Monthly archives: July 2015

Beneath the West Wall of Darkness

Jordan Hofer reminds us in this dread-full tale that sanity is a gift easily stolen.

“Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of hell that during evolution some species crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.”

Werner Herzog, April 30, 1999

Judd Farmer feared the sea. He more than respected the ancient and indifferent nature of its forces. The relentless crashing surf could not care if he were caught in its fury and dashed upon the lacerating coral. When the ocean did care about him he was the object of hunger, food to be devoured by abysmal jaws with rows of serrated teeth. And then there was its incomprehensible vastness, the open and endless depths that concealed fears formed of shadow and dream, of memories so old they had no name and could not be recovered in full conscious form from the primordial sleep.

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The OctoberNomicon rages on!

We are pleased to announce that the OctoberNomicon continues to grow in size and scope!

Celebrity Contributors!

Adam Scott Glancy

Adam Scott Glancy
Delta Green, The Unspeakable Oath, Horrors of War

Oscar Rios

Oscar Rios
Golden Goblin Press, Cthulhu’s Dark Cults, Ripples from Carcosa

Kenneth Hite

Kenneth Hite
Trail of Cthulhu, GURPS Horror 4th Edition, Night’s Black Agents RPG

Scott David Aniolowski

Scott David Aniolowski
Malleus Monstrorum, Undead & Unbound, Singers of Strange Songs

Daniel Harms

Daniel Harms
Encyclopedia Cthulhiana, Long lost friend, The Necronomicon Files

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Nature is a Wonderful Thing

Psst! Yeah, over here. Do you want to read something REALLY disgusting? Of course you do, you little scamp. Well, read what we got below and tell all your friends where you got it, all right? And don’t say nuthin to your parents!”

Since my retirement from the force, I make my weekly pilgrimage to the supermarket and pick up eggs, bread, cheese for my wife, and one copy of each of the supermarket tabloids. I’m not much into the weight loss miracles or reports of Tony Curtis’ brave final days, but the last case I ever handled is one that’s haunted me ever since I slapped the cuffs on Hubert Hubert as he lay buck naked in bed and took his young companion away from him six years ago.

Every week since then I scour the Weekly World News, the Sun, the Star, the Globe, all of them, for some trace of the life I destroyed, some sign that I can make things right.

But today, after giving Marie a sponge bath and getting her down for her morning nap, I found it.

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The Mythos Path

“Pastiche” is usually a dirty word in Lovecraftian circles. Memories of August Derleth classifying Cthulhu as a “water elemental” in his attempts at Christianizing the Old Gents’ work make today’s reader shudder in entirely the wrong kind of horror.

However.

Robert DeFrank calls “The Mythos Path” a “pastiche,” and it does have elements of a Robert Bloch or other master’s technique at producing palimpsests of the Old Gent’s work. Like Bloch or Wandrei or others, he uses the names of the old “forbidden” books in a quick list, writes in a style reminiscent of HPL with its precise wording and its protagonist who has learned too much! but also like those writers, he has taken this pastiche style and made it something all his own. His treatment of the shoggoth idea in particular is astounding.

This is a longer work, and every word is worth reading.

I

(From the journal of Dr. Arthur Murphy, alienist on staff at the Canton Hospital for the Insane.)

I am a rational man.

This may come as a surprise to some of my acquaintances, considering my unconcealed love of weird literature, poetry and a near-obsession with the Hellenic myths, the traditions of which are the foundation of Western thought. But like the most canny of Greeks I eschew reliance on mysticism and see the imaginative works purely as a rich source of analogy for the human condition.

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Blindsided

Blindsided

Brown Jenkins, part seven. Soundtrack HERE.

jenkin“I jumped in the cab as it pulled up. Someone wasn’t invited, but I knew he’d turn up when I got where I was going. Bad penny, Clarke’s Law, whatever means it was that he employed to achieve his goals, he accomplished them. Wile E Coyote persistence.
Don’t know what the hell to do with a misshapen dwarf that seems attached to me. I don’t really know what he wants, or what he was originally sent for.
“The black man that I met at the double crossing would seem to hold the keys to everything. But he already said his piece. Brown Jenkin was certainly talkative, but he spouted so much bullshit that it was hard to tell when he had some nugget of truth buried in his pile of lies.

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HP Lovecraft Film Fest: Portland Kickstarter


Back it today!
The fabled HP Lovecraft Film Fest: Portland is here once again!

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A Shoggoth Sculpture

From our writer Jordan Hofer, we have an imagining of the shape-shifting slave for which our site is named. They overthrew the Elder Things, and there may still be a few frozen under the ice of Antarctica, just waiting for Earth’s long man-made summer to begin …

Shoggoth sculpture

We here at your Hub of Horrors would love to publish more photos of Lovecraftian art and sculpture. Hit us up at [email protected]!

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Bad Reception

A strange frequency. An elemental horror. A story unlike anything you’ve read.

The new sensation hurt. It was like cosmic radiation, but I experienced it in a new way. I was not used to this and did not like it. The strangest thing wasn’t that, but the new shapes which moved before me. I did not recognize the creature, but I knew it was like the things I’d experienced upon visiting other dimensions. It would be soft and fragile.

“It looks like we have a signal. We’re receiving something.”

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