at the post office overheard a conversation between two ancient rustic farmers which inspired our coming expedition. They were discussing hunting prospects, and spoke of the migration of all the rabbits and squirrels across the line into Connecticut; when one told the other that there were plenty left in the Dark Swamp. Then ensued a description to which Eddy listened with the utmost avidity, and which brought out the fact that in this, the smallest and most densely populated state of the Union, there exists a tract of 160 acres which has never been fully penetrated by any living man. It lies two miles from Chepachet—in a direction we do not now know, but which we will ascertain Sunday—and is reputed to be the home of very strange animals—strange at least to this part of the world, and including the dreaded “bobcat”, whose half-human cries in the night are often heard by neighbouring farmers. The reason it has never been fully penetrated is that there are many treacherous potholes, and that the archaic trees grow so thickly together that passage is well-nigh impossible. The undergrowth is very thick, and even at midday the darkness is very deep because of the intertwined branches overhead. the description so impressed Eddy that he began writing a story about it—provisionally entitled “Black Noon”—on the trolley ride home. And now we are both to see it . . . we are both to go into that swamp . . . and perhaps come out of it. Probably the thing’ll turn out to be a clump of ill-nourished bushes, a few rain-puddles, and a couple of sparrows—but until our disillusion we are at liberty to think of the place as the immemorial lair of nightmare and unknown evil ruled by that subterraneous horror that sometimes cranes its neck out of the deepest pot-holes . . . It. —H. P. Lovecraft to Edwin Baird, c. Oct 1923, Letters to Hyman Bradofsky & Others 45
Lovecraft’s letters to Baird was published in Weird Tales (Mar 1924), and forms the first account in print.
My next trip, on which I had as a companion my new adopted son Clifford Martin Eddy, Jr., was on Sunday, Novr. 4; and led thro’ much the same territory as did my trip of Septr. 19 with out amiable confrere Mortonius. It was a quest of the grotesque and the terrible—a search for Dark Swamp, in northwestern Rhode-Island, of which Eddy had heard sinister whispers amongst the rusticks. They whisper that it tis very remote and very strange, and that no one has ever been completely thor’ it because of the treacherous and unfathomable potholes, and the antient trees whose thick boles grow so closelytogether that passage is difficult and darkness omnipresent even at noon, and other things, of which bobcats—whose half-human howls are heard in the night by peasants near the edge—are the very least. It is a peculiar place, and no house was ever built within two miles of it. the rural swains refer to it with much evasiveness, and not one of them can be induc’d to guide a traveller through it’ altho’ a few intrepid hunters and woodcutters have plied their vocations on its fringes. It lies in a natural bowl surrounded by low ranges of beautiful hills; far from any frequented road, and known to scarce a dozen persons outside the immediate country. Even in Chepachet, the nearest village, there are but two men who ever heard of it. Eddy discover’d its rumour at the Chepachet post office one bleak autumn evening when huntsmen gather’d about the fire and told tales and express wonder why all the squirrels and rabbits had left the hills and fled across the plain into Connecticut. One very antient man with a flintlock said that IT had mov’d in Dark Swamp, and had cran’d ITS neck out of the abysmal pothole beneath which IT has ITS immemorial Lair. And he said his grandfather had told him in 1849, when he was a very little boy, that IT had been there when the first settlers came; and that the Indians believed IT had always been there. This antient man with the flintlock was the only one present who had ever heard of Dark Swamp.
So on that Sunday my son and I took the stage for Chapachet, and in due time alighted before the tavern. In the tap-room they had never heard of Dark Swamp, but the landlord told us to ask the Town Clerk, two houses down the road beyond the White Church, who knows everything in the parish Upon knocking at this gentleman’s pillar’d colonial house, we were greeted by the genial owner him self; a prefect rural magnate and Knight of the Shire, than whom Sir Roger himself cou’d not be more oddly humoursome. he told us, that the Dark Swamp had a very queer reputation, and that men had gone in who never came out; but confest he knew little of it, and had never been near it. At his suggestion we went across the road to the cottage of a very intelligent yeoman nam’d Sprague, whom he reported to have guided a party of gentlemen from Brown-University thro parts of the swamp in quest of botanick specimens, some twelve years gone. Sprague dwells in a trim colonial cottage with pleasing doorway and good interior mantels and panelling;a ND tho’ it turn’d out that ’twas not he who guided the gentlemen, he prov’d uncommon genial and drew us a map by which we might reach the house of Fred Barnes, who did guide them […] After a long walk over the same highroad travers’d by Mortonius and me, we came to Goodman Barnes’ place; and found him after waiting Al of thirty-five minutes in his squalid kitchen. When he did arrive, he had not much to say; but told us to find ‘Squire James Reynolds, who dwells at the fork of the back road beyond the great reservoir, south the the turnpike. Again in motion, we stopt not till we came to [Cady’s] Tavern, built in 1683 […] The tavern lyes on the main Putnam Pike; but shortly after quitting it and passing the reservoir we turn’d south into the backwoods, coming in proper season to Squire Reynolds’ estate. We found the gentleman in his yard; a man well on in years, and having a very market rural speech which we had thought extinct save in stage plays. he told us, we had better take the right fork of the road, over the hills to Ernest Law’s farm; declaring, that Mr. Law owns Dark Swamp, and that it was his son who had cut wood at the edge of it. Following the Squire’s directions, we ascended a narrow rutted road betwixt picturesque woods and stone walls; coming at last to a crest […] We found Mr. Law […] He inform’d us, that Dark Swamp lyes in the distant bowl betwixt two of the hills we saw; and that ’tis two miles from his house to the nearest part of it, by a winding road and a cart0path. He said, the peasants have a little exaggerated its fearful singularities, tho’ it is yet a very odd place, and I’ll to visit by night. We thanked him greatly for the civilities he had shewn us, and having complimented him on the fine location of his seat, set out to return to town with the information we shall use upon our next trip. —H. P. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long, Jr., 8 Nov 1923, Selected Letters 1.264-267
[…] setting a time and place of next meeting December 2nd, 6:45 a.m., west facade of the Federal Building—whence leaves the coach for Chepachet and the Dark Swamp. —H. P. Lovecraft to Maurice W. Moe, 24 Nov 1923, Letters to Maurice W. Moe137
We were on a still hunt for the grotesque & the terrible—the ghoulish & the macabre—in the form of a hideous locality which Eddy had heard certain rusticks whispering about . . . . . Dark Swamp. The peasants had mutter’d that it is very remote & very strange, & that no one hath ever been completely across it because of the treacherous & fathomless potholes, & the ancient trees whose thick boles grow so closely together that passage is difficult & darkness omnipresent even at noon, & other things, of which bobcats—whose half-human cries are heard in the night by cotters near the edge—are the very least. It is a very peculiar place, & no house was ever built within two miles of it. The rural swains refer to it with much evasiveness, & not one of them can be induc’d to guide a traveller thro’ it. It lies near where we were lost south of the pike—there & westerward—& probably brushes the foot of Old Durf himself. Very few know . . . . or admit they know . . . . of it. Eddy discover’d its rumour at the tavern in Chepachet one bleak autumn evening when huntsmen gather’d about the fire & told tales. One very ancient man said that IT dwells in the swamp . . . . & that IT was alive even before the white man came.
Well, anyway, we took the nine-twenty-five for Chepachet on Nov. 4, & wasted all the noon period getting shunted from one villager to another for directions. One bimbo—a bearded chap named Sprague, who lives in a colonial house—was especially valuable, & gave some extra tips on Durf. […] The last Swain we were directed to was Ernest Law, who owns Dark Swamp, & who was reached by a rutted road that climbs upward betwixt woods & stone walls. […] He told us how to reach Dark Swamp, & inform’d us it is a very odd place, tho’ the peasantry have a little exaggerated its fearful singularities. We thank’d him for the civilities he shew’d us, & having congratulated him on the fine location of his seat, set out to return to town with the information we shall use upon our next trip. […] —H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 5 Dec 1923, Letters to James F. Morton 58-59
“Durf” in this case is Durfee Hill, the second-highest point in Rhode Island, located near Chapechet. On 19 September 1923, Lovecraft and James F. Morton had gone to Chapechet to climb the hill, as detailed in a letter to Frank Belknap Long, Jr. (Selected Letters 1.250), which makes no mention of Dark Swamp. According to Lovecraft, C. M. Eddy, Jr. heard about Dark Swamp in Autumn (say, October), they went there on 4 November 1923, but couldn’t find it, though they got directions to find it next time, made plans for such a trip in December—and ultimately never returned to Chepachet.
One unanswered question is what Eddy was doing in the Chepachet post office to overhear these rumors of Dark Swamp. We know Lovecraft was in Chepachet in September, but why would Eddy be there? Stephen Olbrys Gencarella in “Lovecraft and the Folklore of Glocester’s Dark Swamp” (Lovecraft Annual #16) notes several other discrepancies in Lovecraft’s account that suggests that whatever the original story, HPL elaborated the tale with subsequent telling.
Ken Faig, Jr. in “Searching for Dark Swamp” in Lovecraftian Voyages, traced through old maps and records and confirmed much of the geography and named personages that Lovecraft mentions in his letters regarding the search for Dark Swamp, which he believes is currently inundated and forms the northern part of the Ponaganset Reservoir.
C. M. Eddy, Jr.’s Version In 1966, Eddy’s brief memoir “Walks With Lovecraft” was published in The Dark Brotherhood by Arkham House. Near the end of the memoir, Eddy recalled the trip to Chapachet:
One other jaunt with Lovecraft is retained rather vividly in memory, for all that it was in a way a frustrating one. It was a trip made into the country in August 1923, in search of a blighted area called the “Dark Swamp”—a place of such stygian darkness that the sun reputedly never shone there, never penetrated its fastnesses, even at high noon. Lovecraft had no very clear idea of its setting, but had been told that it was located off the Putnam Pike, about halfway between Chepachet, Rhode Island, and Putnam, Connecticut.
The day we set out was blisteringly hot; though we took the first trolley in the morning to the end of the line in Chepachet, it was already very warm at that hour. In Chepachet, we started out on foot on the road toward Putnam. The heat increased as the day wore on. We had brought sandwiches with us, and from time to time we stopped at farmhouses along the way for water and to inquire about Dark Swamp. But no one seemed to have heard of it, and after four miles, Lovecraft, considerably wilted by the heat, decided reluctantly that we would have to give up the quest. So we found some reasonably comfortable stones at the side of the road and sat there until one of the Putnam-Providence cars stopped for us and put an end to our search. We never afterward took it up again, though, despite the discomfort of the summer day, it was as rewarding as any walk with Lovecraft, in that he found many of the old farm buildings fascinating and conveyed that fascination to me. —C. M. Eddy, Jr., “Walks With Lovecraft” (1966) in The Gentleman from Angell Street 49-50
The most immediate discrepancy between the two accounts is that while Lovecraft places the search for Dark Swamp in early November 1923, Eddy places it in August. The comments about the heat make sense if it was a summer hike, but in the autumn?. Lovecraft doesn’t mention the heat in his own accounts, but did allow that he was “monstrous weary, and cou’d scarce stand” at the end of the hike (SL1.267), which would jive with Eddy’s account (though Lovecraft avers that they hiked 17 miles around Chepachet, not 4 miles).
Granted that Eddy was remembering back ~43 years, so some details could be hazy; Lovecraft mentions they were walking about noon, and if it was an All-Saints summer, perhaps that might account for Eddy’s memory of summer heat. More odd is that Eddy makes no mention that he was the originator of the search; by his account, it was Lovecraft that had been told about the swamp, rather than Eddy that told Lovecraft about it. However, we know Lovecraft had been in Chapechet before; perhaps it was Lovecraft who heard of Dark Swamp when he went to Chepachet with Morton, and later asked Eddy to go with him to find it.
Muriel E. Eddy’s Version There are three versions of the story in Muriel Eddy’s memoirs of Lovecraft, two published before C. M. Eddy’s 1966 memoir and one after. All versions agree largely with each other, and more with C. M. Eddy’s version than with Lovecraft’s—this makes sense given that all of Muriel’s information probably came from her husband or memories of what Lovecraft mentioned about the trip. Though Selected Letters 1, with Lovecraft’s lengthy account of the trip to Long, was published in 1965, the Eddys do not seem to have referred to it.
It was during the hot summer months that Lovecraft expressed the desire to have Mr. Eddy accompany him on a quest to find a so-called “Black Swamp” somewhere, it was said, in the wilds of Chepachet, R.I.—a swamp so overhung with trees that no sunlight ever penetrated it. Always on the lookout for oddities of nature, the idea of seeing such a swamp intrigued Lovecraft to such an extent that he took the whole day off, leaving his writings, as eager as any schoolboy to witness nature’s phenomenon. The whereabouts of that swamp—if such a swamp truly exists—is still a msytery—at least, it was never located, and Mr. Eddy almost had to carry Lovecraft back from the rural excursion, at least a mile, to the trolley line, for, unaccustomed to such vigorous jaunts at that time, the writer of tales macabre soon became so exhausted he could hardly move one foot after the other. It was a great disappointment to Lovecraft that the trip was failure, as far as finding the swamp was concerned; but the rural characteristics of the village delighted him, and found place, I am sure, in many of his later stories. —Muriel E. Eddy, “Howard Phillips Lovecraft” in Rhode Island on Lovecraft(1945) 18
It was during the summer of 1923 that Lovecraft expressed the desire to have Mr. Eddy accompany him on a quest to find a so-called “Black Swamp” somewhere near the small village of Chepachet, Rhode Island. It was said to be a swamp so overhung by trees that sunshine never penetrated it.
