Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Ian Kinane

  “The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare

  “Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,

  Knocking on the moonlit door;

  And his horse in the silence champ’d the grasses

  Of the forest’s ferny floor:

  And a bird flew up out of the turret,

  Above the Traveller’s head:

  And he smote upon the door again a second time;

  “Is there anybody there?” he said.

  But no one descended to the Traveller;

  No head from the leaf-fringed sill

  Lean’d over and look’d into his grey eyes,

  Where he stood perplex’d and still.

  But only a host of phantom listeners

  That dwelt in the lone house then

  Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

  To that voice from the world of men:

  Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

  That goes down to the empty hall,

  Hearkening in an air stirr’d and shaken

  By the lonely Traveller’s call.

  And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

  Their stillness answering his cry,

  While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

  ‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;

  For he suddenly smote on the door, even

  Louder, and lifted his head:—

  “Tell them I came, and no one answer’d,

  That I kept my word,” he said.

  Never the least stir made the listeners,

  Though every word he spake

  Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

  From the one man left awake:

  Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

  And the sound of iron on stone,

  And how the silence surged softly backward,

  When the plunging hoofs were gone. (De la Mare 1916, 13)

  Source: De La Mare, Walter. 1916. “The Listeners.” In The Poetry Review of America. William Stanley Braithwaite and Joseph Lebowich, editors. Vol. 1 (May). Cambridge, MA: Poetry Review Company.

  See also: de la Mare, Walter; “Out of the Deep”; The Return.

  Further Reading

  Avery, Gillian, and Julia Briggs. 1989. Children and Their Books: A Celebration of the Works of Iona and Peter Opie. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

  Bentinck, A. 1991. “De la Mare’s ‘The Listeners.’” Explicator 50, no. 1 (Fall): 33–35.

  de la Mare, Walter. [1912] 2010. The Listeners, and Other Poems. Charleston: Nabu Press.

  Duffin, Henry Charles. 1949. Walter de la Mare: A Study of his Poetry. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.

  Pierson, Robert M. 1964. “The Meter of ‘The Listeners.’” English Studies 45, no. 5 (October): 373–381.

  Reid, Forrest. 1929. Walter de la Mare: A Critical Study. New York: Holt.

  LONG, FRANK BELKNAP (1901–1994)

  Frank Belknap Long was an American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction who was best known as a friend and disciple of groundbreaking weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. He was the first writer to build on the mythology Lovecraft was elaborating in his stories and that would eventually serve as the foundation for the shared fictional universe referred to as the Cthulhu Mythos.

  Lovecraft made Long’s acquaintance in 1921 after reading his Edgar Allan Poe pastiche “The Eye Above the Mantel” in United Amateur, a magazine to which Lovecraft himself contributed. Several years later he recommended Long’s fiction to Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright, who published Long’s first professional sale, “The Desert Lich,” in the magazine’s November 1924 issue. The themes of Long’s stories were typical of early Weird Tales fare: native curses in “Death Waters” (1924), giant sea monsters in “The Ocean Leech” (1925), and ancient sorceries in “The Black Druid (1930) and “A Visitor from Egypt” (1930). One of his most reprinted Weird Tales stories, “Second Night Out” (aka “The Dead Black Thing,” 1933), nods to F. Marion Crawford’s classic tale “The Upper Berth” in its account of a monster that regularly manifests aboard a ship at a particular nautical crossing. Another Weird Tales sale, “The Man with a Thousand Legs” (1927), incorporated significant science fiction elements, and, in fact, Long went on to write more science fiction than supernatural fiction over the course of his career.

