fragment of atmosphere

''naturally we cannot expect all weird tales to conform absolutely to any theoretical model. creative minds are uneven and the best of fabrics have their dull spots... moreover, much of the choicest weird work is unconcious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast... therefore we must judge a weird tale... by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... if the proper sensations are excited, such a "high spot" must be admited on its own merits as weird literature,''

h.p.lovecraft, super natural horror in literature.


"i have'nt read enough magic spells. last night i was captivated by the atharvaveda, the indian book of magic. uncanny things in that book--nowhere are human wishes expressed more openly. it is a completely elementary world, and if we really want to learn about human-kind, then we should look not only at myths but also at spells, which are naked."

elias canetti, notes from hampstead, english by john hargraves.

shunned apple trees

'' what i heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers. ... it was plainly unhealthy, perhaps because of the dampness and fungous growth in the cellar, the general sickish smell, the draughts of the hallways, or the quality of the well ... the general fact is, that the house was never regarded by the solid part of the community as in any real sense "haunted" ...

'' what is really beyond dispute is that a frightful proportion of persons died there; or more accurately, had died there, ... these persons were not all cut off suddenly by any one cause; rather did it seem that their vitality was isidiously sapped, ... which spoke ill for the salubriousness of the building. neighboring houses it must be added, seemed entirely free from the noxious quality. ...

'' in my childhood the shunned house was vacant, with barren, gnarled and terrible old trees, long queerly pale grass and nightmarishly misshapen weeds in the high terraced yard where birds never lingered. ... and i can still recall my youthful terror not only at the morbid strangeness of this sinister vegetation, but at the eldritch atmosphere and odour of the delapidated house, whose unlocked front door was often entered in quest of shudders ...

'' it is still spectral, but its strangeness fascinates me, and i shall find mixed with my relief a queer regret when it is torn down to make way for a tawdry shop or vulgar apartment building. the barren old trees in the yard have begun to bear small, sweet apples, and last year the birds nested in their gnarled boughs. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the shunned house.

interview with the town drunkard

'' thar's whar it all begun--that cursed place of wickedness whar the deep water starts ... ol' cap'n obed done it--him that faound aout more'n was good fer him in the saouth sea islands ... told abaout an island east of otaheite whar they was a lot o' stone ruins oldr'n anybody knew anything abaout, kind o' like them on ponape, in the carolines, but with carvin's of faces that looked like the big statues on easter island. they was a little volcanic island near thar, too, whar they was other ruins with diff'rent carvin's--ruins all wore away like they'd ben under the sea onct, an' with picters of awful monsters all over 'em ...

'' the natives araound thar had all the fish they cud ketch, an' sported bracelets an' armlets an' headrigs made aout of a queer kind o' gold an' covered with picters o' monsters just like the ones carved over them ruins on the little island ... nobody cud git aout o' them whar they got all the stuff, an' all the other natives wondered haow they managed to find fish in plenty even when the very next islands had lean pickins. ...

'' it took obed to git the truth aout o' them heathen. i dunt know haow he done it ... finally wormed the story aout o' the chief walakea, they called him. nobody but obed ud ever a believed the old yeller devil, but the cap'n cud read folks like they was a books. ... wal, sir, obed he larnt that they's things on this arth as most folks never heard abaout--an wouldnt believe if they did hear. it seems the kanakys was sacrificin' heaps o' their young men and maidens to some kinds o' god-things that lived under the sea, an' gitten all kinds o' favour in return. ... mebbe they was the kind o' critters as got all the mermaid stories an sech started. ...

'' them things liked human sacrifices. ... what they done to the victems it ain't fer me to say, an' i guess obed wa'nt none to sharp abaout askin; but it was alrigtht with the heathens, ... what the things agreed to give in return was plenty o' fish--they druv'em in from all over the sea--an a few gold-like things naow an' then ...

'' walakea, he shewed obed a lot o' rites and incantations as had to do with the sea-things ... in the end he gave him a funny kind o' thingumajig made aout o' lead or something, that he said ud bring up the fish things from any place in the water whar they might be a nest of 'em. the idee was to drop it daown with the right kind o' prayers an' sech. ''

i: thingumajig at fishingcross-tm.

h.p.lovecraft, the shadow over innsmouth.

because the stars say so ...

'' they worshipped so they said the great old ones who lived ages before there where any man, and who came to the young world out of the sky. those old ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea ... mankind was not absolutely alone among the conscious things of earth, for shapes came out of the dark to visit the faithful few. but these were not the great old ones. no man had ever seen the old ones. ...

'' there had been aeons when other things ruled on the earth, ... they all died vast epochs of time before man came,but there were arts which could revive them when the stars come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity ... when the stars were right, they could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, they could not live. but although they no longer lived, they would never really die. they all lay in stone houses in their great city of r'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for them. ...

'' in the elder time chosen men had talked with the entombed old ones in dreams, but had then something had happened. the great stone city r'leyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres , had sunk beneath the waves; ... but memory never died, and high-priests said that the city would rise again when the stars were right. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.

whippoorwill's lament

'' then too the natives are mortally afraid of the numerous whippoorwills which grow vocal on warm nights. it is vowed that the birds are psyhchopomps lying in wait for the souls of the dying, and that they time their eery cries in unison with the sufferer's struggling breath. if they can catch the fleeing soul when it leaves the body, they instantly flutter away chittering in daemonic laughter; but if they fail, they subside gradually into a disappointed silence ...

'' old whateley noticed the growing number of whippoorwills that would come out of cold spring glen to chirp under his window at night. he seemed to regard the circumstance as one of great significance, and told the loungers at osborn's that he thought his time had almost come. "they whistle jest in time with my breathin' naow," he said, "an' i guess they're gitten ready to ketch my soul. they know its a-goin' aout an' dun't calc'late to miss it. yew'll know boys, arter im gone, whether they git me er not. ef they dew, they'll keep up a-singing' and laffin till break o' day. ef they dun't they'll kinder quiet daown like. i expeck them an' the souls they hunt fer hev some pretty tough tussles sometimes" ...

'' that hallowe'en the hill noises sounded louder than ever, and fire burned on sentinal hill as usual; but people paid more attention to the rhythmical screaming of vast flocks of unnaturally belated whippoorwills which seemed to be assembled near the unlighted whateley farmhouse. after midnight their shrill notes burst into a kind of pandaemonic cachinnation which filled all the country side, and not until dawn did they finally quiet down. then they vanished hurrying southward where they were fully a month overdue. what this meant no one could be quite certain till later. ...

'' a loud chourus of whippoorwills among the shrubbery had commenced a damnably rhythmical piping, as if in unison with the last breaths of a dying man. ... outside the window the shrilling of the whippoorwills had suddenly ceased, and above the murmurs of the gathering crowd there came the sound of panic struck whirring and fluttering. against the moon vast crowds of feathery watchers rose and raced from sight, frantic at that which they had sought for prey ... dogs howled from the distance, green grass and foliage wilted to a curious, sickley yellow-grey, and over field and forest were scattered the bodies of dead whipporwills. ''

i: caprimulgiforme songs at naturesongs.

h.p.lovecraft, the dunwich horror.

s.latitude 47d 9', w.longitude 126d 43'47

'' a coast line of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror--the nightmare corpse-city of r'lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars. ...

'' i suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great cthulhu was buried actually emerged from the waters. when i think of the extent of all that may be brooding down there i almost wish to kill myself forthwith. ''

h.p.lovecraft, the call of cthulhu.