The thought of visiting such a swamp intrigued H.P.L. and he discarded his habit of staying in during the bright hours of the day to join my husband in the long hike. They took a trolley to Chepachet, and from then on they were on their own. It was a long walk to any kind of swamp land from the civic center of the community, and hours later, after viewing several small swamps but not finding any to answer the description of Black Swamp, they were about to turn back when Lovecraft suggested that they stop in and rest at one of the farmhouses dotting the section. besides, he averred, some of the farmers in that region might possibly know where (and if) there was such a swamp in the vicinity.
The wife of one farmer invited them into the kitchen and offered refreshment in the form of a glass of milk and gingerbread. H.P.L. eagerly accepted it, and he listened attentively as their hosts assured them that Black Swamp was virtually unknown to them, and it must have been a pipe dream somebody had, writing up a non-existent place. There were plenty of swamps, but none, they were sure, through which sunlight never filtered. Sometimes their cows got lost in the swampland, but they always found them sooner or later.
Lovecraft, later, jotted down in a little notebook he carried, tidbits of their quaint Yankee talk, saying the trip was not entirely a failure, as he had gleaned quite a bit from hearing the antiquarians converse. It would come in handy when he wrote his next story, he assured my tired-out husband. —Muriel E. Eddy, “The Gentleman from Angell Street” (1961) in The Gentleman of Angell Street 11-12
My husband often accompanied Howard on trips to get new ideas. One day they took a trolley car from Providence to the village of Chepachet, Rhode Island, to find a black swamp. it was said to be so overhung by trees that sunshine could not penetrate it.
They hiked for hours, and saw several swamps, but found nothing to answer the description.
But H.P.L. made many notes for future reference. He told Cliff that no trip was ever wasted.
Although Howard never wrote a story about the non-existent swamp, my husband used this as a basis for the last story he wrote during his retirement. Entitled “Black Noon,” it will be published in 1970 by August Derleth of Arkham House, Sauk City, Wis.
—Muriel E. Eddy, H.P.L. “The Man and the Image” (1969) 4 Later revised as “Lovecraft Among the Demons” (1970) in The Gentleman from Angell Street54
Muriel E. Eddy’s accounts add certain details lacking in both Lovecraft and her husband’s accounts, such as being served milk and gingerbread by a farmer’s wife (perhaps while waiting in the kitchen of Fred Barnes?) which might be authentic; others might be invented (no notes related to Dark Swamp are in Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book) or the result of the telephone game from husband to wife (neither of them mention any smaller swamps, either).
Both Lovecraft and Muriel Eddy reference “Black Noon,” a story begun by C. M. Eddy, Jr. If the story was begun in 1923, as Lovecraft suggests, it was not completed at that time. C. M. Eddy, Jr. attempted to complete the story in the 1960s, but ill-health made it difficult to impossible for him to write, and the story went unfinished at the time of his death in 1967. In the Arkham Collector Summer 1968, August Derleth announced “Black Noon” would appear in the forthcoming anthology Dark Things, but Derleth died in 1971, before this fragment could be published, and it was not included in Dark Things. “Black Noon” was eventually published in Eddy’s posthumous collection Exit Into Eternity (1973).
“Black Noon” is set in Eddy’s fictional Fenham, with a thinly-disguised Weird Tales (as Uncanny Stories), Lovecraft (as Robert Otis Mather), and Dark Swamp (as Witches’ Swamp). Although little of their adventure features in the fragment, some of the description of the swamp echoes Lovecraft’s:
[…] the trees on either side of this new construction had grown so close together that their trunks touched one another, and so tall that their leafy branches had interlocked to form a well-night impenetrable covering. In addition, hybrid vines, whichh grew rampant in the swamp, had over-grown both oaks and branches to eliminate all light from the canopy thus formed. The only thing that could find a way through this natural barrier was the fog which, during the early Fall, hung over the entire swampy area!
Even at high noon, the portion of the road was black as a moonless midnight! (117-118)
Neither of the Eddys ever mention Lovecraft’s “IT”; whether this was an invention of Lovecraft’s or a local legend that he picked up on but the Eddys failed to mention is unclear. Thomas D’Agostino in “Dark Swamp’s IT” (2020) leans into local legends; Stephen Olbrys Gencarella in “Lovecraft and the Folklore of Glocester’s Dark Swamp” (Lovecraft Annual #16) goes even deeper, and critically analyzes D’Agostino’s claims. Personally, I’m inclined to agree with Gencarella that Lovecraft may have been pulling his correspondent’s legs a bit—whether or not there was a germ of local lore at the heart of it, Lovecraft let his imagination elaborate with each telling.
However, it is interesting that Clifford Myron Eddy mentioned “IT,” when his parents did not. Did the elder Eddys decide it was more believable to leave out the legendary critter, or did the younger Eddy read Lovecraft’s account in his letters? Alas, we may never know. All we are left with is an intriguing bit of data, and it isn’t clear if it is fool’s gold or the real thing; if it is just a bit of glitter among the dross of clippings, or a valuable addition to Lovecraft studies. All researchers can do is sieve through the data.
Lucky for some of us, it is good fun to pan for digital gold in newspaper archives.
What follows is an extended deep-dive into the history of one of the most contentious affairs in pulp science fiction in the 1940s, the Shaver Mystery, and its interactions with H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos, which was also beginning to coalesce in the same period. The ramifications of their interactions would spill over into science fiction fandom, conspiracy circles, and occult literature, with long-lasting effects on popular culture. Because this is very long, the following internal links are provided for those who would like to jump to specific sections.
I am certainly inclined to believe that [Shaver] has been inspired by the success of Lovecraft in attempting to create a literary mythos with much the same basic motif as he developed in his stories of the Old Ones. But, unlike Lovecraft, Mr. Shaver is not an artist. —Alan Devereux, “Mr. Shaver’s Memories” in Fantasy Review (Oct-Nov 1948) 11
The entire Shaver mythos is so obviously derived from the Lovecraftian fictional background that it is hard today to imagine that it impressed any experienced readers. The first Shaver story told how the people of ancient Earth were endangered by a degenerated elder, how the hero and his followers learned of the danger, and how escape was achieved with the help of immortal elder gods. —Harry Warner, Jr., All Our Yesterdays: an informal history of science fiction fandom in the 1940s (2004), 234
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback had founded Amazing Stories as the first pulp magazine devoted to science fiction. Mismanagement cost Gernsback the magazine, and it went through several hands; by the late 1930s it was owned by pulp publisher Ziff Davis and its readership in decline. In 1938, the editorship of Amazing was given to Ray Palmer, a young and enthusiastic pulp writer and editor who had cut his teeth in science fiction fandom, writing, editing, and publishing fanzines.
Palmer worked to improve the magazine’s circulation by aiming at younger readers, with more adventure, sensational illustrations, and less hard science. Small hoaxes in the pages of Amazing were not uncommon, with stories written by pseudonymous authors accompanied by fake biographies and critical comments from Palmer. At the same time, editor John Campbell had just taken over rival magazine Astounding Stories and was aiming for a more high-brow market. The dichotomy polarized science fiction fandom—Palmer became known as a hack, or at least a purveyor of junk fiction. But Amazing’s circulation increased.
In the October 1943 issue of Writers’ Digest, in the small personal ads are buried two notices from a “Shaver, Barto, Pa.” One was a lonely heart advertisement, the other was more unusual: advice requested for a newly discovered ancient language.
What response was received from these advertisements is unclear, but the response was likely unsatisfactory, because in December 1943 a letter from a Pennsylvania steelworker named Richard S. Shaver arrived at the offices of Amazing Stories. Shaver claimed to have discovered an ancient alphabet for a universal language (later called “Mantong”), supposedly of a pre-human race with connections to Atlantis.
Crank letters were a part of the business every pulp editor had to deal with, along with unsolicited manuscripts and fanmail. However, Palmer saw potential reader interest, and printed the entire letter as “An Ancient Language?” in Amazing Stories Jan 1944. Moreover, Palmer encouraged readers to try out Shaver’s language. Readers responded. As Palmer put it:
Many hundreds of readers’ letters came in, and the net result was a query to Richard S. Shaver asking him where he got his Alphabet.
The answer was in the form of a 10,000 word “manuscript” typed with what was certainly the ultimate in non-ability at the typewriter, and entitled “A Warning To Future Man.”
I read it through, every single word, and then sat back. What was it I had here? Certainly not an attempt by an “author” to sell a story. Mr. Shaver wanted no money for hia manuscript. It wasn’t a manuscript, but a letter. Mr. Shaver seemed anxious that it be published, not for notoriety, but out of sincere (apparently) desire that the world be warned of a terrible danger it faced, and informed of a wonderful heritage it had lost, and which should be recovered if at all possible. —Ray Palmer, The Secret World(1975), 36-37
Palmer continued to correspond with Shaver, who sent him a 10,000-word letter or manuscript titled “A Warning to Future Man.” Ray Palmer bought the manuscript, and re-wrote it.
I put a clean piece of paper into my typewriter, and using Mr. Shaver’s strange letter-manuscript as a basis, I wrote a 31,000-word story which I titled “I Remember Lemuria!” although I added all the trimmings, I did not alter the factual basis of Mr. Shaver’s manuscript except in one instance. Here, perhaps, I made a grave mistake. However, I could not bring myself to believe that Mr. Shaver had actually gotten his Alphabet and his “Warning to Future Man” and all the “science” he propounded from actual underground people. Instead, I translated his thought-records into “racial memory” and felt sure this would be more believable to my readers, and a reasonable and perhaps actual explanation of what was going on was in Mr. Shaver’s mind—which is where I felt it really was going on; and not in any caves or via any telaug rays or telesolidograph projections of illusions from the cavern ray operators. —Ray Palmer, The Secret World(1975), 38
For those of you who will read on and carefully weigh what I am about to tell you I am convinced there will be no thought of puns. Instead, when you consider the real truths behind what I say—and even better, experiment and study to corroborate them—it seems to me to be inevitable that you will forget that I am Richard Sharpe Shaver, and instead, am what science chooses to very vaguely define as the racial memory receptacle of a man (or should I say being?) named Mutan Mion, who lived many thousands of years ago in Sub Atlan, one of the great cities of ancient Lemuria! —Richard S. Shaver & Ray Palmer, The Shaver Mystery Compendium, Vol. 1, 8
In the original manuscript, Shaver had made more explicit reference to Atlantis, not Lemuria; Palmer’s change brought a Theosophical bent to the re-written work (see The Book of Dzyan for other examples of Theosophical influence on the pulps). A footnote interpreted “Mutan Mion” through Shaver’s universal language, which shows the long build-up to this particular story.
In the words of Mutan Mion (amplified by many explanatory footnotes from Palmer), the readers are introduced to a scientifically advanced civilization that lives in underground caverns as protection from the damaging rays of the sun. As the advanced, nigh-immortal Titans and Atlans prepare to migrate to a different solar system, Mutan Mion and Sub Atlan are faced with the threat of the dero.
Pressed for a more complete explanation, Mr. Shaver has defined ‘dero’ for us:
“Long ago it happened that certain (underground) cities were abandoned and into those cities stole many mild mortals to live, at first, they were normal people, though on a lower intelligence plane; and ignorant due to lack of proper education. It was inevitable that certain inhabitants of the culture forests lose themselves and escape proper development; and some of them are of faulty development. But due to their improper handling of the life-force and ray apparatus in the abandoned cities, these apparatii became harmful in effect. They simply did not realize that the ray filters of the ray mechanisms must be changed and much of the conductive metal renewed regularly. If such renewals are not made, the apparatus collects in itself—in its metal—a disintegrant particle which gradually turns its beneficial qualities into strangely harmful ones.
“These ignorant people learned to play with these things, but not to renew them; so gradually they were mentally impregnated with the persisitently disintegrative particles. This habituates the creature’s mind, its mental movements, to being overwhelmed by deterimental, evil force flows which in time produce a creature whose every reaction in thought is dominated by a deterimental will. So it is that these wild people, living in the same rooms with degenerating force generators, in time become dero, which is short for detrimental energy robot.
“When this process has gone on long enough, a race of dero is produced whose every thought movement is concluded with the decision to kill. They will instantly kill or torture anyone whom they contact unless they are extremely familiar with them and fear them. That is why they do not instantly kill each other—because, being raised together, that part of their brain that functions has learned very early to recognize as friend or heartily to fear the members of their own group. They recognize no other living thing as friend; to a dero all new things are enemy.
“To define: A dero is a man who responds mentally to dis impulse more readily than to his own impulses. When a dero has used old, defective apparatus full of dis particle accumulations, they become so degenerate that they are able to think only when a machine is operating and they are using it; otherwise they are idiot. When they reach this stage, they are known as ‘ray’ (A Lemurian word not to be confused with ray as it is used in English.) Translated, ray means ‘dangerous or deterimental energy animal.’ Ray is also used to mean a soldier—one of those who handles beam weapons (note how the ancient meaning has come into our modern word).” —Richard S. Shaver & Ray Palmer, The Shaver Mystery Compendium, Vol. 1, 28-29
Mutan Mion finds aid from Mars and the Nortans (yet another advanced subterranean people), sometimes referred to as Elder Gods and Goddesses. After getting some upgrades and falling in love, Mutan Mion returns to free the Atlans from the dero—who, it turns out, are also cannibals:
These devilish abandondero had a meat market in the lower floors, filled with human flesh; and a pile of choice cuts I saw was composed mainly of Atlan girl breasts! These dero things were cannibals and lived off immortal Atlan flesh! —Richard S. Shaver & Ray Palmer, The Shaver Mystery Compendium, Vol. 1, 73
The story ends with Mutan Mion victorious, the dero temporarily thwarted but not utterly destroyed, and he heads off to a new planet with his love. His warning to the future is inscribed on “telonian message plates” and left for the wild men left behind on the planet to discover. Implicitly in this story, those wild men are the ancestors of homo sapiens today—and the threat of the dero remains.
