Horror Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

Horror Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

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Horror Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. episodes

  • 25 - Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft.
    Ex Oblivione by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    Ex Oblivione is a short prose poem by American author H. P. Lovecraft, composed in late 1920 or early 1921 and first published under the pseudonym Ward Phillips in the March 1921 issue of The United Amateur. The work, part of Lovecraft's early Dream Cycle, follows a nameless narrator disillusioned with the "ugly trifles of existence" who seeks solace in increasingly vivid dreams of an idyllic yet enigmatic landscape. Culminating in a deliberate transcendence beyond the boundaries of life, it encapsulates themes of escapism and the seductive pull of oblivion as a release from mundane suffering.
    In the poem, the narrator describes recurring dreams of wandering through "old gardens and enchanted woods," progressing to a "golden valley" bordered by shadowy groves and ancient ruins, all leading to a mighty wall overgrown with vines and featuring a small bronze gate. As waking life grows intolerable, the dreamer uncovers lore in the fictional city of Zakarion about a mystical drug that can unlock the gate for permanent entry into the realm beyond. Upon consuming the substance, the narrator passes through the gate, only to confront not paradisiacal wonders but an infinite "white void of unpeopled and illimitable space," which they embrace as a return to "crystal oblivion." 
    Lovecraft employs lush, poetic imagery to contrast the dreariness of reality with the dream world's allure, while underscoring the ambiguity and ultimate dissolution awaiting those who pursue absolute escape. The piece reflects broader philosophical influences, such as Schopenhauer's views on desire and suffering, portraying oblivion not as horror but as a profound, liberating peace. As one of Lovecraft's earliest published dream narratives, Ex Oblivione foreshadows the metaphysical explorations in his later works, blending personal introspection with cosmic indifference.

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    5 min
  • 24 - The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft.
    The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" is a short fantasy story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, composed on December 3, 1919, and first published in the June 1920 issue of the amateur magazine The Scot. 
     Written in an archaic, mythic style heavily influenced by Lord Dunsany, the tale forms part of Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and narrates the ancient legend of the splendid city of Sarnath in the land of Mnar, whose inhabitants destroy a neighboring city of voiceless, green-skinned beings descended from the moon and later suffer a prophesied doom exactly one thousand years later.   
    The story stands out in Lovecraft's early career as one of his most successful imitations of Dunsany's ornate, dreamlike fantasy prose, featuring invented mythologies, exotic names, and a tone of tragic grandeur rather than his later cosmic horror. It explores central themes of hubris, the long-term consequences of genocidal cruelty, complacency in the face of ancient warnings, and the ultimate fragility of even the most advanced human civilizations before inexorable supernatural retribution.  The narrative is framed as an excerpt from ancient chronicles of the land of Mnar, emphasizing the passage of vast epochs and the persistence of forgotten deities such as Bokrug, the water-lizard idol central to the plot. 
    Though written before Lovecraft fully developed his signature cosmicism, the work anticipates elements of his later mythos, including otherworldly beings and the theme of humanity's insignificance against primordial forces, and remains one of the most praised and frequently anthologized pieces from his pre-1926 period. 

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    19 min
  • 23 - Dagon by H. P. Lovecraft.
    Dagon by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "Dagon" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in July 1917 and is one of the first stories that Lovecraft wrote as an adult. It was first published in the November 1919 edition of The Vagrant (issue #11). Dagon was later published in Weird Tales in October 1923. It is considered by many to be one of Lovecraft's most forward-looking stories.
    The story is the testament of a tortured, morphine-addicted man who relates an incident that occurred during his service as an officer during World War I. In the unnamed narrator's account, his cargo ship is captured by an Imperial German sea-raider in "one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific". He escapes on a lifeboat and drifts aimlessly, south of the equator, until he eventually finds himself stranded on "a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about [him] in monotonous undulations as far as [he] could see.... The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and less describable things which [he] saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain." He theorizes that this area was formerly a portion of the ocean floor thrown to the surface by volcanic activity, "exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths.".....

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    15 min
  • 22 - The Crawling Chaos by H. P. Lovecraft.
    The Crawling Chaos by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    The Crawling Chaos is a short story of weird fiction co-authored by H. P. Lovecraft and Winifred Virginia Jackson, first published in April 1921 in the amateur journal United Co-operative. The narrative opens with reflections on the effects of opium before describing a narrator's drug-induced hallucination that transports him to a surreal landscape, beginning with a peaceful green meadow and progressing through encounters with strange phenomena and an ultimate vision of cosmic horror. The story draws heavily on dream imagery, blending elements of psychological exploration with emerging themes of the unknowable and terrifying vastness beyond human comprehension. 
    The work represents an early collaboration in Lovecraft's writing career, with Jackson (who published under the pseudonym Elizabeth Berkeley for this story) providing foundational dream material from her own visionary experience that Lovecraft expanded into a complete tale of dread. It shares thematic and imagistic connections with another collaborative piece, The Green Meadow, reflecting Lovecraft's interest in using dreams as a source for cosmic horror fiction during his amateur journalism period. Though not as widely known as his later mythos stories, The Crawling Chaos illustrates his developing style. The title was borrowed from Lovecraft's earlier prose poem "Nyarlathotep" (1920), where the phrase "crawling chaos" first appears. 
    The story has been reprinted in various Lovecraft collections and remains a point of interest for scholars studying his collaborations and early dream-inspired narratives. It was published under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Berkeley (Jackson) and Lewis Theobald, Jr. (Lovecraft), reflecting the amateur press context in which much of his early work appeared.

