The Lovecraft Vault

THE HORROR AT RED HOOK was first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. In the story, a detective recounts how a federal investigation into a mysterious recluse left him with a phobia of large buildings.

THE DARK DEMON is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Robert Bloch, first published in the November 1936 edition of Weird Tales. "The strange story of a man who communed too closely with things from beyond space."

WINGED DEATH is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, first published in the March 1934 edition of Weird Tales. "A mysterious death, a maddened diary, and an unholy insect converge to expose a tale of obsession and revenge in the sweltering heart of Africa."

⁠THE GREEN DOOR⁠ is a 2024 Cthulhu Mythos story by Ian Gordon, first published as part of HorrorBabble's From the Library of R'lyeh series. "There’s a green door, and I’m going to tell you all about it."

THE CURSE OF YIG is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop in which Yig, "The Father of Serpents", is first introduced. The story was first published in the November 1929 edition of Weird Tales. Set in Oklahoma around 1889, a newly arrived couple become aware of a chilling local legend: a vengeful “Snake God” known as Yig, who punishes those who harm serpents—either by killing them outright or transforming them into grotesque, half-snake beings.

THE DUNSTABLE HORROR is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Arthur Pendragon, first published in the April 1964 issue of Fantastic Stories of Imagination. “A Gothic, Lovecraftian tale, of ancient evil and ghastly retribution."

In the latest episode of THE UNTOLD MYSTERIES PODCAST, the show's host, Dan Rogers, shares the strange story of a 1978 radio broadcast, concerning a series of calls the station received from a man who claimed to be under the watchful eye of a mysterious sea creature.Performers:Erik Peabody as "Dan Rogers"Ian Gordon as "John Price"Tony Walker as "Phillip Pritchard"Written by Ian GordonMusic and production by Ian Gordon

THE MOUND was written by Lovecraft after he was hired by Zealia Bishop to create a story about an Indian mound haunted by a headless ghost. "An ethnologist investigating eerie legends surrounding a haunted Oklahoma mound uncovers a mysterious metallic relic that hints at an ancient and unsettling secret behind the region’s strange apparitions and madness." The story belongs to the Cthulhu Mythos.

THE TREE was first published in the October 1921 edition of The Tryout. The story takes place in ancient Greece, where the legacy of two master sculptors takes root in a grotesque and supernatural form.

THE RED GOD LAUGHED is a short Cosmic Horror story by Thorp McClusky, first published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales. "A strange tale about the end of human life on Earth."

THE DOOM THAT CAME TO SARNATH is a Dream Cycle story, first published in The Scot in June 1920. "A mighty and prosperous city that once annihilated an ancient lake-dwelling race rises to unparalleled splendour, only to confront the long-forgotten consequences of its sacrilege a thousand years later."

COOL AIR was first published in the March 1928 issue of TALES OF MAGIC AND MYSTERY. The story tells of a doctor with a peculiar affliction.

THE UNNAMABLE was first published in the July 1925 edition of Weird Tales. In the story, the antiquarian Randolph Carter tells a close friend the tale of an indescribable entity that allegedly haunts a dilapidated house near an old cemetery.

BELLS OF HORROR is a story by American author, Henry Kuttner, first published in Strange Stories in April 1939, under the pseudonym, Keith Hammond. "The discovery of ancient, lost bells in the remote mountains of California, results in a disturbing, and potentially deadly revelation."

DEVILSKILL is a 2024 Cthulhu Mythos story by the American author, Aaron Vlek, first published as part of the HorrorBabble anthology, From the Library of R'lyeh. "Of that desolate coast and my ancestral village of Devilskill overlooking the sea, many troubling details emerged that hinted at vague warnings and allusions to unnamed horrors."Aaron Vlek: https://aaronvlek.wordpress.com

First published in Weird Tales in its August 1931 issue, THE WHISPERER IN DARKNESS follows an exchange of letters between a sceptical writer and a reclusive scholar in rural Vermont, where reports of strange creatures have surfaced after devastating floods.

THE FIRE OF ASSHURBANIPAL is a short story by American author, Robert E. Howard. In a lost city in the deserts of the Middle East, two unlikely adventurers hunt for a rare gem.