“I Remember Lemuria!” took clear inspiration from hollow earth fiction such as Jules Verne’s Voyage au centre de la Terre (“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” 1864), Edgar Rice Burrough’s Pellucidar novels beginning with At the Earth’s Core (1914), and A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool” (1918) and “Conquest of the Moon Pool” (1919)—the latter of which are known to have been in Shaver’s library (see “Dick Shaver’s Library” in Shaverology); Shaver also specifically cited Merritt’s works in his “Open Letter To The World” (Amazing Stories Jun 1945). Palmer’s re-casting of the story as one of “racial memory” or recalling a past life was not novel. Past-life stories such as Jack London’s The Star Rover (1915), Lovecraft’s “Polaris” (1920), and Robert E. Howard’s “People of the Dark” (1932) were well-known among science fiction and weird fiction fans.
Yet these works were all presented as fiction. What was remarkable about “I Remember Lemuria!” was not the content—but because Shaver insisted it was true, and Palmer steadfastly claimed to believe him. The reader response, both positive and negative, was tremendous. Letters poured in. Fans debated and denounced the stories. Issues of Amazing Stories sold well.
From 1945 to 1948, more Shaver material appeared in Amazing Stories. Palmer assisted with the prose, but encouraged by publication Shaver continued to develop and expand on his new artificial mythology. Many science fiction fans derided it as a hoax; others bought into it. There’s always a wild conspiratorial fringe in any population, and Shaver’s talk of malicious dero, conspiracies to restrict access to technology, and invisible rays afflicting people caught the imaginations of few.
Palmer left Ziff Davis in 1949, and would go on to help publish more of Shaver’s material in smaller independent magazines and fanzines; he would also be influential in the development of ufology, and founded Fate magazine, among others. He was a titan in the development, spread, and popularization of fringe ideas like flying saucers and various conspiracy theories, and thanks to him Shaver’s Mystery has an outsized cultural footprint, such as the subterranean Derro race in Dungeons & Dragons. Shaver himself continued to write, publish, and evolve his strange little world of paranoid fantasies, with the dero becoming more sexually sadistic and voyeuristic.
In 1934, the death of Shaver’s brother severely impacted his mental health; he began experiencing auditory hallucinations, and was institutionalized at the Ypsilanti State Hospital. When he got out two years later, he found his wife had died (accidentally electrocuted) and their daughter taken into the custody of her maternal grandparents. The following years are poorly-documented but apparently involved rough living and an arrest trying to cross the border to Canada, and culminated in a stay at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Michigan, from which Shaver was discharged in May 1943 into the care of his parents. (This is a highly abridged version of the account given in The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey (2013) by Fred Nadis). The letter to Amazing Stories would come about six months later after his release from Ionia.
Shaver was not unique, however. In the 1930s, a fan named G. P. Olson (or Olsen) of Sheldon, Iowa began to write bizarre fan letters expounding theories about vampires and physics to writers like H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Hugh B. Cave, Henry S. Whitehead, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith. In 1932, Cave wrote to Carl Jacobi suggesting that he mine Olson for ideas for his own fiction (see “The Fool Olson” in Weird Talers)—and I suspect that is ultimately what Palmer did with Shaver, at least in the early part of their correspondence and friendship. Whether Palmer’s encouragement of Shaver’s paranoid fantasies, and the resultant negative response from fans, was detrimental to his mental health is hard to say; that Palmer ultimately exploited Shaver is impossible to ignore.
Lovecraft’s influence on Shaver is also difficult to assess. “I Remember Lemuria!” includes references to Elder Gods, but these do not seem to be the Elder Gods of Lovecraft’s fiction. Nor did Lovecraft go in very much for hollow earth stories, though he certainly had cannibalistic underground peoples in stories like “The Lurking Fear” and “The Rats in the Walls,” and the ruins of an advanced alien civilization feature prominently in At the Mountains of Madness (1936). Probably the closest Lovecraft approached Shaver’s mythos was in “The Mound” (1940) by Zealia Bishop & H. P. Lovecraft—and, as it turns out, this is the one Lovecraft story we know Shaver read.
Palmer published a number of letters from fans in the pages of Amazing Stories as the Shaver Mystery stories unfolded. Being typical fans, some of these were hoax letters, and slipped past the editorial radar. One such letter that saw print:
THE NECROMINICON [sic]
Sirs:
In line with your research on the Lemurian question, may I refer you to the “Necrominicon” [sic] of Abdul Alhazred, and also, the singularly famous “Das Inausprechlichen Kulten” [sic] by Von Junzt.
Both of these volumes may be found in the reserve room of Miskatonic University’s library at Arkton [sic], Massachusetts.
I am a graduate in occult sciences of this university, and have been engaged in conflict with Mr. Shaver’s “underground deros” since my graduation there in 1935.
Translation of the seventh chapter of the “Necronominicon” [sic] using the “Lemurian alphabet” should aid greatly in discovering the missing plates.
I regret deeply that a certain interest in the (deleted by the editor for very good reasons) keeps me from aiding you materially in your search, but a hint to so fertile a brain as Mr. Shaver’s should be enough. And I feel quite sure that after you have read the above-mentioned volumes, many things should be clear that are now confused and dark.
This was all in good fun, and Palmer seemed to know that Poldea was pulling his leg—yet it may also have suggested possibilities to Palmer. In an undated letter to August Derleth of Arkham House publishers, Palmer wrote asking for copies of Lovecraft’s The Outside and Others (1939), Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943), and Marginalia (1944), and added:
I wonder if you were right when you said Lovecraft did not believe a word of what eh wrote. Strangely enough, I have received some interesting comments on “truth” contained in his writings which, together with corroborative evidence in support of those comments, intrigues me very much.
Also, do you have on your lists the name of John Poldea? An affirmative answer would be very interesting to me.
A copy of Derleth’s answer is not in his file of correspondence with Palmer at the Wisconsin Historical Society, but it was likely very much in the negative on both accounts. In a follow-up letter, Palmer wrote:
I am slightly amazed at your reaction to my question concerning Lovecraft. I understand little about the matter, except that it seems you’ve built up a “legend” about Lovecraft and his creations. Would you mind explaining briefly.
I published a letter which I knew was fake, in order to get the reaction, which was terrific, regarding the Miskatonic U and the books Das Unaussprechlichen Kulten and the Necronomicon of Alhazred.
Maybe you wouldn’t be surprised to know how many people believe there are such things—and maybe you wouldn’t be surprised to know how many people know there are not—and yet are fascinated by your “legend”.
You say you’d jump on any statement that Lovecraft believed what he wrote with both feet. This fascinates me. Personally I believe he did believe what he wrote, and further, I think I could even prove it.
I might even be able to produce what he wrote about! —Ray Palmer to August Derleth, 20 Jun 1945, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
For Palmer, this was just another possible dimension by which to extend the Shaver Mystery; and even Shaver wasn’t sure how much of it he believed in or not, so long as it got a reaction from people. What Palmer probably had no idea of was how he was crossing nearly every possible line with Derleth, who had worked and sweated to build Arkham House in part on Lovecraft’s reputation as a literary figure, not a general pulp writer and certainly not as part of some cockamamie hoax running in Amazing.
A carbon copy of Derleth’s answering letter was immediate, and makes the Arkham House founder’s position clear—including an unsubtle legal threat if Palmer decided to push the matter any further:
You ask about Lovecraft. Contrary to your belief, we have NOT been building any “legend” about Lovecraft and his creations. We have been doing all in our power to keep him a straight literary figure, even to the extent of my taking time to write a brief critico-biography of him when I have little time for anything off-trail, and when you write that you “believe he did believe what he wrote and think” you “could prove it” this is simply to anyone who knows a plain bid to use the memory of a dead man in a cheap bid for publicity, which I construe as plain fraud and which would force me and the Lovecraft estate into legal action against the Ziff-Davis Company, regrettable as that is. I know very well what you are getting at when you say you might “even be able to produce what he wrote about”—crackpots have offered to write a NECRONOMICON for us, and you may be sure that such a purely Lovecraft creation would again, if fraudulently offered, bring action from us.
Where you got the idea we have built up a legend about HPL and his creations is beyond me. Certainly there are a lot of people who believe in the NECRONOMICON, and so forth; the origin of all these things is correctly set down in my H. P. L.: A MEMOIR, coming in book form in a month or so. I suggest you get hold of a copy and inform yourself before falling into any belief pattern. The UNAUSSRPECHLICHEN KULTEN was Howard’s invention, and I still have in my possession letters between R. E. Howard and HPL, with some of my own, showing that I contributed the UNAUSSPRECHLICHEN to the title in place of another word Howard wanted to use. Other titles came from other writers with Lovecraft’s permission.
Naturally, when, in the face of the contention of the man who has read more of the Lovecraft papers and letters than any man alive, you still say you “believe” to the contrary and contemplating offering “proof”, I have no other course but to think that you are contemplating some cheap plan to involve HPL and his mythos in a publicity plan for the Z-D magazines. I might expect that from Davis, but hardly from you, and you are right when you suggest that I might be “shocked”. I frankly hope that I am very much wrong.
Before going into the publication of any NECRONOMICON etc., you might look into the legal aspects of copyright in this matter; you will find that we have very solid grounds to take action against anyone purporting to offer “THE” book. I am thoroughly familiar with the copyright laws, and your use of a NECRONOMICON in this way is the equivalent of anyone else’s use of a w–k character or device under copyright. —August Derleth to Ray Palmer, 21 Jun 1945, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
In strict point of fact, Derleth’s legal position was probably weaker than it looked. He had an arrangement with the estate of Lovecraft to reprint his works, in cooperation with Lovecraft’s literary executor R. H. Barlow (then in Mexico), but his stated control over the copyrights was mostly bluff and bluster. Yet it was an effective threat, because Palmer had no way of knowing that. Nor was Palmer aware that he had inadvertently threatened everything Derleth had built at Arkham House by confusing the nascent Mythos with Shaver’s Lemurian stories. Certainly, Palmer didn’t appear to have any idea of Derleth’s personal involvement with the Mythos, as with the naming of Robert E. Howard’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten (for which see “Unspeakable! The Secret History of Nameless Cults”).
For Palmer, it was all potential fodder for the expanding Shaver Mystery—and his own weird capability of believing things. As it was, in Palmer’s answering letter he did his best to defuse the situation and cover his ass.
Your information is interesting. Some of my readers informed me there was a “business” being built up about the “cthulhu mythos”. I understand Esquire has purchased an article about Lovecraft hinting such a buildup. You see, I am not without foundation for that idea. […]
Nor did I mean that I had any mss to present. I meant that I (and numberless readers) believe Lovecraft’s writings to a certain extent, and that excludes those fictional books and university. You see, what I said I could prove was the existence of the “beings” Lovecraft writes about. I’ve had some quite entertaining experiences with them of a personal nature. But before you think me mad, we’ll drop my little dabblings into demonology, as they are personal, and get back to the “proof” I could offer that many readers believe in Lovecraft, and dis-believe in his Necronomicon and Kulten books, and the Miskatonic U. they believe in his demons, because they’ve seen them. I have dozens of sincere letters addressed to my Discussions columns, affirming that these experiences are true, and that they are identical with Lovecraft’s so-called fictional ones. Of course, suggestion is a powerful thing, and Lovecraft’s writings can be said to be powerful. Believing them is a matter of personal choice. I believe that more people believe them sincerely than accept Lovecraft asa great writer. This should interest you, since you are not trying to build up anything but his reputation as a writer.
On a purely personal vein, I know Lovecraft believed his basic theories, and his choice in taking that field for expression of his art was not just because he liked weird things. But of course, this has nothing to do with your reaction.
Regarding “hoaxes”, you remember I asked if you had a certain name on your list? You said no, which absolved you of being an innocent party to a rather filthy trick that was played on me, to discredit my Lemurian stories through the Lovecraft “mythos”. I have since discovred the unprincipled gentlemen were those who call themselves the “fans” of science fiction, and you know who they are.
[…] But, since the “fans” have taken up Lovecraft’s creations as a club to show that mine are the same attempt at “falsifying”, I will retaliate by publishing those letters which show a sincere belief in Lovecraft does exist Naturally these letters are authentic. I have thousands of letters from persons who believe in Shaver, many more than those who believe in Lovecraft. but most significant, all belief in both because they present the same basic theory (I’ll not call it fact, because I’d rather have the scientific world go on calling the Shaver material “metaphysics” or whatever they choose. I am prepared to present the positive scientific proof of the Shaver stories, by producing the caves, the machines, and the people. But this must wait until I am prepared scientifically. Amazingly, we have uncovered a vast storehouse of new knowledge, which if not handled carefully, might be very ineptly applied to our bloodthirsty civilization.)
But please be assured I have no manuscripts, or any ideas of producing Lovecraft’s fictional pieces as the real McCoy. But perhaps I will produce one of his “monsters”. It would look very well in the local park along with the giraffes and the anteater. —Ray Palmer to August Derleth, 22 Jun 1945, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
In his memoir The Secret World (1975), Palmer wrote of some remarkable experiences he had when he visited Shaver and his wife in Pennsylvania; this may or may not have been the personal experiences that Palmer spoke of. It is hard to tell because Palmer never seemed to be able to turn the huckster or hoaxer part of himself off; it wasn’t just a poise, it seemed to be fundamental to his being to believe whatever he was selling at the moment, at least to some degree. However, he had badly miscalculated his audience: Palmer had misunderstood or misread Lovecraft, and Derleth knew it.
The end result was that Shaver and Palmer never made any attempt to shoe-horn the Cthulhu Mythos into the Shaver Mystery, at least not in the pages of Amazing. Ray Palmer acknowledged Poldea’s fake letter in Amazing Stories Dec 1945 with a good-natured shrug and didn’t pursue that particular development of the Shaver Mystery further.
