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Howard Philip Lovecraft is often regarded as the king of this subgenre of horror — of course, he gave his name to one of the most famous iterations of cosmic horror. Lovecraft had a thoroughly miserable life, being sheltered in this birthplace of New England, and raised to find anything he didn't understand terrifying and dangerous. Lovecraft was crippled by his fear of everything, from blood, guts, and gore to mathematics, the ocean, and anyone of a different ethnicity to himself. This led to him being the perfect man to father a whole new generation of horror nerds.
The video I've linked to the right is one of my first real encounters with Lovecraft. This YouTube channel does a very good job of watering down a lot of Lovecraft's works, as well as concisely explain his life story. I would highly recommend watching this to gain a summary of a few of the books I will be discussing here.
Without further ado, I would like to examine a few of Lovecraft's works. Once again, I would like to refer to the three questions I have set for myself; how does the short story in question capture the reader's fear of the unknown? How are these aspects embedded into the story and described aesthetics? And are there any other types of fear and horror utilised in this story?
The Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu
The Call of Cthulhu is probably Lovecraft's most famous book — he finished writing it in 1926, when he was 36, however it was not published until two years later, where it was put into a magazine for short horror stories. To summarise, it is essentially a story narrated by a man named Francis Wayland Thurston who discovers the notes of his great uncle George Angell, which contain the tale of a cult that worships a great deity named Cthulhu. It all starts when a man reports to Angell of incapacitating nightmares filled with dripping stone and voices calling about Cthulhu in a language he can't comprehend. The name Cthulhu is familiar to Angell, as he had encountered a statuette depicting this figure which was used as a centrepiece in a hellish cult that had killed multiple innocent people. This cult worshipped “The Old Ones”, who are deities described as having “lived ages before there were any men, and who came to the young world out of the sky. Those Old Ones were gone now, inside the earth and under the sea; but their dead bodies had told their secrets in dreams to the first men, who formed a cult which had never died.” Thurston goes on to read the notes of a sailor who came across a boat full of these cultists, and sailed along its original course to find an island that did not appear on any maps. On this island they found a giant door which, when opened, unveiled Cthulhu himself, who killed most of the sailors from fright. The tale ends with the narrator fearful that Cthulhu's cult might come for him now that he knows so much.
There is no doubt that the main form of horror this short story portrays is cosmic and eldritch — the first line of the short story is the chilling “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.” This is pretty much the entire sentiment behind cosmic horror, and of course Lovecraft is the best of the best when it comes to portraying this fear. The mental image of R'lyeh, the ancient dripping city sunk to the ocean bed which the Old Ones reside in, is grotesque and captivating. The horrible alien form we are presented with when Cthulhu is described is equally horrifying.
The narrator describes the small statue of the deity found as such; “If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings”. This is the generally accepted image we as a society have come to view was Cthulhu, and in fact we have a recorded doodle from Lovecraft himself that you can see to the right depicting the statuette. Now, you might think that because Lovecraft outright described what Cthulhu looks like to the reader, it takes away an aspect of the unknown and unfathomable; it is my belief, however, that the wording and description of this statuette adds to the horror. Just the idea of a terrifying beast unknown by man that can startle even scientists and professors is more terrifying than the actual physical appearance of Cthulhu ever will be.
ChatGPT's depiction of seplophobia, from Reddit user u/mrpie1324
Adobe Firefly's depiction of thalassophobia
There are, of course, other forms of horror baked into this story, apart from cosmic horror. Thalassophobia, the fear of the ocean, can be observed as a result of not only the underwater city of R'lyeh, but also the fish-y aspects of Cthulhu's design. Lovecraft's mythos is often affiliated with sea horrors, especially in several of his other works (notably A Shadow Over Innsmouth). There are also themes of seplophobia, the fear of decay, and of course themes of xenophobia when it comes to the “colourful” descriptions of the enemy cultists.
Overall, however, the themes of cosmic horror prevail — the dreams depicted by artists have overwhelming themes of unknown and incomprehensible, and the effect seeing Cthulhu in the flesh gave to the sailors who went to R'lyeh is presented as terrifying and indescribable.
I asked AI to depict thalassophobia and seplophobia, as the two left images are what were produced.
Adobe Firefly's visual depictions of the quotation given at the beginning of Call of Cthulhu “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space
The Colour Out of Space was, according to Wikipedia, Lovecraft's personal favourite of all his short stories. Ignoring all the glaring scientific plot holes (Lovecraft was never one for the sciences) this is a truly terrifying tale.
The story is narrated by an unnamed surveyor who is trying to unveil the mystery of a blasted heath. He learns from a crazy old man named Ammi Pierce that a farmer named Nahum Gardner and his family used to live on the farm, and one day a meteorite struck the farm — scientists said the meteorite was unlike anything seen before, and contained small bubbles of colours never seen before by man, which popped on impact. Nahum's crops began to grow glossy and ripe, however upon harvest tasted terrible. The farm begins to glow strange colours, and eventually Nahum's wife goes mad and is locked in the attic. After a while people begin to notice that the well water tastes awful, Nahum's first son goes mad and dies, and his second son goes missing trying to get well water one day. After several months, Ammi goes to visit Nahum to make sure he's alright, and finds that he is terribly ill and decaying. Ammi is unable to describe to our narrator the horrors he saw in the attic, simply saying “As it was […] the blasphemous monstrosity which confronted him, and which all too clearly had shared the nameless fate of [Nahum's son]. But the terrible thing about this horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble.” It turns out that the colour from the meteor was living in the well and sapping the life from the farm and its inhabitants. As Ammi and his fellows look on, the colour surges from the well and back into space — however: “And from that stricken, far-away spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again […]. It was just a colour—but not any colour of our earth or heavens. And because Ammi recognised that colour, and knew that this last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well […].”
This short story uses the ago old sentiment of anything you can't understand can be twisted and retold until it is unrecognisable, grotesque, and unfathomable. Even something as simple as colour can become something terrible, if you make it. This is why The Colour Out of Space is one of my favourite pieces of cosmic horror, and why it is one of the most terrifying of Lovecraft's works.
The aesthetic of this book really does speak for itself; the colour in the well is described by Ammi as “The colour […] was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all.” The whole point of the book is that these colours are sapping the life from the farm — by the end of the book, everything is oozing these colours. However, the colour itself is not even able to be described, it is so alien. This paints a truly mind-boggling picture of the farm in question, as we are left wondering what, if anything, this strange colour resembles.
“Astraphobia” is the fear of space, and the horror of knowing that we're either all alone in the universe, or we're not (two sentiments that are both equally terrifying). The vastness and near limitless possibilities of space is jarring, and especially at a time when scientific discoveries might not have been as advanced or well-known to the general populous. H.P. Lovecraft is almost aided by his lack of scientific knowledge, as it helps him to ferment that cosmic horror of an unloving universe, where the possibilities are endless, and the terrors can be as incomprehensible as you like.
The Colour Out of Space utilises this fear, and captures the essence of something horrifying that man can never know by relating that to alien life and unintelligible horrors from outer space.
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