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    17 min
  • 21 - Celephais by H. P. Lovecraft.
    Celephais by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "Celephaïs" is a fantasy story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in early November 1920 and first published in the May 1922 issue of the Rainbow. It is part of the body of work which later came to be known as Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. The title refers to a fictional city that later appears in other Dream Cycle stories, including Lovecraft's novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926).  
    Celephaïs was created in a dream by Kuranes (which is his name in dreams—his real name is not given) as a child, of the English landed gentry. Then as a man in his forties, alone and dispossessed in contemporary London, he dreams it again and, seeking it, slowly slips away to the dream-world. Finally knights guide him through medieval England to his ancestral estate, where he spent his boyhood, and then to Celephaïs. He became the king and chief god of the city, though his body washes up by his ancestors' tower, now owned by a parvenu.  
    In The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Randolph Carter pays a visit to Kuranes, finding that the great dreamer has grown so homesick for his native Cornwall, he has dreamed parts of Celephaïs to resemble the land of his boyhood. Kuranes advises Carter, on a mission to find his own dream-city, to be careful what he wishes for—he might get it.

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    20 min
  • 20 - The Cats of Ulthar by H. P. Lovecraft.
    The Cats of Ulthar by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "The Cats of Ulthar" is a short fantasy story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written on June 15, 1920, and first published in the November 1920 issue of the amateur press journal The Tryout.  
    The narrative is set in the fictional town of Ulthar, beyond the river Skai, and explains the origin of an ancient law forbidding anyone from killing a cat. It tells of a sinister old couple who cruelly trap and kill neighborhood cats, until a visiting caravan's orphaned boy loses his beloved black kitten to them, prompting a mysterious prayer that unleashes a supernatural retribution involving the town's cats. The couple is later found as picked skeletons, leading the villagers to enact the protective law. 
    The story reflects Lovecraft's deep affection for cats—he was an ardent cat lover and reportedly considered this one of his personal favorites—and stands out among his early works for its whimsical, fable-like tone rather than overt cosmic horror.
    Themes of reverence for felines, outsider justice, and mystical animal agency are central, with the cats portrayed as almost sacred beings capable of coordinated, otherworldly action. As an early entry in Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, it introduces the fantastical region of the Dreamlands, including Ulthar, which recurs in later tales such as The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. 
    Since its initial appearance, "The Cats of Ulthar" has been reprinted in numerous collections, including Dagon and Other Macabre Tales, The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft: Dreams of Terror and Death, and variorum editions of Lovecraft's fiction. It remains notable for its gentle humor, moral simplicity, and affectionate portrayal of cats amid Lovecraft's broader body of weird fiction. 

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    9 min
  • 19 - Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H. P. Lovecraft.
    Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft.  
    "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1919 and first published in October 1919 in the amateur journal Pine Cones, edited by John Clinton Pryor. The narrative, presented as a first-person account by an unnamed doctor interning at a psychiatric institution in upstate New York around 1900–1901, centers on the dream experiences of a patient named Joe Slater, a 40-year-old Catskill Mountains resident arrested for murder. Through telepathic intervention, the doctor uncovers a cosmic entity trapped within Slater's mind, revealing vast interstellar conflicts and the fragility of human sanity.  
    The story unfolds as the doctor, intrigued by the untapped potential of dreams, observes Slater's violent seizures and ecstatic mutterings about ethereal realms and golden cities among the stars. Slater, described as a coarse and degenerate figure, claims in his dream-states to inhabit a superior being persecuted by a tyrannical foe near the star Algol. Employing a telepathic device of his own design, modeled on wireless telegraphy instruments, the doctor enters Slater's subconscious on the night of February 21, 1901, where the imprisoned entity communicates directly, proclaiming vengeance with the chilling words: "Tonight I go as a Nemesis bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance." Slater dies during this contact, but the next day, February 22, 1901, astronomers report a brilliant nova erupting near Algol, suggesting the entity's liberation and retribution have manifested in the observable universe.  
    Classified as an early work in Lovecraft's oeuvre, "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" blends elements of science fiction and horror, introducing motifs of cosmic indifference and the inadequacy of human perception that would define his later tales. Dreams function as a gateway to incomprehensible realities, a theme central to the story and echoed in Lovecraft's broader exploration of the psyche's vulnerability to otherworldly influences. The tale's emphasis on telepathic technology and astronomical phenomena reflects Lovecraft's interest in blending pseudoscience with the supernatural, marking it as a precursor to his Dream Cycle and Cthulhu Mythos.