However, some of the fans were more critical than Poldea. In the popular fanzine Vampire published by Joe Kennedy, a scathing review was published in issue #4 of Maxin 96, a Lemurianist/occultist/Shaver Mystery zine published by fan David D. Dagmar. The review caught the eye of Amazing Stories’ competitor Startling Stories, which reprinted it in the Summer 1946 issue as part of a regular feature that reviewed science fiction fan publications. In response, Shaver sent a rebuttal to Kennedy, who would report:
Up until a couple moths ago, I corresponded with Shaver. He wrote me when a highly unfavorable comment on the Lemurianist fanzine, Maxin-96, was reprinted from Vampire in Startling’s fanzine review. Shaver seemed to welcome the chance to blast somebody’s ears off for the opposition which the “Shaver mystery” had evoked from the majority of actifandom. Misspellings and simple errors displaying marked ingorance of the fundamental rules of English grammar abounded in his letters. For the publication in Vamp he forwarded me a four-page “prose poem” which, as a piece of literature, was mildly amazing. The thing started off in undistinguished blank-verse style, rambled on another page, with references to Palmer and the deros becoming more and more frequent, bubbled and forthed into an attack on the opposing fan element (supposedly dero-controled!), then broke into straight prose, meandered on as a letter for a page or two, with intermittent ravings, then came to a decidedly abrupt conclusion. I sent it back to him. However, the main reason it was impossible to correspond with the guy, although I tried to give his side of the story a fair chance, was that all my arguments concerning the Shaver “truths” were either completely ignored or raidly passed over with but sparse comment. You can’t argue with a chap who just keeps drilling, over and over, THE DEROS ARE POWERFUL! YOU MUST BELIEVE! I’ve compared the Shaver letters and certain portions of his Palmer-rewritten published stories with examples of psychoneurotic literature quoted in psychology texts. The resemblance is remarkable, and indicative of far more than pure coincidence… No, I don’t correspond with R.S. Shaver any more. —Joe Kennedy, Gruzlak #1 (Oct 1946), 14-15
Eventually, Kennedy and Shaver agreed to a rewritten version of this rebuttal as “Lovecraft and the Deros” by Richard S. Shaver. This piece was first published in the fanzine Vampire #6 (1946); it was later republished in another fanzine, Spicy Armadillo Stories #5 (1991). The entire text is reproduced below.
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LOVECRAFT AND THE DEROS
((EDITOR’S NOTE: Since much has been written in the fan press against the Lemurian series in Amazing Stories, we believe that it is no more than fair that Dick Shaver be given an opportunity to tell his side of the story. We are completely convinced of the author’s sincerity, although the following article does not necessarily reflect the views of Vampire’s staff.))
Up to twelve years ago I was a stf fan, much like yourself, I suppose. I thought I knew exactly what was true in science and what could happen and that I could draw a precise line in my reading between fact and fantasy.
Then it happened, almost exactly as I tell it in the stories I write. Things that couldn’t happen except through a wonder-science never produced by modern men of science at all.
There were three conclusions. The first that these machines and rays came from space (visitors). The second was that they were modern secret science—things that science had developed and kept to itself as a monopoly, for the power and wealth the advantages of using these apparatuses would give them. This second conclusion was my conclusion until I knew more about it, which took many years. It is the usual deduction of the person first contacting secret ray.
The third deduction came after long experience with the phenomena I talk about in my stories. That this thing was a persistence of the same thing the medieval were talking about when they raised such a hullabaloo about witchcraft. The same thing Homer was talking about when he mentioned the immortal gods. I did a lot of research, believe it or not. And this last deduction is the correct one. The caverns I saw were not modern—they were not even built fairly recently by space travelers who stopped here long enough to leave such gigantic traces—were built before Man had a history. They are the big missing portion of history, and they have a history all of their own far more important in many ways than our own surface history.
Witchcraft, fairy tales, legends of the underworld—are not all antique fiction. It is surprising how well they describe some things that are done with with the machines. Merlin, in King Arthur, had a cave full of machines; and he died in it. In Deirdre—a ray from nowhere cuts down the heroes at the climax. The list of references is endless—I know—I looked them up. Take “The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel”—a fifth century Irish MSS.—translated in the Five Foot Shelf—The Men From the Elfmounds are mentioned over and over. The underworld was well known in the past and it shall be in the future. It has been the monopoly of a little group of savagely monopolistic people for a few centuries.
Read Lovecraft’s rewrite for a woman friend of his—”The Mound” in Beyond the Wall of Sleep, quite a long story and as good a picture of the underworld as ever I read. Take off about twenty per cent for Lovecraft’s weird ideation and ornamentation—and you have an exact picture of the underworld—except for the radioactive light.
As for Maxin 96 ((The Lemurianist fanzine—ed.)) I find it unfortunate that all the occultists have leaped to my banner—for I never meant to inferno that spirits had anything to do with what I am talking about. In fact the ray phenomena I mention explain away all spiritualist phenomena as ray work—of my despised dero—incidentally—the real explanation of all evil is dero, detrimental energy robot. These mysterious ray phenomena do exist and occur regularly. I always thought it was wool and lies and fakers myself just as you probably do—’till they happened without benefit of a medium within miles. No, I didn’t leap to the conclusion that they were spirits. I figured out the real reason—and it is some answer. naturally it is hard to swallow offhand, mainly because you don’t get all the background. Read “Da Derga’s Hostel” and Lovecraft’s “The Mound.”
I note in Vampire how the fans booed me at the convention in Newark. All this active fan opposition hurts like hell—but the truth of it is—they lose so darn much I could give them—if THEY UNDERSTOOD! But they are not my worst worry. My worry is the mad dero of the caverns—and they do our country even more harm. Some of those fans who are most loud in denouncing my “LIES” are directly used by the dero ray for that purpose. DON’T BE USED! The very copulation by which those same fans were conceived was watched over a telaug by a dero or a tero—humans who inherit a long line of conditional variational factors from a surrounding entirely different from our own—was watched for the vicarious entertainment received from the augmented emotional and sensory impulses which is greater than ordinary human.
Under our feet is a world of scientific wonder beyond any writer’s power of description, but there before Earth had a sun. Those metals don’t rust—those caves are as dry and hot as a desert—perfectly preserved, they wait for modern scientists to wrest their ancient secrets from those machines. That no scientist will accept this “impossible” truth is the only stumbling block between men and a wonder world. Our race was not the only race on earth; there were greater races and greater times. We are in truth the degenerate descendants of a great race, and not the apre’s mutant brother evolutionists would have us think. If you had been to Mars on an unannounced trip—how would you tell about it? Prove it, people would say. Well, it’s a hard job, but we may get it done—this proof you want is growing every day. Pluto did live, and strangely enough Dante’s concept of the nether world and the city of Dis has its counterpart in actuality.
There was a semi-sequel to this article, in the form of an answer to a letter to Shaver from J. O. Cuthbert in 1948 that opens “Dear Mr. Shaver: L—la-ngai-ygg—Ia—Shub-Niggurath. Ph’nglui mglw ‘nafh Cthulhu R’lyan wgah ‘hagl fhtagn.”, Shaver’s response to that reads:
Dear J. O. Cuthbert:
Did you ever read Lovecrafts [sic] protege’s story, The Mound? Better than Lovecraft, and it has some true data on the caves mingled with Lovecraft expansion. In a Lovecraft collection of storys [sic]. —Richard S. Shaver, The Shaver Mystery Magazine (1948), vol. 2, no. 2, 34
Beyond the Wall of Sleep, which reprinted “The Mound,” was published in 1943, the same year that Shaver began corresponding with Palmer, and a year before Shaver wrote “A Warning to Future Man.” It isn’t clear when Shaver read Beyond the Wall of Sleep, though, and there are many disparate threads of science fiction, fantasy, and folklore that could (and probably did) work to inspire Shaver besides Lovecraft. The Togail Bruidne Dá Derga is a real Irish story reprinted as part of Harvard Classic’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books line in volume 49, Epics and Sagas (1937).
In 1964, a portion of Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer’s correspondence in the 1940s was published in the Shaver Mystery zine The Hidden World (issues A-13, -14, -15, and -16). These letters give some insight into Shaver’s life, thoughts and habits, and working relationship with Palmer. Direct references to Lovecraft only occur in two of the published letters, but are relevant. The first is:
The mention of Merritt is good I think—there are several reasons—the Lovecraft cult of writers uses his name all the time to good effect—and certainly Merritt is more worthy of such honor—as well as the corroboration of my contentions which his work offers and the enticement of his followers is also commercially valuable as they are legion. —Richard S. Shaver to Ray Palmer, [n.d., c.mid-Oct 1944], The Hidden World A-14, 2443-2444
There are a number of mentions of A. Merritt and his stories, particularly “The Snake Mother” (1930) in Shaver’s letters and other writings. Shaver was likely discussing “Open Letter to the World” (Amazing Stories Jun 1945), which mentions Merritt repeatedly. The “Lovecraft cult of writers” references the growing popularity of Lovecraft (who was published in an Armed Services Edition during the war), and emulators and pasticheurs like August Derleth.
The second reference to Lovecraft in Shaver’s letters to Palmer is more extensive:
Reading in Lovecraft’s “Marginalia” which Bob sent me—noted a concept of his directly opposed to one of yours—wish you would think about it—for to a degree he is right.
He is talking in a chapter entitled “Notes on Interplanetary Fiction”.
“The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true ‘hero’ of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena.”
I have thought that perhaps you said the reverse in order to get me to think more carefully of character work in my writing, and in the main you agree with Lovecraft here. Personally, I think he is right, and that if the characters are too natural, we lose the illusion of other worldliness we are trying to create. I think then motivations of such characters should be different, as out of the ordinary as the settings, and thus the whole behavior of your characters, too, becomes the reverse of what we call “natural”—so here I disagree to an extent with Lovecraft, too. I admit the characters behaviour [sic] should be logical, and I stop there.
Personally I think Lovecrafts [sic] buildup for his marvels gets a little tiresome, but old stf fans are apt to be immune to the usual fanfare of intense surprise attempted by the stf writer.
In stf we have to write about marvels, we have to do it in a way that the average man can understand and enjoy as much as he does his Sunday supplement, and it is here that I agree and endorse your views. But that does not necessarily mean the characters can all be “natural”, meaning everyday people, at all. Some of the characters must of course be natural to set off the unnaturalness of those who are motivated by an other-world set of values.
Granted we all agree if boiled down to it. I thought you would be interested in his idea—the “hero of a marvel tale is a set of phenomena.” —Richard S. Shaver to Ray Palmer, [n.d., c. Mar 1945], The Hidden World A-15, 2632-2633
“Bob” is Robert McKenna, a friend of Shaver’s who would also help improve Shaver’s prose and ghostwrite for him. Arkham House published Lovecraft’s Marginalia in 1944; which included his essay “Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction,” which Derleth had excerpted from one of Lovecraft’s letters. The fundamental idea of the weird phenomena taking center stage rather than the human characters who witness it is very much at the core of Lovecraft’s fiction, exemplified in stories like “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Colour out of Space,” and more fully expressed in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”
Shaver’s focus on this bit of writing advice is a glimpse behind the curtain of the Shaver Mystery. While Shaver seems to have very much believed in Deros, rays, et al, he was also keenly aware that what he and Ray Palmer were creating was fiction—perhaps as a way to get the truth out there to the masses, but still very clearly a creative exercise, which involved plotting, narratives, characters who required development, motivations, etc. Palmer, as something of a pulp hack, knew the advantages of character-driven stories, and probably steered Shaver in this direction with his fiction in Amazing Stories; Shaver’s fiction outside of those pages tends to be far less character-focused. With Lovecraft’s advice opposing Palmer’s, Shaver struggled to find his own course and his own voice somewhere between the two.
Despite Harry Warner’s proclamation that Shaver’s Mystery was derived from Lovecraft, in the corpus of Shaver’s writing references to Lovecraft and his work are so few that it cannot be said that the Lovecraft Mythos inspired the Shaver Mystery—but Lovecraft certainly seems to have been one of the influences on Shaver. Lovecraft and Shaver shared some inspirations in common, such as A. Merritt’s “The Moon Pool,” which explains a few of their similarities, but at no point does Lovecraft’s artificial mythology impinge on Shaver’s Atlantis and Lemuria. “Lovecraft and the Deros” emphasizes how much Shaver dismisses Lovecraft’s Mythos in favor of recasting “The Mound” in terms of his own artificial mythology. I suspect that if Lovecraft was a more substantial influence on Shaver, more references to “The Mound” would have found their way into Shaver’s writing at some point…yet all we have, really, is “Lovecraft and the Deros.”
Henry S. Whitehead, “Bothon,” & the Shaver Mystery
Recalling the “old days” brings us to a mention of Henry S. Whitehead’s “Bothon” in this issue. Reverend Whitehead is, of course, dead, but this unpublished story of his is far from dead. We consider it a very fine piece of work, and as we read it, we remember that Henry S. Whitehead was himself a researcher into the unusual, and we wonder what he would have said about the stories of Mr. Shaver? It is a very astounding fact to consider that in this story “Bothon,” Reverend Whitehead’s story is similar in all details to many letters we have from readers who claim to remember, or be reincarned, or have contact with some weird occult record which describes the events Whitehead describes so graphically in his story. Could it be that “Bothon” is itself a “thought record or a “racial memory” or did he believe eh was reincarnated and the story that formed in his mind was really memory of that former life? It is introguing to wonder what the truth behind “Bothon” really is. —Ray Palmer, Amazing Stories Aug 1946
The Reverend Henry St. Clair Whitehead was an Episcopal priest and pulp writer, a friend and correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price, and Robert E. Howard who wrote for pulps like Adventure, Weird Tales, and Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror. He was best known for his “jumbee” stories, based on the folklore of the U.S. Virgin Islands, which he would visit during the 1920s, as well as “The Trap,” a story written with Lovecraft, and “Cassius,” a story written based on one of Lovecraft’s ideas. At the time of his death on 23 Nov 1932, Whitehead apparently had several unpublished manuscripts, including one called “The Bruise.”