  Long first referenced elements from Lovecraft’s fiction in his tale “The Dog-Eared God” (1926). His story “The Space Eaters” (1928), which features characters based on Lovecraft and himself attempting to survive an invasion by the titular otherworldly monsters, which are modeled on horrors in Lovecraft’s own stories, is now regarded the first tale of the Cthulhu Mythos not written by Lovecraft himself. Although Lovecraft gave his blessing to the story and eventually referenced it in his own work, Long’s failure to evoke a sense of horror commensurate with the cosmic horrors of Lovecraft’s fiction showed, from the outset, the challenge that contributors to the Cthulhu Mythos other than Lovecraft faced when trying to work with the same thematic materials. “The Hounds of Tindalos” (1929), another tale that evoked Long and Lovecraft’s friendship in a plot involving ravening monsters from beyond space and time, would become the title tale of Long’s first short-fiction collection, published in 1946. The Horror from the Hills (1931) was a collaboration of sorts between Long and Lovecraft, insofar as this tale of the monstrous entity Chaugnar Faugn’s incursion into our world incorporated a chapter that was actually Lovecraft’s transcription of one of his dreams.

  “The Hounds of Tindalos”: A Cthulhu Mythos Classic

  “The Hounds of Tindalos” was first published in the March 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It is Frank Belknap Long’s best-known tale, and it became a part of the shared universe of Lovecraftian horror stories by diverse hands known today as the Cthulhu Mythos when H. P. Lovecraft, Long’s friend and mentor, referenced the monsters named in its title two years later in his tale “The Whisperer in Darkness.”

  In Long’s story, the main character, Halpin, is a writer of occult fiction who seeks to transcend the limits of known space and time under the influence of a mind-expanding drug. Describing his visions while under the drug’s influence to an assistant named Frank, Chalmers travels back in time before the origins of organic life, where he finds another type of time that is curved and angular. When malignant beings of angular time that he refers to as the Hounds of Tindalos “scent” him, they begin their pursuit. Chalmers attempts to thwart the beings by plastering the architectural angles in his apartment into curves, since entities in angular time cannot enter curved time—but a freak earthquake shakes the plaster loose, with horrifying results.

  The story features characters modeled on Lovecraft himself (Chalmers) and other members of the Lovecraft circle—a narrative quirk that, as much as the evocation of monstrous entities beyond space and time, was to become a trademark of Cthulhu Mythos fiction. It served as the title story for Long’s first short-fiction collection, published by Arkham House in 1946, and August Derleth included it in the seminal 1969 anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Over the years numerous horror writers including Brian Lumley, Thomas Monteleone, and John Ajvide Lindqvist have paid tribute to Long’s story by referencing it in their own work.

  Stefan R. Dziemianowicz

  Long was one of the few writers for Weird Tales who also wrote for Unknown (later Unknown Worlds), the magazine of logical fantasy fiction that was a sister publication to Golden Age science fiction magazine Astounding Science-Fiction. His contributions show greater sophistication than much of his work for Weird Tales, especially “Fisherman’s Luck” (1940) and “Step into My Garden” (1942), which deploy elements of classical mythology, and “Johnny on the Spot” (1939), which presents a literal assignation with death in the style of a hardboiled crime story.

  By the 1940s Long had shifted to writing science fiction almost entirely and eventually placed stories in nearly every major science fiction magazine,
including Astounding, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Startling Stories. He also wrote for a variety of comic books, most notably Adventures into the Unknown. In the 1950s and 1960s he served in an editorial capacity on a number of magazines, among them Satellite Science Fiction, Fantastic Universe, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. He also wrote nine modern Gothic romance novels, all but one under the pseudonym Lyda Belknap Long. Long was a published poet for nearly as long as he was a fiction writer, and his collections of verse include A Man from Genoa and Other Poems (1926), The Goblin Tower (1928), and In Mayan Splendor (1977). Collections of his weird tales and science fiction include The Rim of Unknown (1972), Night Fear (1979), and The Early Long (1975), which includes a lengthy autobiographical introduction.

  Although Long wrote weird fiction sporadically through the 1980s, he is remembered today almost exclusively for his early stories for Weird Tales and his association with H. P. Lovecraft, whom he defended in Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Nightside (1975) against what he thought was an inaccurate representation of his friend and mentor in L. Sprague de Camp’s Lovecraft: A Biography (1975).