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    28 min
  • 18 - From Beyond by H. P. Lovecraft.
    From Beyond by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "From Beyond" is a horror genre short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934 (Vol. 1, No. 10).  
    The story is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator, detailing his experiences with a scientist named Crawford Tillinghast. Tillinghast creates an electronic device that emits a resonance wave, which stimulates an affected person's pineal gland, thereby allowing them to perceive planes of existence outside the scope of accepted reality.  
    Sharing the experience with Tillinghast, the narrator becomes aware of a translucent, interdimensional environment that overlaps our recognized reality. From this perspective, he witnesses hordes of strange and horrific creatures that defy description. Tillinghast reveals that he has used his machine to transport his house servants into the overlapping plane of reality. He also reveals that the effect works both ways, and allows the inter-dimensional creature denizens of the alternate dimension to perceive humans. Tillinghast's servants were attacked and killed by one such inter-dimensional entity, and Tillinghast informs the narrator that it is right behind him. Terrified beyond measure, the narrator pulls out his gun and shoots it at the machine, destroying it. Tillinghast dies immediately afterward from apoplexy. The police investigate the scene, and it is placed on record that Tillinghast murdered the servants despite their remains never being found.



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    19 min
  • 17 - The Temple by H. P. Lovecraft.
    The Temple by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    "The Temple" is a short story by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1920 and first published in the September 1925 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. The narrative is framed as the recovered logbook entries of Lieutenant-Commander Karl Heinrich, Graf von Altberg-Ehrenstein, captain of the Imperial German Navy submarine U-29 during World War I, detailing his commander's experiences after sinking an enemy vessel and discovering a peculiar ivory artifact from a deceased sailor. As the submarine becomes disabled and drifts uncontrollably southward into the North Atlantic, the crew grapples with escalating psychological disturbances, mutiny, and eerie marine phenomena, culminating in the commander's solitary confrontation with an ancient underwater ruin. 
    The story unfolds through dated log entries spanning from June 18 to August 20, 1917, beginning at coordinates 45° 16' N, 28° 34' W and progressing to uncharted depths near 20° N latitude. Lovecraft employs a first-person perspective to immerse readers in the narrator's rational yet increasingly fractured mindset, highlighting the isolation of submarine warfare amid wartime nationalism and the intrusion of the inexplicable. Key events include the artifact's hypnotic influence, unnatural oceanic currents, and visions of submerged architecture suggestive of a lost civilization, all contributing to the crew's progressive demoralization and demise. 
    Central to The Temple are Lovecraft's recurring motifs of cosmic horror, where human arrogance and scientific hubris yield to the indifferent vastness of the universe and the sea's hidden terrors. The narrative explores themes of obsession and madness, as the commander's initial disdain for superstition evolves into an irresistible compulsion toward the unknown, amplified by wartime trauma and sensory deprivation. Imagery of the ocean's depths and ancient monoliths evokes a sense of sublime dread, underscoring humanity's insignificance against primordial forces. Written shortly after World War I, the tale reflects Lovecraft's fascination with naval history and German militarism, though it transcends contemporary events to embody broader existential unease. 
    As one of Lovecraft's early published works in Weird Tales, The Temple marks a pivotal entry in his oeuvre, bridging his pre-war tales of psychological unease with later mythos explorations of submerged horrors. Its epistolary structure, drawing from maritime logs, enhances verisimilitude and has influenced subsequent sea-based weird fiction. The story's emphasis on atmospheric tension over graphic violence exemplifies Lovecraft's style, prioritizing intellectual horror and the erosion of rationality. 

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    39 min
  • 16 - The Other Gods by H. P. Lovecraft.
    The Other Gods by H. P. Lovecraft.  
    The Weird Fiction of Fantasy Fan Magazin by Various Authors.  
    The Fantasy Fan was a fanzine edited by Charles D. Hornig that featured exclusive works by many seminal figures from the golden period of weird fiction including H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, R. H. Barlow, Robert Bloch and many others. This collection seeks to compile together all the fiction published by The Fantasy Fan during its two-year run, excluding Clark Ashton Smith whose Fantasy Fan works have previously been published in Fantasy Fan.  

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    12 min

About Horror Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

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Horror Stories by Howard Phillips Lovecraft.  
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American author of weird fiction and horror, best known for originating the…