HYPNOS first appeared in The National Amateur vol. 45, no. 5 (May 1923). It is one of Lovecraft’s key early entries in his Dream Cycle, exploring themes of altered consciousness, artistic obsession, and the boundaries of reality.

The story is narrated by an unnamed sculptor who forms an intense intellectual and psychic bond with a mysterious, beautiful man he meets in a train station. Together, they embark on increasingly dangerous experiments in dream projection and mental exploration, using opiates and willpower to transcend the physical world and venture into strange cosmic realms.