  Stefan R. Dziemianowicz

  See also: Arkham House; Cthulhu Mythos; Lovecraft, H. P.; Pulp Horror; Weird Tales.

  Further Reading

  Daniels, Les. 1985. “Frank Belknap Long.” Supernatural Fiction Writers, edited by Everett F. Bleiler, 869–874. New York: Scribner’s.

  Dziemianowicz, Stefan. 1998. “Frank Belknap Long.” The St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers. Detroit, MI: St. James Press.

  Long, Frank Belknap. 1975. Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side. Sauk City, WI: Arkham House.

  Long, Frank Belknap. 1975. “Introduction.” The Early Long. New York: Doubleday.

  “LOT NO. 249”

  Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Lot No. 249” first appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1892. The short story combines Doyle’s enthusiasm for the supernatural with his interest in crime and detection. “Lot No. 249” is a tale of murder and mystery. Doyle sets his tale in Oxford, where Abercrombie Smith, a medical student, discovers that another student, Edward Bellingham, has become enamored with Egyptology, going so far as to have a mummy, Lot No. 249 at an auction, in his room. Several students are mysteriously attacked, and Smith eventually discovers that Bellingham has brought the mummy to life and is controlling him. Smith eventually confronts Bellingham and forces him to destroy the mummy and all objects connected with it.

  Conan Doyle structures his story as a standard mystery. An intelligent man, in this case medical student Abercrombie Smith, comes across a series of unusual, unexplained events that suggest danger to the community. As the mysterious events grow more threatening, the protagonist must first uncover the true nature of the events, then who is behind them, and finally eliminate the threat by destroying or capturing the source of the evil. This is a typical plot structure of both mystery and horror narratives, and in “Lot No. 249” Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, sets an amateur detective in the world of the fantastic.

  “Lot No. 249,” although one of Conan Doyle’s lesser known works, is important for several reasons. First, it is an example of the interest in the fantastic that was a significant part of Victorian and Edwardian English culture. Conan Doyle was one of the founders of the British Society for Psychical Research in 1893 and published works on Spiritualism, telepathy, reincarnation, and the existence of fairies. He, like many others at the turn of the century, was fascinated by ancient Egypt, and the nineteenth century enthusiasm for Egyptian art, architecture, science, and spirituality led to what has been called Egyptomania, which was only heightened with Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1923. “Lot No. 249” dramatizes the juxtaposition of modern realism (in Abercrombie Smith’s medical science) with the actuality of the supernatural (a mummy brought back to life).

  Conan Doyle’s story is important for another reason: it was the first English story to depict a mummy being brought back to life by a modern man using ancient Egyptian texts. Previous tales of mummies being brought back to life had used galvanism, or electricity, as the rejuvenating force. But here, and in his other, more famous mummy tale, “The Ring of Thoth” (1890), Conan Doyle provided a groundwork narrative that served as a source for the film mummies that followed in the twentieth century.

  “Lot No. 249” has been adapted more than once for other media, including a 1967 BBC television production and the opening segment of Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990).

  Jim Holte

  See also: Mummies; Occult Detectives.

  Further Reading

  Booth, Martin. 2000. The Doctor and the Detective: A Biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  Bulfin, Ailise. 2011. “The Fiction of Gothic Egypt and British Imperial Paranoia: The Curse of the Suez Canal.” English Literature in Transition 1880–1920 54, no. 4: 411–443.

  Curl, James Stevens. 1994. Egyptomania: The Egyptian Revival, a Recurring Theme in the History of Taste. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press.

  Pascal, Janet B. 2000. Arthur Conan Doyle Beyond Baker Street. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

  LOVECRAFT, H. P. (1890–1937)

  Howard Phillips Lovecraft was an American author whose innovative approach to horror fiction ushered in a new era of the genre, and whose work is distinguished by exceptional artistry and philosophical depth. Writing in the early twentieth century, Lovecraft blended radical developments in science—physics, astronomy, biology, geology, anthropology, and psychology—into his tales, relocating the center of horror from outmoded superstition to human confrontation with an indifferent, unknowable, and chaotic cosmos.