I’m helping Whitehead prepare a new ending for a story which Bates rejected. It was about a man in 1923 who got a bruise on the head which caused him to hear strange cataclysmic sounds—that turned out to be the Tokyo earthquake. The bruise had made a sort of radio of his ears! In my new version, the bruise excites certain cells of hereditary memory & causes him to hear the destruction of one of the cities of fabulous Mu—the sunken continent of the Pacific—20,000 years ago. —H. P. Lovecraft to August Derleth, 31 Mar 1932, Essential Solitude2.469
I’m now helping Whitehead prepare a new ending & background for a story Bates has rejected. The original told of a young man who bumped his head & thereafter heard sounds of a mighty cataclysm, although the city around him was quiescent. It was supposed to be due to a result of the bruise—which made the fellow’s head a natural radio & enabled him to hear the Japanese earthquake—which was occurring at the time. Bates rightly thought this tame, so I am having the cataclysm & its cause somewhat different. I am having the bruise excite cells of hereditary memory causing the man to hear the destruction & sinking of fabulous Mu 20,000 years ago! —H. P. Lovecraft to Clark Ashton Smith, 4 Apr 1932, Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill 361
He had a splendid tale under way called “The Bruise”, which (at my suggestion) involved the lost & fabulous Pacific continent of Mu. I am wondering whether it was ever finished. —H. P. Lovecraft to E. Hoffmann Price, 7 Dec 1932, Letters to E. Hoffmann Price & Richard F. Searight 38
Whitehead also had another story under way—his old tale “The Bruise”, with a new ending (suggested and mapped out by myself) involving the fabulous lost continent of Mu 20,000 years ago; but whether this was ever put in final publishable shape I don’t know. —H. P. Lovecraft to Farnsworth Wright, 6 Jan 1933, Letters to Woodburn Harris & Others75
Harry Bates was editor of Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror (1931-1933), a short-lived competitor to Weird Tales that Whitehead contributed to, and Astounding Tales of Super-Science (1930-1933).
Years after Whitehead and Lovecraft’s death, August Derleth, co-founder of Arkham House, pursued the publication of Whitehead’s collected weird fiction, which eventually resulted in two books: Jumbee and Other Uncanny Tales (1944) and West India Lights (1946). This required dealing with Whitehead’s heirs; a confusing situation where a woman named Edna Black owned the copyrights, but a woman named Mary Starr owned several of the actual manuscripts. Included in a letter from Starr to Derleth dated 8 Nov 1943 is a list of unpublished manuscripts; at the bottom are two stories labeled “Scar-Tissue” and “Bothon.”
Mss. Wisconsin HIstorical Society, August W. Derleth Archive
It isn’t clear what some of these annotations mean, such as the checkmarks; possibly those indicate that the completed manuscript had been submitted to a given market (which suggests that “Scar-Tissue” at least may have been sent to Weird Tales, and was presumably rejected).
“Scar-Tissue” involves Gerald Canevin, a series character in Whitehead’s fiction, and a Dr. Pelletier who encounter a patient named Joe Smith who not only remembers Lemuria, but carried a physical scar that corresponds with a wound obtained in a past life as a gladiator. Canevin and Pelletier had previously appeared together in “The Great Circle” (Strange Tales Jun 1932). “Bothon” follows the general plot laid down by Lovecraft: a man bangs his head, and the bruise unlocks memories of his past in Lemuria. The story ends with a reference to a man named Smith who had similar memories.
The interrelation between “The Great Circle,” “Scar-Tissue,” and “Bothon” is unclear. Canevin and Pelletier form a link between “The Great Circle” and “Scar-Tissue,” while “Scar-Tissue” and “Bothon” share much common ground, including the character Bothon, and the latter “Bothon” appears to reference the character of Smith in “Scar-Tissue”; but there is no Canevin or Pelletier in “Bothon.” Was this the aborted start of an intended series, or the tail end of an ongoing one? We may never know. All three stories are also somewhat uncharacteristic of Whitehead’s typical pulp product, with more action and fantasy, but that was a direction that some of his fiction was headed toward near the end of his life.
It is unknown if one or both stories were complete at the time of Whitehead’s death, or existed in draft. “Scar-Tissue,” if it was submitted to Weird Tales as the above list implies, must have been in decent shape. Lovecraft’s involvement appears to have been primarily suggestion and plotting for “The Bruise”—he never mentions “Scar-Tissue” nor contributed any actual text to “The Bruise.” Though there have been claims that someone else may have written or completed the stories:
It is not certain that Whitehead ever finished the revision and expansion of “The Bruise” before his death. As late as December 1932, Lovecraft speaks of the process being still “under way” ([see letter to Price above]). It is possible, therefore, that the story was finished and retitled by August W. Derleth, who oversaw the editing and assembling of West India Lights, where it appeared. Derleth fleshed out a number of Lovecraft’s plots and notes into complete stories (see The Survivor and Others, 1957), and frequently wrote fiction pseudonymously. It has been claimed, for example, that in Night’s Yawning Peal (1952), an anthology he edited, there were three such tales, Derleth appearing (in addition to an entry under his own name) as Stephen Grendon, Michael West, and—J. Sheridan le Fanu! See Jack L. Chalker, “Arkham House & Sons, part 2,” Fantasy Review, no. 97 (December 1986): 19. —A. Langley Searles, “Fantasy and Outré Themes in the Short Fiction of Edward Lucas White and Henry S. Whitehead) in American Supernatural Fiction: From Edith Wharton to the Weird Tales Writers (1996), 75n62
As mentioned in the review of “The Murky Glass” (1957) as by August Derleth & H. P. Lovecraft, Derleth’s approach to “posthumous collaboration” was often one of entirely original writing based around an extent bit of text or story synopsis. Derleth did use pseudonyms as well; this was a common practice in the pulps, and “Stephen Grendon” was an established alternate name that Derleth used many times. So Derleth was certainly capable of writing or revising a story and publishing it under a different name, and had done so. But did he do it?
Before or concurrent with the publication of West India Lights, both “Scar-Tissue” and “Bothon” were published in Amazing Stories in 1946, in the July and August issues respectively. While there is no copyright notice or reference to Derleth attached to the stories, and unfortunately no letters with Starr or Black from this period attest to any deal or payments for publication, Derleth’s letters to Ray Palmer show that he submitted the stories, and brokered their sale at the same time as he was arguing with Palmer about Lovecraft:
Yes, I’d like to look at the Whitehead things concerning Lemuria, etc. Would appreciate your sending me the manuscripts. —Ray Palmer to August Derleth, 20 Jun 1945, MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
I will send along the Whitehead stories—BOTHON and SCAR-TISSUE—just as soon as my secretary gets around to typing them: in a fortnight or so. They are very good stories of the Lemuria type which you seem now to tbe seeking. —August Derleth to Ray Palmer, 21 Jun 1945, MSS. WHS
Thanks for getting the Whitehead stories in shape for me to look at. —Ray Palmer to August Derleth, 22 Jun 1945, MSS. WHS
This was followed up some months later by a receipt of sale:
MSS. Wisconsin Historical Society
Derleth submitting stories on behalf of Whitehead’s heirs isn’t unusual. In the early 1950s, Derleth had arranged for the reprinting of two of Whitehead’s stories in the pages of Weird Tales (“The Tree-Man,” WT Sep 1953 and “Passing of a God,” WT Jul 1954), so we know Derleth did sometimes act as agent for such stories. Whether Derleth was acting as agent or ghost-writer, some of this money should have gone to Edna Black; unfortunately, the correspondence for this period between Black and Derleth is lacking.
There are some substantial textual differences between the text in Amazing Stories and West India Lights, with the Amazing Stories version of the text being substantially shorter and punchier. Probably Palmer cut the text down for publication to better fit the space in the magazine. To give one example of the differences:
“Do you get that picture? Here we were, prisoners of war — after a couple of months of the hardest training I have ever known, in the Ludektan gladitorial school, about to shed our blood to make an Atlantean holiday! Yes, Ludetka was the southernmost province of Atlantis, the cultural center of the continent. There had been innumerable wars between the Atlanteans and Lemuria. Like Rome and Carthage.
“Do you get that picture? Here we were, prisoners of war — after a couple of months of the hardest training I have ever known, in the Ludektan gladitorial school, about to shed our blood to make an Atlantean holiday!
“Scar-Tissue,” West India Lights 233
“Scar-Tissue,” Amazing Stories (Jul 1946) 149
Practically all of the changes in the Amazing Stories text represent a condensation of the story, truncating some of the battle scenes and speeding up the pacing. The above is a rare instance where a bit of the “lore” of the setting was excised. Was this done by Palmer so that Whitehead’s story dovetailed more closely with the Shaver Mystery? Given that so much setting material was left intact, probably not.
What is remarkable about “Scar-Tissue” and “Bothon,” and what might be most suggestive of Derleth’s involvement, is not so much the existence of two salable manuscripts by Whitehead that finally saw print after fourteen years—but that both such stories were directly relevant to the current trend in Amazing Stories. The timing is key: just when Amazing Stories was pushing the Shaver Mystery hard, here comes two stories of essentially similar theme from a different, established author, that could almost have been written to order.
Whether Derleth saw an opportunity to market Whitehead’s stories and took it, or Derleth re-worked one or both of the stories to fit isn’t clear, but it seems more than coincidence that two such atypical stories from a fortunately deceased author could emerge at just this time in Amazing Stories. That topicality makes them suspect. Yet without access to the original manuscripts there is no way to know for sure.
Despite Searles’ surety that someone other than Whitehead was involved, the evidence for Derleth revising, completing, or writing “Scar-Tissue” or “Bothon” is entirely circumstantial. We know at least from Lovecraft’s letters that “The Bruise” contained recognizable elements to be found in “Bothon,” and the 1943 manuscript list from Mary Starr clearly lists both stories. So it seems likely that if Derleth did touch up the manuscripts, he at least had some manuscript to work with, rather than writing the tales out of whole cloth, or based only on the synopsis in Lovecraft’s letters about “The Bruise.”
There is undoubtedly more to the story of how these two Whitehead works ended up at Amazing Stories. It’s notable that the publication in those magazines does not mention Lovecraft, Derleth, Arkham House, or West India Nights; for a tireless self-promoter and champion of Lovecraft like Derleth, it seems odd he wouldn’t make more of the opportunity for some free advertising, or to at least promote the Lovecraft connection elsewhere. In fact, when Clark Ashton Smith commented on “Bothon” in a letter to Derleth after West India Nights came out, Derleth’s reply didn’t mention Lovecraft at all (Eccentric Impractical Devils 370).
There are several Lovecraftian traces in “Bothon” that are not present in “Scar-Tissue.” The simian slave-class is called “Gyaa-Hua”; compare with “The Mound” (1940) by Zealia Bishop & H. P. Lovecraft, where the slave-class is called the “gyaa-yothn.” Two transcribed bits of ancient Lemurian speech in “Bothon” are: “Iï, Iï, Iï, Iï;—R’ly-eh!—Ieh nya, —Ieh nya; —zoh, zoh-an-nuh!” and “Ióth, Ióth,—natcal-o, do yan kho thútthut,” which bare similarities to some of Lovecraft’s alien speech,” especially the appearance of”R’y-eh” is particularly close to “R’lyeh” from “The Call of Cthulhu,” and “kho thútthut” could be a phonetic rendering of “Cthulhu.” Either Whitehead or Derleth could easily have inserted these references; though given Derleth’s contretemps with Palmer over adding anything Lovecraftian to the Shaver Mysteries, why he would insert such a reference is unclear. It is perhaps notable that when Lovecraft used Mu in his fiction in “Out of the Æons” (1935) by Hazel Heald & H. P. Lovecraft, he made no reference to either R’lyeh or the gyaa-yothn/gyaa-hua.
The connection between Lovecraft, “The Bruise,” and “Bothon” does not appear to have become publicly known until after Derleth’s death, when Selected Letters IV (1976) was published, which book contains the references in letters to E. Hoffmann Price and Clark Ashton Smith. Without access to concrete evidence in the form of drafts, letters, or business records to clarify matters, this small tangent to the Shaver Mystery and its almost-connection to the Lovecraft Mythos must remain a mystery.
Manly Wade Wellman, The Necronomicon, & the Shaver Mystery
“Suppose,” said Thunstone, “that I wanted a copy of the Necronomicon?”
“Suppose,” rejoined the old woman, “that I gave it to you?” She turned to a shelf, pulled several books out, and poked her withered hand into the recess behind. “Nobody else that I know would be able to look into the Necronomicon without getting into trouble. To anyone else the price would be prohibitive. To you, Mr. Thun—”
“Leave that book where it is!” he bade her sharply. —Manly Wade Wellman, “The Letters of Cold Fire” in Weird Tales May 1944
Lovecraft and Wellman overlapped a bit at Weird Tales, but never corresponded. Nevertheless, Wellman had respect for his elder in weird fiction, and paid homage to Lovecraft in several stories, including “The Terrible Parchment” (WT Aug 1937) and “The Letters of Cold Fire” (WT May 1944), which feature the Necronomicon, and “Shonokin Town” (WT Jul 1946) where Lovecraft is mentioned as an expert in eldritch lore.