THE GRINNING GHOUL is a short story by the American author, Robert Bloch. First appearing in Weird Tales back in June of 1936, the story was described as follows: “A story of stark horror in the subterranean depths beneath the tomb.”Artwork by David Last: davidlast.net

TENTACLES is presented as an episode of a fictional podcast called "Finders Creepers with Lana Thompson", in which the host investigates supposed evidence pertaining to mysterious and supernatural events. This particular show, focuses on the strange disappearance of a paranormal investigator.

THE AQUARIUM is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Carl Jacobi, first published in DARK MIND, DARK HEART in 1962. "When a painter and her friend move into a spacious London house, the strange aquarium left behind by its former owner begins to exude an influence both unnatural and terrifying."

THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH⁠, first published by Visionary Press in 1936, tells the strange story of an unnamed student, whose visit to a decrepit Massachusetts seaport—the crumbling town of Innsmouth—leads to a number of shocking and personal revelations… It forms part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

TWO BLACK BOTTLES is the result of a collaboration between H. P. Lovecraft and Wilfrid Branch Talman. It was first published in Weird Tales Magazine in August 1927. In the story, the narrator, Hoffman, recounts a trip into the Ramapo Mountains of New York, following the death of his uncle.

SPAWN OF THE GREEN ABYSS is a Cthulhu Mythos story by C. Hall Thompson, first published in the November 1946 edition of Weird Tales. "An accursed house, a soul that is no longer one's own, and a boundless doom that comes from the sea."

BELLS OF OCEANA is a short story by Arthur J. Burks, first published in the December 1927 edition of Weird Tales. It tells of an encounter with something deadly in the uncharted waters of the North Pacific. The story is imbued with a touch of 'outsideness', as noted by Lovecraft in a letter to the magazine in 1928.

THE CRAWLING CHAOS is a short story based on a dream once described to Lovecraft by fellow-author, Winifred V. Jackson, in which the consequences of dabbling with opium were experienced. It was first published in the 1943 collection, Beyond the Wall of Sleep.

THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE IN THE MIST was written on November 9, 1926, and first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales. It concerns a character traveling to the titular house which is perched on the top of cliff which seems inaccessible both by land and sea, yet is apparently inhabited.

THE RED BRAIN is a short story by Donald Wandrei, first published in the October 1927 edition of Weird Tales Magazine. The story tells of a strange, menacing cosmic dust that engulfs the universe.

Forming part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, THE DUNWICH HORROR, first published in the April 1929 edition of Weird Tales, takes place in the decaying village of Dunwich, a Massachusetts backwater steeped in rural superstition and dark whispers. When a strange child named Wilbur Whateley is born under mysterious circumstances, a series of bizarre events begins to unfold, drawing the wary attention of both the locals and distant scholars.

PICKMAN'S MODEL was first published in the October 1927 edition of Weird Tales. In the story, the narrator recalls his friendship with Richard Upton Pickman, an eccentric painter whose grotesque and disturbingly lifelike canvases of ghouls and nightmarish scenes earn him both fame and infamy.

THE ABYSS is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Robert Lowndes. The story was described by Stirring Science Stories back in February 1941 as follows: “A tale of a ghastly journey down a little strip in the center of a rug!”

FROM BEYOND tells of Crawford Tillinghast, a man whose curiosity leads to a fate ‘horrible beyond conception’. First published in the June 1934 edition of The Fantasy Fan.

THE SALEM HORROR is a short story by American author, Henry Kuttner. The tale first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in May 1937, and tells of an author who rents a quiet house in Salem in order to finish his latest novel—a house that once belonged to a witch—a witch whose presence has far from faded.

HERBERT WEST–REANIMATOR was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew. The story concerns the gruesome adventures of Herbert West, a young scientist consumed with the ambition of bringing the dead back to life.

THE SECRET IN THE TOMB is a short story by American author, Robert Bloch, first published in the May 1935 edition of Weird Tales. In the story, a man answers an inexplicable summons from beyond the grave.