  The Long Shadow of H. P. Lovecraft

  Lovecraft’s influence on popular culture has been enormous, and actually preceded his canonization as a top-tier American literary author. The website www.hplovecraft.com features an extensive catalog of Lovecraft’s influence on movies, television, games, music, art, comics, and more. So does the book H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture by Don G. Smith (McFarland, 2006).

  The following is a highly selective sampling of Lovecraft’s ubiquitous presence in pop culture.

  Movies directly based on Lovecraft’s stories:

  •The Haunted Palace (1963) (From The Case of Charles Dexter Ward)

  •Die, Monster, Die! (1965) (From “The Colour out of Space”)

  •The Crimson Cult (1968) (From “The Dreams in the Witch House”)

  •The Dunwich Horror (1970)

  •Re-Animator (1985) (From Herbert West—Reanimator)

  •From Beyond (1986)

  •The Curse (1987) (From “The Colour out of Space”)

  •The Unnamable (1988)

  •The Resurrected (1992) (From The Case of Charles Dexter Ward)

  •Dagon (2001)

  Movies featuring a distinct Lovecraftian influence or direct Lovecraftian references:

  •Alien (1979)

  •The Evil Dead (1982)

  •John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)

  •Ghostbusters (1984)

  •Army of Darkness (1993)

  •In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

  •Hellboy (2004)

  •The Mist (2007)

  •The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

  Lovecraftian television

  •Night Gallery: “Cool Air” (1971), “Pickman’s Model” (1972), “Professor Peabody’s Last Lecture” (1971)

  •The Real Ghostbusters: “Collect Call of Cthulhu” (1987), “Russian About” (1990)

  •Babylon 5: Multiple elements inspired by Lovecraft

  Lovecraftian music:

  •Black Sabbath: “Behind the Wall of Sleep” (1970)

  •Metallica: “The Call of Ktulu” (1984), “The Thing That Should Not Be” (1986)

  Lovecraftian games:

  •The Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)

  �
��Dungeons & Dragons (incorporates many Lovecraftian monsters and concepts)

  •Digital games:

  oAlone in the Dark (1992)

  oCall of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth (2005)

  oEternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002)

  oThe Lurking Horror (1987)

  oSilent Hill (1999)

  Matt Cardin

  Lovecraft was born and spent much of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. His childhood was marked by tragedy: his father went mad, and his family lost their house and fortune. Lovecraft emerged from a period of seclusion in 1914 when he became a leading light in various amateur press associations. In this milieu he met his wife, and they lived in New York City for several years before splitting up. He returned to Providence and spent the last decade of his life creating his greatest stories, dying from cancer at forty-seven years old.

  In Lovecraft’s cosmology, the human race can no longer claim a privileged place in the universe; indeed, it can no longer claim a privileged place on the earth. Aliens came here millions of years ago, erected magnificent civilizations, and departed long before humanity arrived. These races, which occasionally still manifest themselves, are superior to humans—physically, intellectually, and aesthetically. Humanity is at best the inconsequential and accidental by-product of life-forms completely beyond its comprehension. Lovecraft is thus at the forefront of cosmic horror, where conventional notions are destabilized by transdimensional ruptures, by otherworldly intrusions, and by shadowy threats to the fundamental fabric of reality.

  The notion of alien races was first used by Lovecraft in “The Nameless City” (1921) and most extensively treated in his last major tale, “The Shadow out of Time” (1934–1935). From the beginning, however, Lovecraft created a recurring set of unknown entities, geographical settings, and arcane books (e.g., the Necronomicon, a blend of grimore, demonology, and scripture regarding the extraterrestrial Old Ones, transcribed ca. 700 CE by Abdul Alhazred). This apparatus was collectively labeled the “Cthulhu Mythos” by Arkham House publisher August Derleth, but Lovecraft did not wish to segregate tales employing this pseudo-mythology from his other works.