Showing results by narrator "Peter Coates" in All Categories

"Old Bugs" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, probably written shortly before July 1919. It was first published in the Arkham House book The Shuttered Room and Other Pieces (1959) With the onset of Prohibition, the Sheehan Billiard Room in Chicago became a sordid haunt for hard drinkers. A certain Old Bugs, a mature man corroded by vices but capable of showing, at long intervals, the typical sensitivity of educated people works as a kitchen cleaner.

"The Shadow Out of Time" is a novella by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written between November 1934 and February 1935, it was first published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. The story describes time and space travel by mind transfer. The premise is that a person in a given place and time can switch bodies with someone who is elsewhere or elsewhen. Other writers have re-used this concept in later works, such as drinking tea from Red Forest leaves in the television series 12 Monkeys and long-range communication stones in the Stargate SG-1 television series.

The story is recounted by the protagonist, Count Antoine de C, in the first person. Hundreds of years ago, Antoine's noble ancestor was responsible for the death of a dark wizard, Michel Mauvais. The wizard's son, Charles le Sorcier, swore revenge on not only him but all his descendants, cursing them to die on reaching the age of 32. The protagonist recounts how his ancestors all died in some mysterious way around the age of 32. The line has dwindled and the castle has been left to fall into disrepair, tower by tower.

"The Evil Clergyman" is an excerpt from a letter written by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft in 1933. After his death, it was published in the April 1939 issue of Weird Tales as a short story. The story was later adapted into the unreleased 1987 anthology film Pulse Pounder. The story begins in the attic of an ancient house. The narrator's companion refers to the former owner of the house and the presumably violent end that befell him.

"Sweet Ermengarde" is a short comic story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft under the pseudonym "Percy Simple". As a comedy it is a curiosity of his early writing, and was probably written between 1919 and 1921; Lovecraft scholars state it is "the only work of fiction by HPL that cannot be dated with precision." It was first published in the Arkham House collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep (1943).

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. The title refers to a fictional city that later appears in Lovecraft's Dream Cycle, including his 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. As a man in his forties, alone and dispossessed in contemporary London, he dreams it again and then, seeking it, slowly slips away to the dream-world.

Beyond the Wall of Sleep is a science fiction short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1919 and first published in the amateur publication Pine Cones in October 1919. A former intern and a worker of a mental hospital relates his experience with Joe Slater, an inmate who died at the facility a few weeks after being confined as a criminally insane murderer...

The Tree is a macabre short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920, and published in October 1921 in The Tryout. Set in ancient Greece, the story concerns two sculptors who accept a commission with ironic consequences. On a slope of Mount Maenalus in Arcadia is an olive grove that grows around a marble tomb and the ruin of an old villa. There, one gigantic tree resembles a frighteningly distorted man, and the roots of the tree have shifted the blocks of the tomb.

The Shadow over Innsmouth is a horror novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written in November–December 1931. It forms part of the Cthulhu Mythos, using its motif of a malign undersea civilization, and references several shared elements of the Mythos, including place-names, mythical creatures, and invocations. The Shadow over Innsmouth is the only Lovecraft story that was published in book form during his lifetime. The narrator is a student conducting an antiquarian tour of New England.

The Street is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in late 1919 and first published in the December 1920 issue of the Wolverine amateur journal. The story traces the history of the titular street in a New England city, presumably Boston, from its first beginnings as "but a path" in colonial times to a quasi-supernatural occurrence in the years immediately following World War I.

The Very Old Folk is the name given by publishers to a story found in the letter sent to Donald Wandrei by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft on 3 November 1927. It is a recording of a dream, where the protagonist is a Roman military official in the Vascon country near Pompelo. The countryside is, every year, ravaged by terrible hill people who kidnap citizens and perform cruel rituals at a Sabbath. The narrator wishes to lead a military expedition to crush these hill folk, as a feeling of approaching evil has enveloped the countryside, due to a riot between the citizens and the hill people.

Ibid is a parody by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1927 or 1928, and first published in the January 1938, issue of O-Wash-Ta-Nong. Ibid is a mock biography of the Roman scholar Ibidus (486–587), whose masterpiece was Op. Cit., "wherein all the significant undercurrents of Graeco-Roman thought were crystallized once and for all." The piece traces the skull of Ibidus, once the possession of Charlemagne, William the Conqueror and other notables, to the United States, where it travels via Salem, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island to a prairie dog hole in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, also known as just Arthur Jermyn or The White Ape, is a short story in the horror fiction genre written by H. P. Lovecraft 1920. The themes of the story are tainted ancestry, knowledge that it would be best to remain unaware of, and a reality which human understanding finds intolerable.

Supernatural Horror in Literature is a essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between November 1925 and May 1927, first published in August 1927, and then revised and expanded during 1933–1934. Lovecraft's essay ranges widely, but he first examines the beginnings of weird fiction in the early gothic novel.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is a novella by H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) published by Arkham House posthumously in 1943 in the collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, it was completed on January 22, 1927 and was unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing.

The Statement of Randolph Carter is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written December 1919, it was first published in The Vagrant, May 1920. It tells of a traumatic event in the life of Randolph Carter, a student of the occult loosely representing Lovecraft himself. It is the first story in which Carter appears and is part of Lovecraft's Dream Cycle.

The Strange High House in the Mist is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written on November 9, 1926, it was first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales. An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that the story may have been inspired by Lord Dunsany's Chronicles of Rodriguez, in which strange sights can be seen from a wizard's house on a crag.

In the Vault is a short story by American horror fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft, written on September 18, 1925 and first published in the November 1925 issue of the amateur press journal Tryout. George Birch, undertaker for the New England town of Peck Valley, finds himself trapped in the vault where coffins are stored during winter for burial in the spring. When Birch stacks the coffins to reach a transom window, his feet break through the lid of the top coffin, injuring his ankles and forcing him to crawl out of the vault.

Cool Air is a short story by the American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written in March 1926 and published in the March 1928 issue of Tales of Magic and Mystery. The narrator offers a story to explain why a "draught of cool air" is the most detestable thing to him.

From Beyond is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. It was written in 1920 and was first published in The Fantasy Fan in June 1934. The story is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator and details 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.