THE CALL OF CTHULHU, first published in Weird Tales in 1928, is a foundational tale of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Told through a series of manuscripts and testimonies, the story traces a hidden pattern of strange dreams, cult activity, and archaeological discoveries that point toward the existence of an ancient cosmic entity: Cthulhu, a monstrous Great Old One.

UBBO-SATHLA is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Clark Ashton Smith, forming part of Smith's Hyperborean Cycle. It tells of a man, who, in a state of trance, ventures back to the very beginning of time, where he encounters the primal one, Ubbo-Sathla. The story first appeared in the July 1933 edition of Weird Tales.

First appearing in The Philosopher in 1920, POLARIS is an early entry in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle. The story’s narrator, haunted by the cold, pulsing light of the North Star, dreams of a majestic marble city called Olathoë in the land of Lomar.

First published in Weird Tales in 1924, IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS is a first-person tale ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft for the escapologist Harry Houdini. In the story, Houdini recounts how, while visiting Egypt, he is kidnapped and thrown into a deep shaft beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza. Struggling to escape, he encounters vast underground chambers filled with monstrous, half-human entities and glimpses a colossal, ancient presence tied to Egypt’s forgotten gods.

THE HAUNTER OF THE GRAVEYARD first appeared in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1969. "The story of a TV presenter who encounters a malign spirit in a cemetery."

THE TEMPLE first appeared in the September 1925 edition of Weird Tales. Told through the final log entries of a doomed German U-boat commander during the First World War, the story charts a descent from prideful rationality into madness and the embrace of the abyss.

THE DEATH WATCH is a short story by the British born, American author, Hugh B. Cave. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in its 1939 June-July edition, was described as follows: "What ghastly thing was it that came clumping into the big house out of that wild night of storm?"

THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN was first published in the March 1922 edition of The National Amateur. In a shadowed quarter of a mysterious Old World city, a poor student takes lodgings in a crooked house on the Rue d’Auseil and becomes entranced by the strange nocturnal music of his neighbour: an aged, reclusive viol-player named Erich Zann.

HYDRA is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Henry Kuttner, first published in the April 1939 edition of Weird Tales. "A unique tale of the fourth dimension, a dangerous experiment in occultism, and the ghastly horror that reached back from that other plane of space."

THE LURKING FEAR first appeared in Home Brew, January–April 1923 (serialized in four parts). In the storm-ravaged hills of the Catskills, an investigative narrator braves the ruins of the ancient Martense mansion in search of the source of a series of grisly killings.

THROUGH THE ALIEN ANGLE is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Elwin G. Powers. Little is known about the author, nor the publication history of the story, though ISFDB suggests it was written in 1941.

THE OUTSIDER first appeared in Weird Tales in its April 1926 edition. Told in the first person, the story follows a solitary being who has lived his entire life in the shadowed depths of a forgotten castle. Yearning for light, freedom, and human contact, he finally escapes his prison, only to discover a dreadful truth waiting for him in the world above.

OUT OF THE JAR is a Cthulhu Mythos story by the American author, Charles R. Tanner. First appearing in the February 1941 edition of Stirring Science Stories, the tale was given the following synopsis: “Are you inquisitive too? Do you want to know things? Too many things?”

OUT OF THE AEONS is a classic tale of cosmic horror and forbidden knowledge from the collaborative pen of Lovecraft and Hazel Heald. The story is set in the Cabot Museum of Archaeology in Boston, where a mysterious mummy recovered from a lost Pacific island draws public fascination and fear. The ancient island—once called Yaddith-Gho—briefly rose from the ocean before sinking again, and with it came artifacts that hint at unspeakable truths.

THE HOUSE OF THE WORM is a Cthulhu Mythos story by the American author, Mearle Prout. It first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in October 1933. The story tells of two men, and their struggle against an otherworldly blight that originated in a bleak forest.

THE GUARDIAN OF THE BOOK is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Henry Hasse, first published in the March 1937 edition of Weird Tales. “A strange and curious tale of cosmic horror, of the Outer Ones from beyond the galaxy, and a soul-shattering experience of stark terror.”