Wellman came into his own in Weird Tales during the 1940s, when his occult detective character John Thunstone ran in a successful series of tales. Like Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and others, Wellman had learned to build up a degree of interconnectedness in his stories for greater verisimilitude—Thunstone mentions Weird Tales authors H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price, Seabury Quinn’s occult detective Jules de Grandin (who would also mention Thunstone in his own stories), and several of Wellman’s characters exist in the same general setting, and sometimes face the same enemies—notably the pre-human, magically adept beings known as the Shonokin.
One of the details revealed in Richard S. Shaver’s correspondence with Ray Palmer in The Hidden World is that Shaver himself read Weird Tales, at least occasionally, and even submitted short fiction to the magazine. One story that caught his eye was “The Letters of Cold Fire” by Manly Wade Wellman:
In a tale in Weird Tales mag. recently it spoke of THE DEEP SCHOOL of Magic. I think you will find this is pertinent. Men who had been through the school could no longer stand the light at all. The underworld – hereditarily – have extra large eyes. This was in the Rowley Thorne – Dunstone [sic] series – runs regularly in Weird Tales and the author may know something though it’s hard to tell among all his magic wool. He should not be hard to contact and writers can explain what they mean. I hope he is not one who believes really the common concept of magic. —Richard S. Shaver to Ray Palmer, 8 Jun [1944], The Hidden World A-14 2338-2339
It isn’t known if Shaver ever attempted to contact Wellman. In Weird Tales Jul 1946 and in the fanzine Sunspots #28 (Fall 1946), Wellman claims to have received letters form those who were convinced the Shonokin were real and could tell him more. Could Shaver have been among them? Perhaps, perhaps not; Shaver’s further letters to Palmer don’t mention any such attempt.
What is known is that Shaver remembered “The Letters of Cold Fire,” and later when the subject of grimoire came up after reading William Seabrook’s Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today (1940), Shaver was inspired to an elaboration on his theories.
Such writers as your firned [sic] friend of Weird Tales mention such EVIL books—the book from the DEEP SCHOOL etc. etc.—and such wonderful things can be done with formula in them—is standard weird talk for witch stories through the ages—why—because once that was true and magicians—or mag-neticians—did save those books and work wonders with but they were not numerous to save that wisdom for us—or they lived in the caves and all that history of theirs still lies down there waiting for us—but if my observations of dero are right they are still using the ancient libraries for toilet paper and fire starting as in the ancient days. —Richard S. Shaver to Ray Palmer, Jan 12 [1945], The Hidden World A-15, 2570
There is something strange and terrible about the image of a Dero, after evacuating last night’s cannibalistic feast, reaching for the age-softened, crumbling pages of the Necronomicon to wipe themselves clean—and that is an aspect of Shaver’s mystery that readers of Amazing Stories perhaps did not appreciate, the degree to which Palmer and other ghostwriters cleaned things up, for Shaver could be quite brusque about subjects like torture, sex, and some of the more unpleasant aspects of life in his stories.
Muriel E. Eddy, David H. Keller, & the Shaver Mystery
In a 1948 interview, David H. Keller, a prolific author of science fiction and weird tales and a contemporary of Lovecraft’s, was asked about the Shaver Mystery:
“What is your opinion of the Shaver controversy?”
“A healthy affair in some ways. After all there is not much difference between Shaver and Lovecraft as far as the basic idea is concerned. Even Jules Verne hinted at it in his JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. Merritt talked about those Old Ones and Lovecraft wrote constantly in regard to such a menace. […] —David H. Keller, interviewed by Jacob Hudson, Fantasy-Times #64 (Apr 1948), 5
Keller’s comparison of Shaver and Lovecraft is not unique; it’s a point that crops up repeatedly in the literature. One of the key points Keller makes is that “Lovecraft wrote constantly in regard to such a menace”—but did he really? At this date, Arkham House had brought Lovecraft into print in hardback, and in the mid-40s editions paperback editions were available through Bartholomew House and the Armed Services Edition. Weird Tales under Dorothy McIlwraith published or re-printed Lovecraft stories provided by August Derleth and Arkham House, as well as Derleth’s own pastiches. Derleth’s first “posthumous collaboration,” the novel The Lurker on the Threshold, was published in 1945.
While Lovecraft wrote of many terrors, some ancient and some underground, there was never a single unifying threat that ran through multiple stories as the Deros do through Shaver’s oeuvre. However, for casual readers who absorbed a great deal of Derleth along with Lovecraft, this fine distinction between the Mythos as Lovecraft wrote it versus how Derleth tended to play it up was easily lost. Derleth’s pastiches tended to emphasize a unity and structure to Lovecraft’s Mythos that wasn’t originally there, while Shaver seems to have had a very clear conception from the beginning of how things were in the underground caverns, even if he struggled with how to present this information to the audience.
This kind of comparison led to another tangential connection between Lovecraft and Shaver, in the pages of Fantastic Adventure, another Ziff Davis pulp magazine that was under the editorship of Ray Palmer. While the Shaver Mystery stories largely appeared in Amazing Stories, some of Shaver’s fiction also appeared in Fantastic Adventure, which was at least nominally dedicated to fantasy, although in practice Ray Palmer tended to run both fantasy and science fiction together in the magazine.
In Fantastic Adventure s(Feb 1948), Shaver’s story “Slaves of the Worm” ran. The story is not explicitly related to the Mystery—not a Dero in sight—and may owe something to Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom” (1929) and “The Valley of the Worm” (1934) as well as A. Merritt’s “The Face in the Abyss” (1923) and its sequel “The Snake Mother” (1930). Yet something about the story prompted a reader to write in and compare it to Lovecraft; and Ray Palmer agreed.
Not many would look to the letter-columns of Fantastic Adventures for a brief memoir about Lovecraft, yet that is part of the legacy of the Shaver Mystery too.
Robert E. Howard, Serpent People, & the Shaver Mystery
One of the hallmarks of conspiratorial literature is how quickly it is to absorb new ideas into its existing framework, and the same is true for the Shaver Mystery. In the August 1946 issue of Amazing Stories, Ray Palmer wrote a piece about the pamphlets of Maurice Doreal, an occultist, which presents his ideas of the hollow earth (drawing much inspiration from Theosophy), and wrote that:
I am advising that Doreal’s booklets be read by all students of the Shaver matter. I do not believe that he is correct in all his statements, but there may be a basis underlying them, and this knowledge should be known to students simply as a matter of theory.
In the October 1946 issue of Amazing Stories, an answering letter from Doreal was published, essentially confirming the subterranean evil Dero exist, and working the Dero into their schema.
Maurice Doreal (also M. Doreal, Morris Doreal, etc.) was a pseudonym for Claude Doggins, an occultist and conspiracy theorist inspired by both Theosophy and pulp fiction. One of Doreal’s most notable publications is The Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean (n.d.). The esoteric poem includes a lot of material drawn from ancient Egyptian religion, Hermetic occultism, and Theosophy, but there’s one passage in particular which is basically a synopsis of Robert E. Howard’s story “The Shadow Kingdom (Weird Tales Aug 1929):
In the form of man they amongst us, but only to sight were they as are men. Serpent-headed when the glamour was lifted but appearing to man as men among men. Crept they into the Councils, taking forms that were like unto men. Slaying by their arts the chiefs of the kingdoms, taking their form and ruling o’er man. Only by magic could they be discovered. Only by sound could their faces be seen. Sought they from the Kingdom of shadows to destroy man and rule in his place.
While Doreal does not connect the dero to the serpent people directly, they share certain attributes, being evil, shape-shifting, and subterranean. It goes to show how flexible and adept at self-promotion Doreal was to latch onto the Shaver Mystery, however briefly. Doreal also borrowed from other pulp authors, notably referencing Frank Belknap Long Jr.’s “The Hounds of Tindalos” (Weird Tales mar 1929), also referenced in The Emerald Tablets:
Strange and terrible are the HOUNDS of the Barrier. Follow they consciousness to the limits of space. Think not to escape by entering your body, for follow they fast the Soul through angles. Only the circle will give ye protection, save from the claws of the DWELLERS IN ANGLES.
Like Shaver, Doreal’s writings influenced popular conspiracy theories, and his works tied together aspects of Theosophy, pulp fiction, and the nascent ufology culture. Michael Barkun in A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America(2013) notes that Doreal also authored a pamphlet giving a revisionist history of the world featuring this serpent race (Mysteries of the Gobi), where the perverted, underground Lemurians were supposedly the ancestors of all Semitic peoples. Another pamphlet, Flying Saucers: An Occult Viewpoint postulated the serpent people were extraterrestrials, which would help set the stage for popular depictions of reptilian humanoid aliens, such as the television series V. All of these have uncertain publication dates, but based on this letter we can definitely say they were around in the 1940s.
Doreal would be quoted extensively in David Icke’s Children of the Matrix: How an Interdimensional Race has Controlled the World for Thousands of Years—and Still Does (2001), which collates and updates the whole idea of shapeshifting reptilians for a 21st-century audience. Icke is noted for his antisemitism, and for his identification of members of the Jewish Rothschild family as secret reptilians (Barkun 146); the entire shape-shifting reptilian alien idea in popular culture has been tinged by Icke’s prejudice.
Robert E. Howard did not invent the idea of serpent people or reptilian humanoids; H. P. Lovecraft had played with the idea in “The Nameless City” (1921), A. Merritt had the eponymous Snake-Mother of Yu-Atlanchi in “The Snake-Mother” (1923); Frank Belknap Long, Jr. had a woman-headed serpent in “The Were-Snake” (1925); Edgar Rice Burroughs had underground serpent people in Tarzan at the Earth’s Core (1929-1930); Clark Ashton Smith had made serpent a part of his stories in “The Double Shadow” (1933) and “The Seven Geases” (1934); Edmond Hamilton, famous for his space operas, included reptilian alien humanoids in “Monsters of Mars” (1931) and “The Snake-Men of Kaldar” (1933), and John Murray Reynolds had similar Scaly Ones in “The Golden Amazons of Venus” (1939); E. Hoffmann Price played on Southeast Asian beliefs about the Naga in “Snake Goddess” (1939), and there are many other precursors and cases of independent invention. There is even a famous case in 1934, an engineer named G. Warren Shufelt even advertized that there was an underground city of lizard people beneath Los Angeles.
Richard S. Shaver had serpent-people in his Shaver Mystery fiction too—most notably in “The Fall of Lemuria” in Other Worlds Science Stories (Nov 1949). These snake-people probably owe more to Merritt’s “Snake-Mother” than to anything Howard or anyone else wrote.
Yet Howard’s serpent-people have gained pop-culture precedence—and entered conspiracy circle legend—because of several contributing factors. For Lovecraft, Smith, and many others, the reptilians and serpent people, whether beneficient or inimical to humanity, hatched no conspiracies, and dwelt underground and apart from humanity and its affairs. Howard’s were actively seeking to undermine and manipulate human civilization, and doing so with the aid of magical disguises to impersonate others.
Marvel Comics introduced serpent people to their universe through works adapted from and inspired by the work of Robert E. Howard; in the pages of Conan the Barbarian,Kull the Conqueror, and (oddly enough) Marvel Premiere #4, where Dr. Strange fights the spawn of Sligguth in a story that combines aspects of “The Shadow Kingdom” and “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” Robert E. Howard’s version of the serpent-god Set, and his serpent-people followers, would play a major role in the Marvel Universe during storylines like Atlantis Attacks! (1989), although since Marvel subsequently lost the license to Conan, the serpent-people have played substantially less of a role.
Roleplaying games have featured a number of reptilian and serpent-people, some of whom were inspired by pulp fiction, others of which are original. The Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game adapted Howard, Smith, and Lovecraft’s serpent-people lore and glossed and expanded it. Dungeons & Dragons have the Yuan-Ti, who were largely humanoid serpent-people with shapeshifting powers, that first appeared in Dwellers in the Forgotten City (1980); whether they were originally based on Howard’s serpent people or not, they embody many of the tropes—but there are innumerable fantasy serpent- and reptile-people in fantasy and science fiction, too many to narrow them all down to one single source. Publisher White Wolf would also borrow from Howard when creating the clan called the Followers of Set for Vampire: The Masquerade (1991), whose discipline of Serpentis gives them serpent-like powers and attributes.
The Followers have an Egyptian theme, despite the fact that the Egyptian god known as Set, Seth, or Sutekh does not have serpentine attributes—a common misconception which also affected the Marvel comics (where the Egyptian god Seth was a separate deity, though still serpent-themed) and even Dungeons & Dragons (where the Mulhorandi god Set was largely based on the Egyptian god, but also took on serpentine characteristics). Robert Bloch would commonly err in making the serpentine Set an Egyptian god in some of his early horror and fantasy stories. The confusion comes because in the Conan tales, Set is the god of the Stygians—who are intended to be strongly reminiscent of ancient Egypt, and to be the precursor civilization to it:
Meanwhile, also, a tribe of Vanir adventurers had passed along the Pictish coast southward, ravaged ancient Zingara, and come into Stygia, which, oppressed by a cruel aristocratic ruling class, was staggering under the thrusts of the black kingdoms to the south. The red-haired Vanir led the slaves in a general revolt, overthrew the reigning class, and set themselves up as a caste of conquerors. They subjugated the northern-most black kingdoms, and built a vast southern empire, which they called Egypt. From these red-haired conquerors the earlier Pharaohs boasted descent. —Robert E. Howard, “The Hyborian Age” (1936)
There is a terrible irony to Doreal and Icke’s adding bigotry to Howard’s serpent people: Howard was thinking about Jews when he wrote it. Howard’s original story “The Shadow Kingdom” was in part inspired by some of his own characterization of Jews in the Old Testament in his private letters (see Deeper Cut: Conan and the Shemites: Robert E. Howard and Antisemitism). However, a study of Howard’s letters do not show any definite awareness or belief in popular antisemitic conspiracy theories, and Howard never made any explicit connection between serpent people and Jews in his fiction. Howard did not confuse fantasy and real-world prejudice; he took a metaphor based on a personal reading of the Old Testament and wove into his fantasy fiction—making literal serpents out of the metaphorical manipulators of King Saul. This wasn’t a huge stretch for Howard, who had already included his antipathy to serpents and characters with snake-like attributes in several stories before Kull was created (see “Conan and the Little People: Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft’s Theory.”)
