Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss
    The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss
    The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss

    By H. P. Lovecraft and George Henry Weiss

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When strange, monstrous carcasses are observed floating in the river following a historic flood in Vermont, instructor of literature Albert N. Wilmarth becomes involved in the controversial argument as to their authenticity. Sceptical, he embarks on an investigation of his own that pushes the boundaries of credulity, leading him to a horrific cult of ancient power and a race of extra-terrestrial beings with malign intentions. “The Whisperer in Darkness” is a 1931 novella by H. P. Lovecraft and part of his famous "Cthulhu Mythos". A chilling example of horror fiction by master of the genre not to be missed by those who have read and enjoyed others in Lovecraft's Cthulhu series. Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937) was an American writer of supernatural horror fiction. Though his works remained largely unknown and did not furnish him with a decent living, Lovecraft is today considered to be among the most significant writers of supernatural horror fiction of the twentieth century. Other notable works by this author include: “The Call of Cthulhu”, “The Rats in the Walls”, and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Read & Co. is publishing this classic work now as part of our “Fantasy and Horror Classics” imprint in a new edition with a dedication by George Henry Weiss.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateMar 31, 2016
    ISBN9781473360303
    The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss
    Author

    H. P. Lovecraft

    Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

    Read more from H. P. Lovecraft

    Related to The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A Warning To The Fortean

      Jul 14, 2022

      A Warning To The Fortean
      9 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 4, 2021

      CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS The correspondence about the Whispering Corner in Lytchett Maltravers, Dorset [FT410:73] brings to mind the experienc

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 31, 2022

      As a successful music producer (Prince, David Byrne) turned cognitive neurologist, Susan Rogers is unusually well qualified to investigate the mysterious, drug-like impact music has on the physical body and the emotional mind. But it is a bold soul w

      6 min read

    • Article

      Going Dutch

      Dec 8, 2021

      THIS work covers a period neatly book-ended by two sea journeys: those of Matilda, William the Conqueror’s Flemish-speaking wife, and the Dutch William of Orange in 1688. Between the two dates, the fortunes of Anglo-Dutch literary relations, like tho

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Last Naturalist

      Mar 1, 2022

      The Last Naturalist
      21 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Mar 24, 2022

      CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS The very interesting report on ‘Man Of Russia’ and his outlandish claims about giant trees [FT415:9] got me thinking

      14 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 7, 2021

      Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Walls Around Us

      Sep 17, 2020

      The Walls Around Us
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cone Rangers

      Oct 26, 2023

      Cone Rangers
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Spectre Of The Past

      Jan 25, 2024

      The Spectre Of The Past
      6 min read

    • Article

      Remastering The Mythos: Questions For Ruthanna Emrys

      May 4, 2017

      When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," her sympathies were squarely with the monsters — and that sympathy was the seed of her new book, Winter Tide.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Sep 3, 2019

      And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons. —Ogden Nash, “Everybody Tells Me Everything,” The Face Is Familiar, 1941 Someone goes by wearing a

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Devil Strides Our Countryside

      Jan 26, 2023

      TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Jeremy Harte Reaktion Books 2022 Hb, 296pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781789146509 One of the most beloved of Doctor Who stories has long been 1971’s “The Daemons”. Over the cou

      15 min read

    • Article

      Shelf Life

      Nov 2, 2023

      I’m not sure if I can truly pinpoint the moment my new novel Once A Monster was born – but I can trace the history of some of its most important ingredients. As a boy, looking through an old illustrated book of Greek myths, and being at once captiva

      5 min read

    • Article

      “Properties of Thirst”

      Jul 5, 2022

      “Properties of Thirst”
      11 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 4, 2018

      I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. —Fred Allen I have always wondered, in reading travels, at the childish joy travellers felt at meeting people they knew, and their sense of loneliness when they did not, in

      4 min read

    • Article

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age

      Jun 11, 2019

      Orlando Spirit Of The Age
      5 min read

    • Article

      Liberace With Attitude

      Apr 20, 2023

      Carl Abrahamsson Inner Traditions 2022 Pb, 424pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781644112410 Given the scope of available candidates for the title of Devil incarnate, one finds it difficult to imagine that Anton LaVey would even get a look in! LaVey was born in Chic

      8 min read

    • Article

      Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels

      Feb 3, 2022

      The paradox of imagined apocalypses is that they’re always more about the present than the future. Here's a list of a few haunting and evocative titles. The post Nine Haunting Postapocalyptic Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Whisperer in Darkness (Fantasy and Horror Classics) - H. P. Lovecraft

      1.png

      THE

      WHISPERER

      IN DARKNESS

      Fantasy & Horror Classics

      By

      H. P. LOVECRAFT

      WITH A

      DEDICATION BY

      GEORGE HENRY WEISS

      First published in 1931

      Copyright © 2020 Fantasy and Horror Classics

      This edition is published by Fantasy and Horror Classics,

      an imprint of Read & Co.

      This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

      way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available

      from the British Library.

      Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

      For more information visit

      www.readandcobooks.co.uk

      To

      Howard Phillips Lovecraft

      Essayist, Poet &

      Master-writer of the Weird

      1890-1937

      He lived—and now is dead beyond all knowing

      Of life and death: the vast and formless scheme

      Behind the face of nature ever showing

      Has swallowed up the dreamer and the dream.