The 1930s and 40s saw the cross-pollination between pulp and popular fiction and fringe conspiracy theories, and what would become New Age movements, many of which were in a foundational stage during the interwar and WW2 period. Doreal’s letter in support of Shaver’s Mystery is an example of how easily these works incorporated ideas from science fiction and weird fiction into already-extent occult and conspiratorial ideologies about the hollow earth and hidden masters. It also demonstrates how antisemitic tropes can grow and spread, sometimes under unlikely guises.
Marebito (稀人, 2004)
Marebito(“Unique One,” 稀人) is a Japanese horror film from director Shimizu Takashi (清水 崇), based on a novel and screenplay by Konaka Chiaki (小中 千昭). As the film opens, freelance cameraman Masuoka (played by Tsukamato Shin’ya 塚本 晋也) is obsessed the nature of fear and with viewing the world through a camera lens. Masuoka investigates the apparent suicide of a terrified man underground that was captured on camera. His investigation leads him to a subterranean network of tunnels beneath Tokyo. Masuoka meets people who live in the tunnels and believe in Richard Shaver’s Deros; Masuoka himself finds a section of the underground that resembles ancient ruins and believes he has come to the Mountains of Madness spoken of by Lovecraft—although he acknowledges both Shaver and the hollow earth theory are fiction. Yet in that netherworld, fact and fiction seem to merge.
Throughout the film, possibly-supernatural events occur, and the line between what is real and what is just in Masuoka’s head is not clear. The film plays with aspects of voyeurism, documentary filmmaking, the nature of reality, and the uncertain nature of perception. The narrative is shot through with sudden transitions, artifacts of digital recording in settings of clear reality, impromptu encounters and conversations, and a growing uncertainty about who the characters really are and how much of this is really happening, or if Masuoka is just off his meds and reality and delusion are merging together inseparably.
The Deros are a repeated touchstone in the ideology of the film, not something seen on the screen much, but a pervasive idea. Likewise, while Lovecraft is seldom referenced directly, the questioning of the nature of fear is strongly reminiscent of his work. This is no accident, Konaka Chiaki has also written Cthulhu Mythos fiction, including the screenplay for a Japanese television adaptation of “The Shadow over Innsmouth” (インスマスを覆う影, 1992). In Marebito, Konaka gets to marry those ideas with the questioning of reality and memory that are trademarks of some of his anime work such as Serial Experiments Lain and The Big O.
Shimizu Takashi brings these ideas to the screen with an aesthetic that places it in the general oeuvre of the Ring films directed by Nakata Hideo (中田 秀夫) and the later documentary-style horror films of director Shiraishi Kōji (白石 晃士). While there is no single video artifact or ghost at the center of Marebito, the visual transition between watching what is “really” happening and watching the same through the lens of a camera introduces a layer of visual rhetoric that gives the film considerable depth. If Konaka adapted Shaver and Lovecraft for a new Japanese context, Shimizu adapted that script for a new Japanese syntax, translating the voyeuristic impulses of Shaver and the fear of the unknown in Lovecraft into present-day fears of video surveillance, the questionable fidelity of memory, and the pliable reality of recordings.
Which might be an interesting way of looking at the Shaver Mystery and the Lovecraft Mythos in the 21st century: not as literal truth, and not necessarily as something to copy and pastiche, but collections of ideas and images to use as a springboard for new work. Shaver and Lovecraft did not live to see the long tail of their creations influence popular culture, nor for the fringe of true believers to spread their ideas of ancient aliens from the pulps to the mainstream. Yet it is a new century now, and new voices find uses for old pulp ideas.
In this way, the Shaver Mystery and the Lovecraft Mythos live on.
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. —H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature”
While many horror stories grapple with fear of the unknown, there are elements within and without the narrative of cozy horror stories that bring the work in question into a safer, more knowable realm, allowing for a sense of comfort to take hold. —Jose Cruz, “The H Word: Getting Cozy With Horror”
“Cozy horror” is the current term for a broad swathe of horror-flavored creative works. It is probably more properly a mode of weird fiction than a subgenre. A kind of attitude and approach that reaches across genre conventions. Not everything with horror trappings is necessarily horrific in the pure sense of the term. With experience comes familiarity. Bela Lugosi capes, Boris Karloff neck-bolts and flat top, plush Cthulhus all come from the same Hallowe’en-store aesthetic of cozy horror.
Parts of Lovecraftian horror have been cozy for a long time.
In part, this is because Mythos fiction, more than most, tends to be intensely self-referential. Writers want the readers to make connections with other stories, they want to be part of something bigger. Sometimes this bleeds over into full-blown nostalgia; “The Discovery of the Ghooric Zone” (1977) by Richard Lupoff and “Down into Silence” (2018) by Storm Constantine are both stories that bank on the reader not only being able to catch the hints, but to share in that sensation of quiet longing and awed recognition. Others just go for straight-up humor, even to the point of parody and satire: what is “At the Mountains of Murkiness, or From Lovecraft to Leacock” (1940) by Arthur C. Clarke if not taking the piss out of Lovecraftian horror, in a gentle and ribbing British manner?
The balancing point of “cozy Lovecraftian horror” is going to be subjective. It needs to at least work as a weird tale on its own; it needs to be a part of or allude to the Mythos in a way that the readers can recognize and respond to. Jose Cruz’ four elements of Familiarity, Sensuousness, Distance, and Fun are all important—but three of those, at least, are typical of most Mythos stories by default. Readers rarely identify with finding our great-great-great-grandma was a Deep One or Ape Princess, or experience the anxiety of living in the attic room of a witch house and dealing with an extradimensional rodent infestation when they really should be focusing on their finals. The Fun aspect of cozy horror is probably the trickiest and most argumentative aspect of the whole business.
That being said, I believe “On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera” (2020) by Elizabeth Bear stands out as a very good representation of cozy Lovecraftian horror. The overall shape of the narrative is intensely familiar: how many scions of Innsmouth (never mentioned under that name) have come back home, in how many different variations? Yet the way the story is told is relatively light and novel: a fifty-something female physics professor with tenure and a penchant for sushi. A perfect setup for any number of funny-because-its-true comments about the lives of women in academia.
I note, entirely for the record and apropos of nothing, that I am the only female tenured faculty in the physics department. I note, entirely for the record and apropos of nothing, that I do an estimated thirty-six percent of the emotional labor in my sixteen-person department.
Female grad students and admins do the rest. And it’s not like we’re any less introverted and non-neurotypical than the dudes. We’re just forced to learn to endure more discomfort in order to have careers. —Elizabeth Bear, “On Safari in R’lyeh and Carcosa with Gun and Camera” (2020)
If the story was just a whine, no matter how well-deserved, it probably wouldn’t sustain interest. Yet Bear is very good at composing her narratives, and has structure the story with an in media res action sequence right at the start to let us know that yes, the safari with guns and cameras are real, we’re getting to that. Then she gets to that. It’s not exactly a novel story structure, but it’s a workhorse of fiction for a reason: putting a bit of action first as a hook to draw the reader in, and then it can build up again.
The actual horror in the story is slight. The monsters aren’t very monstrous, the characters aren’t really scared as much as driven by scientific curiosity; blasting away at byakhees like Hunter S. Thompson in bat country is a select aesthetic that doesn’t really encourage the same kind of comforting glow of, say, a mountain that walked or stumbled, or the remnants of an ancient cannibal feast that happens to have the unmistakable physical tell-tales of your own peculiar family. This is not quite on the level of a hypothetical Abbott and Costello Meet Cthulhu, but it’s not far from it.
It is the kind of good, clean fun that you can have when you learn to stop worrying and love the Lovecraft Mythos—and it managed to do it without naming Deep Ones, without running across a copy of the Necronomicon, and only mentioning Miskatonic Univeristy once and in regards to a failed graduate thesis in genetics. If the rules at play seem to owe a little more to the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game than Lovecraft’s original, then at least Bear has the good sense not to recapitulate the entire Mythos, August Derleth style. She gives just enough lore to keep things moving, and no more.
The dream originally took place in New England, in a cemetery there. For some reason, Lovecraft decided to relocate it to Florida, which makes NO sense to me. Florida doesn’t have a history of ancient cemeteries stretching back hundreds of years. Also, Florida is barely above ocean level! —Lisa Shea, “Author’s Note” in “The Statement of Randolph Carter Twisted” (2024)
The only topographical features of H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Statement of Randolph Carter” are the “Gainsville pike” and the “Big Cypress Swamp.” This has led many to believe the story takes place in Florida, near the city of Gainesville. It is possible that Lovecraft actually intended the location to be Georgia—his friend Samuel Loveman, who appeared in his dream and is depicted as Harley Warren, was stationed at Camp Gordon, only about 40 miles from Gainesville, GA.
I don’t point this out to nitpick, but to applaud. Lisa Shea’s author’s note gives evidence she really thought about Lovecraft’s story. Looked at how he framed it, what he did and did not achieve in a narrative sense. There have been many efforts to revise, revisit, revamp, and rewrite Lovecraft’s stories, from “His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood” (1990) by Poppy Z. Brite to “The Ballad of Black Tom” (2016) by Victor LaValle to “Kanye West—Reanimator” (2015) by Joshua Chaplinsky. Like old folktales, there is room for infinite variation. The first version of a story isn’t necessarily the best one, even if it’s the one repeated most often.
Shea’s “twist” to “The Statement of Randolph Carter” is an update to setting, characters, and attitude. No ambiguous Southern swamp in the 1910s and military telephones with long wires; this is set in Massachusetts in the 21st century with smartphones. The characters are younger, but their relationship is less ambiguous. The shift in setting and character requires a few tweaks in the plot; but the end result is tight. Nothing superfluous, no attempts to cram in a random “fhtagn!” where it isn’t needed. True to the spirit of Lovecraft’s original, but adapted to the current syntax.
There’s even a nice little flourish at the end. A little twist of the knife that Lovecraft didn’t do.
As a twisted tale, it works. What works best about it, however, might be the approach. Instead of approach Lovecraft’s tales as canon, they are approached as examples to study and learn from. Jumping-off points rather than fixed stars in the firmament.
If you read the original “The Statement of Randolph Carter” by Lovecraft, how would you change the scenes so they were more scary to you? —Lisa Shea, “Author’s Note” in “The Statement of Randolph Carter Twisted” (2024)
An einem seiner vielen ereignislosen, langweiligen Abenden beschließt der junge Jacop O’Damsel, freiberuflicher Nerd, sich besoffen in einem Hinterhof schlafen zu legen. Blöd, wenn ausgerechnet da plötzlich ein intergalaktischer Dimensionsschlürfer auftaucht. Bevor Jacop überhaupt die Chance bekommt, einen Kater zu haben, nimmt in das Ding auch schon einfach so mit.
Jacop wacht in Xoth auf, einer fremden Welt voller abartiger Kreaturen – oder solite man sagen: geradezu unsagbar grauenhaft? Auf jeden Fall sind da noch die »Humanisten«, eine Bande von stinkigen Fischköpfen, die Menschen kultarig verehren, und die Jacop angeblich für eine Mission brauchen. Und gäbe es niche genug an Wahnsinn zu verkraften, setzt der Bürgermeister der Stadt, der mächtige Cthulhu, seine besten Killer auf den Fall an. Den großen Alten sei Dank gibt es da noch Yen Niggurath, ein hübisches Ziegenmädchen, Des Gefallen an dem hilflosen Menschlein findet. Zusammen mit ihr get Jacop dem »Ordus Humanus« auf den Grund, Dennis – bei Cthulhus fettem Arsch! – er hat keine Lust, ständig um sein Leben zu rennen.
Vor dem Hintergrund von H. P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos entwirft Anna-Maria Jung eine Geschichte voller Monster, Nerds, Monsternerds und Nerd monster. Und der Mann aus der Angell Street kommt auch drin vor.
On one of his many uneventful, boring evenings, young Jacop O’Damsel, a freelance nerd, decides to get drunk and sleep in a backyard. Too bad when an intergalactic dimensional shambler suddenly turns up. Before Jacop even gets the chance to have a hangover, the thing takes him with it.
Jacop wakes up in Xoth, a strange world full of disgusting creatures – or should we say, downright unspeakably horrible? In any case, there are also the “Humanists”, a gang of smelly fishheads who worship humans in a cult-like manner and who supposedly need Jacop for a mission. And when there isn’t enough madness to deal with, the mayor of the city, the mighty Cthulhu, sets his best killers on the case. Thank the Great Old Ones, there is also Yen Niggurath, a pretty goat girl who takes a liking to the helpless little human. Together with her, Jacop gets to the bottom of the “Ordus Humanus”, Dennis – by Cthulhu’s fat ass! – he doesn’t want to constantly run for his life.
Against the backdrop of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, Anna-Maria Jung creates a story full of monsters, nerds, monster nerds and nerd monsters. And the man from Angell Street appears in it too.
Back cover copy, 2010 edition
English translation
Xoth! Die unaussprechlichen Stadt (“Xoth! The unspeakable City!”) is a 2007 graphic written and drawn by Anna-Maria Jung ( https://www.annamariajung.com/ ), an Austrian illustrator with a penchant for monsters and nerds. The publication history is a little difficult to piece out, because part of the history has been eaten by the web, but the Internet Archive maintains a copy of (most) of the old website, which offers some background:
Xoth! ist ein 70 seitiges Farbcomic, das auf dem “Cthulhu-Mythos” von Howard Philips Lovecraft beruht.