      But brief the hour he had upon the stream

      Of timeless time from past to future flowing

      To lift his sail and catch the luminous gleam

      Of stars that marked his coming and his going

      Before he vanished: yet the brilliant wake

      His passing left is vivid on the tide

      And for the countless centuries will abide:

      The genius that no death can ever take

      Crowns him immortal, though a man has died.

      Francis Flagg

      (George Henry Weiss)

      Contents

      H. P. Lovecraft

      I

      II

      III

      IV

      V

      VI

      VII

      VIII

      H. P. Lovecraft

      Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Rhode Island, USA. Although a sickly boy, Lovecraft began writing at a very young age, quickly developing a deep and abiding interest in science. At just sixteen he was writing a monthly astronomy column for his local newspaper. However, in 1908, Lovecraft suffered a nervous breakdown and failed to get into university, sparking a period of five years in which he all but vanished.

      In 1913, Lovecraft was invited to join the UAPA (United Amateur Press Association)—a development which re-invigorated his writing. In 1917, he began to focus on fiction, producing such well-known early stories as Dagon and A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson. In 1924, Lovecraft married and moved to New York, but he disliked life there intensely, and struggled to find work. A few years later, penniless and now divorced, he returned to Rhode Island. It was here, during the last decade of his life, that Lovecraft produced the vast majority of his best-known fiction, including The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Thing on the Doorstep and arguably his most famous story, The Call of Cthulhu. Having suffered from cancer of the small intestine for more than a year, Lovecraft died in March of 1937.

      THE WHISPERER

      IN DARKNESS

      I

      Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred—that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night—is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep extent to which I shared the information and speculations of Henry Akeley, the things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness of the impression produced on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong in my hideous inference. For after all, Akeley’s disappearance establishes nothing. People found nothing amiss in his house despite the bullet-marks on the outside and inside. It was just as though he had walked out casually for a ramble in the hills and failed to return. There was not even a sign that a guest had been there, or that those horrible cylinders and machines had been stored in the study. That he had mortally feared the crowded green hills and endless trickle of brooks among which he had been born and reared, means nothing at all, either; for thousands are subject to just such morbid fears. Eccentricity, moreover, could easily account for his strange acts and apprehensions toward the last.

      The whole matter began, so far as I am concerned, with the historic and unprecedented Vermont floods of November 3, 1927. I was then, as now, an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, and an enthusiastic amateur student of New England folklore. Shortly after the flood, amidst the varied reports of hardship, suffering, and organised relief which filled the press, there appeared certain odd stories of things found floating in some of the swollen rivers; so that many of my friends embarked on curious discussions and appealed to me to shed what light I could on the subject. I felt flattered at having my folklore study taken so seriously, and did what I could to belittle the wild, vague tales which seemed so clearly an outgrowth of old rustic superstitions. It amused me to find several persons of education who insisted that some stratum of obscure, distorted fact might underlie the rumours.

      The tales thus brought to my notice came mostly through newspaper cuttings; though one yarn had an oral source and was repeated to a friend of mine in a letter from his mother in Hardwick, Vermont. The type of thing described was essentially the same in all cases, though there seemed to be three separate instances involved—one connected with the Winooski River near Montpelier, another attached to the West River in Windham County beyond Newfane, and a third centring in the Passumpsic in Caledonia County above Lyndonville. Of course many of the stray items mentioned other instances, but on analysis they all seemed to boil down to these three. In each case country folk reported seeing one or more very bizarre and disturbing objects in the surging waters that poured down from the unfrequented hills, and there was a widespread tendency to connect these sights with a primitive, half-forgotten cycle of whispered legend which old people resurrected for the occasion.

      What people thought they saw were organic shapes not quite like any they had ever seen before. Naturally, there were many human bodies washed along by the streams in that tragic period; but those who described these strange shapes felt quite sure that they were not human, despite some superficial resemblances in size and general outline. Nor, said the witnesses, could they have been any kind of animal known to Vermont. They were pinkish things about five feet long; with crustaceous bodies bearing vast pairs of dorsal fins or membraneous wings and several sets of articulated limbs, and with a sort of convoluted ellipsoid, covered with multitudes of very short antennae, where a head would ordinarily be. It was really remarkable how closely the reports from different sources tended to coincide; though the wonder was lessened by the fact that the old legends, shared at one time throughout the hill country, furnished a morbidly vivid picture which might well have coloured the imaginations of all the witnesses concerned. It was my conclusion that such witnesses—in every case naive and simple backwoods folk—had glimpsed the battered and bloated bodies of human beings or farm animals in the whirling currents; and had allowed the half-remembered folklore to invest these pitiful objects with fantastic attributes.

      The ancient folklore, while cloudy, evasive, and largely forgotten by the present generation, was of a highly singular character, and obviously reflected the influence of still earlier Indian tales. I knew it well, though I had never been in Vermont, through the exceedingly rare monograph of Eli Davenport, which embraces material orally obtained prior to 1839 among the oldest people of the state. This material, moreover, closely coincided with tales which I had personally heard from elderly rustics in the mountains of New Hampshire. Briefly summarised, it hinted at a hidden race of monstrous beings which lurked somewhere among the remoter hills—in the deep woods of the highest

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1