Die Idee für Xoth! kam Anna-Maria Jung 2006 in New York, als sie ein Buch zu H.P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos entdeckte. Beruhend auf diesem Mythos entstand die Idee, eine einzige Heimatwelt für Lovecrafts Kreaturen zu kreieren.
Anna-Maria diplomierte 2007 mit einer Arbeit über »Lovecraft in den Medien«. Diese Diplomarbeit wurde eine konzeptuelle Vorarbeit für ihren Comic sie erforschte Lovecrafts Vergangenheit, den gesamten Mythos und seine Einflüsse auf die Medienwelt. Auf Wunsch kann man diese Diplomarbeit bei mir als PDF kostenlos bestellen.
Als praktischen Teil entwickelte sie die Charaktere, Hintergründe, Gegenstände, Zusammenhänge, Beziehungen und Verhältnisse einer Welt, die sie, inspiriert von Sci-Fi Autor Lin Carter, Xoth taufte.
Xoth! is a 70-page color comic based on the “Cthulhu Mythos” by Howard Philips Lovecraft.
Anna-Maria Jung came up with the idea for Xoth! in 2006 in New York when she discovered a book about HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Based on this myth, the idea of creating a single home world for Lovecraft’s creatures was born.
Anna-Maria graduated in 2007 with a thesis on “Lovecraft in the Media.” This thesis was a conceptual preparatory work for her comic; she researched Lovecraft’s past, the entire myth and his influence on the media world. If you wish, you can order this thesis from me free of charge as a PDF.
As a practical part, she developed the characters, backgrounds, objects, contexts, relationships and conditions of a world that she named Xoth, inspired by sci-fi author Lin Carter.
Was ist Xoth? (Deutsche)
What is Xoth? (English)
Lin Carter’s Mythos fiction was published in The Xothic Legend Cycle by Chaosium; Xoth was the star from which Cthulhu originated, and Carter’s fiction dealt with Cthulhu’s progeny. Cthulhu himself appears in Jung’s Xoth! as the mayor of the city.
Unfortunately, with the death of early web, stuff like Jacop O’Damsel’s MySpace page and the English translation of some of the comic pages are likely sadly gone forever.
A 2008 “exclusive preview” of Xoth for the Internationaler Comic Salon Erlangen 2008, where the book presumably premiered; Jung also wrote and drew a spin-off comic titled “Marie Jenkins Brown: Sechs ist Besser als zwei” (“Mary Jenkins Brown: Six Is Better Than Two”) published in Comicgate Magazin #3 (2008). Both Xoth! and the Marie Jenkins Brown spin-off were collected and published in the Xoth! Die unaussprechliche Stadt Extended Edition (2010, Zwerchfell Verlag).
Absinthe and Dimensional Shamblers don’t mix.
There is a slightly cartoonish, early-2000s webcomic vibe to Jung’s art style, which might make some folks to confuse Xoth! for a comic intended for kids at first glance, but really this is aimed at a more mature audiences, with references to alcohol and sex, and some brief cartoon nudity that is designed to amuse rather than titillate. It’s a fun takeoff of the Mythos for grown ups, especially grownups who were monster enthusiasts in their youth.
Fans will appreciate the many references to Lovecraft’s Mythos (and the Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game) sprinkled throughout the story. It’s definitely played for humor more than horror, reminiscent of works like The Unspeakable Vault (of Doom!), but with more narrative and focus on characters. This is really the story of Jacop O’Damsel, the sole human in the city.
Fortunately, Jacop has help from Yen Niggurath, one of the Dark Young, who takes a shine to him. Their relationship has a meet-cute quality, and there’s a certain romantic frisson between the two almost from the start.
Lovecraft, “the Man from Angell Street.” does indeed make an appearance, although he spends most of the comic in the body of a Yithian he’s been mind-swapped with. Which is a fun way to include Lovecraft in what is otherwise a contemporary setting that includes cellphones.
A scene where Jacop meets a dying Lovecraft in 1937 is also included, although Jung makes a slip here in getting the date and address incorrect.
It is a fun graphic novel. The plot isn’t very profound, but not all stories have to be epic. Some people just learn to accept where they are and who they’re with. To monsters, humans are ultimately just another monster.
The Mary Jenkins Brown spin-off comics are a bit more deliberately mature, even racy in parts. Mary is an occult detective in these brief strips, but seems more interested in getting laid than solving mysteries. They’re short and cute, played for laughs more than eroticism. It’s nice to have them collected somewhere.
There is no published English translation of Xoth!, and sadly probably never will be, which I feel is a pity because there was a time and place when I think it would have definitely found an appreciative audience. The German-language Extended Edition is still available for sale, and Anna-Maria Jung’s webstore has a lot of cool shirts.
Lovecraft had a rare faculty for beginning with something commonplace and building up an overwhelming aura of horror that left his readers hanging onto the ropes. In that sense, I can’t think of anyone who could surpass him. He had a knack of delving into man’s subconscious, untranslated fears—putting them into an appreciable form, giving them appealing names and personifying one’s own, inmost, half-comprehended, even personal nightmares. —Bruce Bryan in “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales (Jul 1937)
H. P. Lovecraft created Yig for “The Curse of Yig” (WT Nov 1929), ghostwritten for Zealia Bishop. Yig is also mentioned as “Niguratl-Yig” in “The Electric Executioner” (WT Aug 1930), ghostwritten for Adolphe de Castro; and “The Father of Serpents” in “The Whisperer in Darkness” (WT Aug 1931); “Yig the Serpent-God” in “Out of the Æons” (WT Apr 1935), ghostwritten for Hazel Heald, and “Mother of Serpents” (1936) by Robert Bloch. Five appearances over the course of eight years, all in the pages of Weird Tales, and to the casual reader all by different authors.
Perhaps that is why in 1937 professional archaeologist and pulp author Bruce Bryan borrowed Yig—here under the name “Yig-Satuti”—for his archaeological horror yarn, “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror,” which ran in Weird Tales Sep 1937 issue.
“On the Mountain-That-Is-Heaven,” he hissed fiercely, “the white man is a trespasser. Yig-Satuti does not welcome visitors who come to dig up his secrets. It is bad medicine for those who seek to disturb the ancient dwelling-place of the god.” —Bruce Bryan, “The Ho-Ho Kam Horror” in Weird Tales (Sep 1937)
G. W. Thomas has described “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror” as “an unnoticed Cthulhu Mythos sequel” (Snake Gods & Were-Serpents), and he’s largely correct. Dedicated fans recognized the reference to Yig at least as early as the 1950s, when George Wetzel included it in one of the listings in his TheLovecraft Collector’s Library (1955); the story is also listed in Chris Jarocha-Ernst’s mammoth A Cthulhu Mythos Bibliography & Concordance(1999). However, the story has never been reprinted outside of its original appearance, not in a random Mythos anthology or anywhere else, contributing to its overall obscurity and lack of recognition.
Even for dedicated Mythos-hounds, the story is easy to miss. Bruce Bryan was never a member of Lovecraft’s circle of correspondents, and outside of the reference to Yig, the story has no other connections to the Mythos—nor many to its probable inspiration, “The Curse of Yig.” For one, the story is not set in Oklahoma, but in Superstition Mountain in Arizona; the Native American groups involved thus shift in relation to that portion of the Southwest, and the mythology shifts with it, becoming associated with the Hohokam culture. Bizarrely, even though Yig-Satuti is depicted with wings, Bryan makes no effort to connect it with Queztacoatl as Lovecraft had done.
The story takes on a more familiar shape than Lovecraft’s “The Curse of Yig,” echoing “Sunfire” (1923) by Francis Stevens, “The Monster-God of Mamurth” (1926) by Edmond Hamilton, and “The Thing on the Roof” (1932) by Robert E. Howard among others—all stories where in an ancient and deserted city or temple, the monstrous god of the forgotten people remains to be discovered by archaeologists or treasure-hunters. While there’s a certain Lovecraftian touch in the framing of the story, since the last of it is told through a diary the protagonist discovered and the final sentence is an appropriately italicized culminating revelation, it is otherwise a bit crude. The pot that prognosticates the archaeologist’s doom, for example, is never explained in any detail.
By far the most substantial difference between Bryan and Lovecraft, however, might be in their treatment of Native American characters and culture.
Few would consider Lovecraft an exemplar when it comes to the accurate or sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans in his fiction. While there are sparingly few references to Native Americans in his corpus, the one Native American character who is named and speaks is Grey Eagle in “The Curse of Yig” and “The Mound,” and he is basically a walking stereotype of the Old Native American Chief, complete with the kind of English patois that Barbra A. Meek in “And the Injun Goes ‘How!’: Representations of American Indian English in white public space” (2006) called “Hollywood Injun English.” Yet for all that, Lovecraft obviously did research for his stories set in Oklahoma, accurately names the Native American peoples that would have been there, and references some of their genuine beliefs, like Tiráwa. The worst negative stereotype Lovecraft indulges in is depicting the Native Americans with a penchant for alcohol.
Bruce Bryan did his research too—albeit, a few folks wrote in to Weird Tales to correct a few points:
I read with much enjoyment Bruce Bryan’s story The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror. I lived near Superstition Mountain for about eight years, and learned to speak the Pima dialect fairly well. Naturally, I took quite an interest in the Indians, their legends and the ruins of the Hohokam. Little is known of the Hohokam, but there were a few errors in the story which I think the author should have corrected. ‘The Hopi and Smoki Indians do not live near Superstition Mountain, nor do they get their snakes for the rain dance there. I doubt if they know of the existence of the place. The story is based on legend, apparently, and legend has it that the Hohokam did not live on Superstition Mountain; the ancestors of the Apache Indians lived in that vicinity, and the Hohokam, who are apparently the ancestors of the Pimas (although this is not certain), lived and farmed the Gila River valley when the valley was not such a desert as it is now. The Casa Grande ruins (a four-story adobe structure) were built by the Hohokam who continually warred with the Apaches of Superstition Mountain. The Pimas and Apaches don’t get along any too well today, as far as that goes. In regard to the Hohokam-built ruins, the age of these ruins is probably more than two thousand years. At that time (when the Hohokam lived there) they irrigated the land with water from the Gila. Some of the ditches are filled with lava. It must have been quite a while ago that the volcanoes in Arizona erupted. […] Little can be said of Superstition Mountain. In the present century no white man has climbed it alone and come back, although a few have tried. Planes can’t fly very low over it, due to strong and gusty updrafts. An exploring party recently made a trip over part of the mountain to try to discover the cause of loud and thunderous noises, like the reports of guns, but found nothing. —Paul Smith in “The Eyrie,” Weird Tales (Nov 1937)
However, the issue has less to do with Bryan’s anthropology of the deceased Hohokam culture and geography than his depiction of the living Native Americans and their culture. Lovecraft kept the Native Americans almost always off the page, talked about rather than depicted directly interacting with the white viewpoint characters, and while Yig is depicted as part of their belief-system, but is not necessarily evil nor was his worship all-encompassing. Bryan has the Native American characters much more present, and the white viewpoint characters interact with them directly—which means there’s a lot more room for stereotyping, especially within the already hackneyed scenario of one lone white man with a group of Indigenous laborers.
The only one named is Jim Red-Cloud, who becomes the mouthpiece for the Native American viewpoint:
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jim!” I snapped angrily. “You’re not a superstitious child. You went to the white man’s schools. And you’ve been with me a long time. Tell me, just what or who is this Yig-Satuti?”
The Pima winced at my words, as if they expressed some damnable blasphemy. In the smoldering depths of his eyes modern teachings seemed to struggle with the antique lore of his savage forefathers.
“Some things the white man’s schools do not teach,” he whispered almost fearfully. “Some things they do not know. Yig-Satuti is the Indian’s god beyond all other gods. It is not well to speak his name, for he is jealous of his secrecy. Those who know, worship him in hidden places that the white man does not suspect. It is better so. Yig-Satuti is older than the earth itself, and all wisdom is his heritage. Here on his mountain we are trespassers. Much evil will come if we do not go.” —Bruce Bryan, “The Ho-Ho Kam Horror” in Weird Tales (Sep 1937)
Before long, the “rational” white archaeologist who ignores the warnings to the curious offered by Jim Red-Cloud. The nameless, faceless indigenous laborers are demeaned as superstitious and primitive children, whom the white man tries to coax with money and then threatens with implied violence. It is little surprise when the white man ends up alone and eaten by the ancient horror his excavation has unearthed.
A very old-fashioned story, one where none of the characters come out looking good.
In terms of Native American representation, the Yig Cycle stories—whether written by Lovecraft or anyone else—often suffer from difficulties in their portrayal and presentation of indigenous peoples and their culture. Part of this is due to ignorance, part of this is due to stereotypes, and part of this is just the lens of the storytelling. The default perspective is of voyeuristic outsiders to an indigenous culture poking around where they are not invited and don’t belong. It is a Colonialist narrative, told from the standpoint of the colonizer, and even when bad things happen to said colonizer, it does so by representing the indigenous culture as exotic, secretive, and dangerous. Reiterating and reinforcing stereotypes.
Not all Yig Cycle fiction is like that; “The Head of T’la-yub” (2015) by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas for example provides a very different viewpoint, and the approach is much more respectful with regards to depicting Native American characters as possessing agency, and of how and why they integrate indigenous beliefs with the Cthulhu Mythos. If there’s a lesson to be learned from “The Ho-Ho-Kam Horror” by Bruce Bryan, it might be to listen more, keep an open mind, and try to see things from someone else’s perspective.
If nothing else, it would make a more interesting story if it had been written from Jim Red-Cloud’s point of view.
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.
Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein 