nº 3Brumario/07

Lovecraftian webzine by the

NUEVALOGIA DELTENTÁCULO

Special Issue

- English Edition -

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EX La Estela de Luveh-Kerapt Special Issue English Edition, nº 3. Termidor 2007.

Lovecraftian webzine by the Nueva Logia del Tentáculo (NLdT).Staff:Director: Henry Armitage (Eulogio Ga. Recalde). Collaborators: Edmund S. Meltzer, Keziah Mason, Aaron Vanek, Adolf J. Fort, MiquelRof, Àngel Svoboda, Tyndalos (Carlos Blanco).Editor: Ebenezer Holt (Antonio Blázquez).

web: dreamers.com/logiaforo: gritos.com/logiae-mail: nuevalogia_lovecraft@hotmail.com

Dragon. Aubreay Beardsley

Coverby Ebenezer Holt .....................................1

Index ......................................................2

Encounterby Edmund S. Meltzer .............................3

Three Horror Storiesby Keziah Mason .....................................4

Flightby Edmund S. Meltzer ...........................10

Twenty-first Dinasty Coffinby Edmund S. Meltzer ...........................11

Celluloid Cthulhuby Aaron Vanek .....................................12

Chantings and Litanies.The Music of H. P. L.by Adolf J. Fort......................................18

La Precipitación Appleyard+KuhnComic by Miquel Rof..............................19

Lupo Valpurgisby Ángel Svoboda ..................................25

Sueños en la casa de la brujaby Dogon ...............................................26

Untitledby Tyndalos ...........................................27

Contraportadaby Tyndalos ..........................................23

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hat think the figures frozen on these wallsAs they watch our progress through their worldAs they see the shadow pierced with sunlight

As they hear our tread break the breathless stillness?

Do they strain against their stony bondsEager to gaze on azure-golden glareTo feel the pulsing, vivifying warmth

To breathe the breezes as they blow away the dust?

Or do they cry in vain, For us this nightWas day, this sable shade a sunny sky,We were content. We had our own world here;

What need have we of yours, who left it long ago?

Hearing our footfalls, do they first mistake themFor others, sandal-shod? Do our hushed whispersRecall the voices (not so reverent)

Which bantered and commanded in an ancient tongue?

Perhaps they wait in taut anticipationStraining to recognize a familiar wordAnd disappointed when at first they hear none,

Only the jabber of an uncouth foreign speech –

But then – do they deceive themselves? – a name,And then another – That’s our sovereign king!That’s my home town! That, its local god!

The accent may be strange, but . . . they understand.

That’s funny, says one archaeologistTo another, do you see that little manLeading that yoke of oxen? Well, he’s smiling,

And I could have sworn he wasn’t when we first came in.

ByEdmund S. Meltzer

EEnnccoouunntteerrFor Robert

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The Postmortem of Jim Blakedied. It happened about four months ago. I am nowout of my body, disconnected to life, connected todeath, to other consciousness that I didn’t knowexisted, until now. And here I am, in this other

dimension of other existence, invisible to the human eye,watching how the living mess around my house, biddingfor it, and trying to figure out the reason why the pan-nelled kitchen floor was so brutally damaged. I admit, itwas a mistake to assume that it was possible to keep areptile as a pet in your own kitchen. I did that and nowI am dealing with the consequences. You must knowwhat killed me and how I died. I will tell you all. It mayfrighten you, but there is no other way, you must be told.

For there is another realm, another awareness thatsurrounds your innocent unawareness. It is the invisiblesubterranean Kingdom of Snakes, the First Nation. Theirpeople hold the ultimate source of power. They will strikefrom their invisibility into your visibility at any time theychoose, day or night. They sometimes pick a man, withthe intention to experiment on human mortality. It wasonly later that I realised that they had chosen me. Littleby little hideous secrets started to unravel to me.

My name is Jim Blake. I had arrived at my old sum-mer house at Madison Grove, not far from the city ofMansville. One morning I had seen a fat black lizardslithering through the leaves. The nasty thing was soongone. I was no friend of lizards, I can tell you that. Terrormixed with weird admiration lingered in my mind. Werethere more of those? Were they poisonous? Were theresome lurking in the house, too? - I’d slaughter themimmediately with utmost violence, should any reptileever sneak into my house, I had thought defiantly. Theykilled me first, only I didn’t know it then.

- Keep your friends close and your enemies even clos-er. With this in mind, I had caught one ugly creature,built him a fine terrarium and placed it in the kitchen. Ihad even studied how to take care of the poor devil. Hedidn’t look happy and I didn’t like him either, but I madethe creep my domestic pet. As long as I was the Master,I was safe, I figured.

A few days later, one Tuesday afternoon, to be exact, Iwas making dinner in the kitchen. I lifted up the kettleof boiling water and turned it upside down, dumping thecooked rise into a strainer. As the steam cleared, I sud-denly saw a long snake, about one metre away from my

ByKeziah Mason

hreeorrortories

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bare feet, raised proudly in its defensive position, readyto strike and kill. As it did. (I had never seen a beast likethat. This was something else. Not the serpent from thekitchen terrarium.)

A quick, savage sting pierced my skin. Daemonic poi-son spread instantly like narcotics into my blood. Ifought for my life, with all my force, hands and nails,knives and forks, and all the other kitchen tools. Whatdamaged the panelled kitchen floor was the fact that Iwas dragged through the floor like some kind of gate intoanother world. Doped by the poison, I barely noticed theexplosion that broke the panels and opened the gate,leaving the visible signs of the unknown.

I was lying on my side on the ground, damp andsquelchy. I was breathing fast, feeling my pulse throb-bing beteween my eyes. Where was I? What were thesestrange, slimy ropes around me? Brutal slashes of coldwhips lashed across my throat and chest, arms and legs.The strange vines tightened their grips every time I triedto inhale. I was aware that I was not yet dead flesh, I wasstill living. Still in my senses, I tried to reason and exam-ine myself. Strangling, restrictive bindings impeded themovements of my arms and legs. My eyes were burningfrom alien optical effects of colourful, flashing neonlights. A number of weights hanging from my body cre-ated the sensation of drained muscles. My hearing wasgone. My tongue hardened and swelled and soon filledmy mouth. I was choking. I came to a horrible realisa-tion: it was not the tongue that filled my mouth, it was,oh, my God!, a snake! My mouth had become a snake’snest! God, wake me from this insane nightmare!

Snakes swarmed and swished all over my body. Theyformed a moving blanket, black and shining, snake skinblanket. All the ropes, wines and restrictive contrap-tions, they were slimy snakes of all species. I couldn’t

move. Not even lift a finger. They had chained me,cemented me in their overwhelming, fierce tentacles.

I was drifting in delirium. My blood was gurgling in mythroat like water in a snorkel. I could do nothing but givein. There was no magic nor strength in my defence, noway I could have defeated the formidable enemy and wonthe battle. I lay on my back, eyes wide open, in mortalpanic. I began to tremble in cold sweat. The more I trem-bled, the more the assailants squeezed. In panickedjerks, with each feeble gasp, I felt my lungs explode andburst out from my chest. Then, finally, the darkness fell,swooped at me like bat’s wings. I lay stunned. My visionwent black. I couldn’t breathe anymore. I was no more.

The irate King Snake approached slowly. He openedHis vast jaws, revealed the venomous fangs in great fury,and with solemn, slow gulps, with great enjoyment,devoured my surrendered, vegetable, lifeless body. Fromthe other end of the Royal Tail came a new serpent. I wit-nessed the enchanted rite of my own transformationfrom human to snake. The human death was transferredto a snake life. My mortal self remained an outsider,watching the ritual take place. There was not a thingthat I could have done to stop it.

After it was all over, my lips moved, but I could pro-duce no sounds, only the rattle of bubbling blood. Painthrobbed its way back again into my head. It grew into asteady hammering, like pounding nails into my skull.But what was this? How could I still feel something?How could I breathe again? Was I dead or was I notdead? The answer came to me soon enough.

I was both, dead and alive; dead as a human and aliveas a snake. What killed me gave me life. It was in Hispower to complete the transformation from human tosnake; either to reject or to accept. This time He chose toaccept. I got a second body and a second life. Had He not

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accepted, I would have died as mor-tals do, from a poisonous snake bite.Then I would not be here now,watching you, telling you about thethings that I know. He saved my life,or rather, my death. He saved mydeath. My snake spirit is here to tellyou about His existence and the ruleof His incomprehensible subter-ranean Snakedom. Had He not beenmerciful in the fury and excitementof the rite, the secret knowledge ofthe First Snake Nation and theirinvisible omniscient power wouldnot have been brought to yourknowledge. I am telling you this atthe risk of being exposed andbecoming a miserable traitor. Butyou must know. What happened tome can happen to you.

So, here I am, in this other dimen-sion of other existence, invisible tothe human eye, watching the livingfuss in my house, bidding for it.They should go into the bedroom. Ileft a sign under the bed. Look underthe bed! Under the bed! The bed!

Jim Blake’s body was found deadon the kitchen floor at an old sum-mer house at Madison Grove fourmonths ago. The police reported thecause of death: poisonous snakebite. Blake’s house was put for sale.The new owners, Robert Moore andColin Wilson, from the near-by cityof Mansville, bought the house at a

reasonable price. They fixed thekitchen floor and did some minorrepairs in the bedroom. Robert hadseen something shining, quicklymoving in the grass…

FreedomRunning, without a destination.

Straight ahead. Taking curves onlyto avoid some sudden misformationsin the ground. Dry sticks crackedunder her feet, cones and needleshurt her as they pierced the delicateflesh of her feet. Shoes she had for-gotten in a hurry.

All she could think of was to flee.To get away, far away from theeveryday hell, to another world,inside another mind. Her feetstamped the ground faster andfaster. The path took the lead, andshe became part of it. No crossroadsto choose from, just straight ahead.The path let her do it. It showed herthe way deeper into the forest.

He had hurt her. His words hadstruck her down like a lightning.Smashed her heart, destroyed herbrains. She had no more heart, nomore human thoughts in her head.Instead, pure anger and pain burn-ing in her redblood veins.

It wasn’t the first time she hadfled. But now, for the first time therewas someone, or rather, somethingundefined, formless and facelessthat called her. She let it take her.

And she ran. The shadows grewtaller. They sucked her moving fig-

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ure hungrily. She was nothing but ashadow.

Without her own will, she reacheda bare top of a cliff. High above treetops. Beneath she could distinguishwater surface of a forest pond, stillglittering in the pale night. Nordicsummer nights never turn pitchdark. There she halted. Exhaustedand swetting. Listened. Nothing.Nobody had followed. She was sur-prised to realize there was no fear inher. The forest was humming inlament, birds were quiet.

She sat down on the highest pointof the cliff. Her butt against the coolrock, knees bent, arms around theknees, head bent down, forehead onthe sharp bone of her knees, forminga shape of a human ball. Her buttfelt the cool stone. A human ball.Leaving the holes at both ends of hermiserable body vulnerable to what-ever bizarre caprice the night wouldchoose to perform on her.

The path had disappeared. It hadcompleted its task. It had broughther here, to this place of nowhere.She gave herself away to the night. Ittook her readily.

Hours passed. She didin’t move.Ants crawled up her legs. A spiderfound its way between her toes.Hundreds of mosquitos feasted onher blood, piercing her body with

their sharp little needles. Hundredsof sharp little neddles. Hundreds.One or two would have been a nui-sance but hundreds became a tor-turing pain. Blood dripped down herneck. Arms itched. Her back was infire.

Finally, the night soothed the tur-moil inside her. Then there wasnothing. She had reached the noth-ingness, the mere core of insignifi-cance. She was nothing. She floatedin the sea of non-existence.

She was free. Free to go to anoth-er world, to another mind.

She found herself standing up,slowly stretching her numb limbs.She was alone and empty. Without aname. Without a heart. Without asingle human thought in her head.The path appeared again. It was theonly true friend to show her the wayto peace.

People said that she had got lost inthe forest last night. Now she wasout. Good news! They hailed andapplauded. How clever she had beento have found the way back to thevillage, unharmed and in her fullsenses. Thank God nothing bad hadhappened to her. She walkedthrough the cheering crowd. A littlefurther away they saw her meet him.What a nice couple!

He too had come to meet her,regretting the evil words that hadslaugthered her earlier.

She put her hand into her pocket.Felt the gun. In the name of Hell,with a smile, she pulled the trigger.

In a country, far away from here,tourists come to see an amazingball-shaped rock on the highestpeak of a steep cliff that is hidinginside a tense forest. They say itlooks like a she-monster, with eyeswide open, hair mixed with moss,mouth like a dark, bottomless gap(you can throw in a coin and make awish!), limbs crooked and bent onthe rough surface of the rock. Onecan even distinguish black finger-nails, the longest you’ve ever seen,almost dripping off from the fingertips. Spiders, snakes, frogs, and allkinds of God’s bugs creep all overher, not touching each other butrather sucking some devilish pleas-ure out of her. Visitors have giventhe rock different names: MonsterRock, Teufelsstein, Hirviökivi… Askyour local travel agency. A trip to theMonster Rock will be worth yourwhile.

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Fear of RealityJohn Eira was driving along a

dusty country road. He waswhistling away, driving at a slowspeed, enjoying the scenery, the sunand the summer around him. Likeso many times before, he was head-ed to his summer cottage, a logcabin, right on the lake.

It was a quiet place, not far fromtown Näkkälä. The lake,Näkkäläjärvi, was known for itsclear, unpolluted, fresh waters. Youcould see right down to the bottomthrough metres of it cool waters. Thelake was rich with fish - some evencaught crabs in July. Now it was awarm and buggy June day. “Not agood time to catch crabs, eh?”, Johntalked sweetly to Jasu, his big, fat,white-black cat, travelling in theback seat. “Yeah, you like fish betteranyway, don’t you?, the cat movedher ears in response.

The area was sparsely populated,as it is usual in the North. Not manyneighbours around but plenty ofspace and freedom just for yourself.Good, if you want to be alone. Therewere the Hartikainens, a retired cou-ple who came like migratory birds inthe spring and left in the autumn,and another cottage a little further

away. John didn’t know who livedthere. Some unhappy, lonely spin-ster, he guessed. “Might give her avisit sometime,” John grinned tohimself.

In his younger years he had beenquite a womanizer. Today, he didn’tquite know how to relate to theopposite sex. When Maggie Maggahad left him, ended their relation-ship for some travelling salesman,John hadn’t been interested inwomen. He had come to terms withhimself, kept to himself and tried toenjoy life as it was. He had Jasu tokeep him company. The only faithfulfriend. He hadn’t heard from Maggie.There had been no contact, not evena postcard. “Well, I guess she is bet-ter off without me”, John thoughtand couldn’t help feeling a little bit-ter.

Nobody knew, but he had anembarrassing secret. He liked tosleep. He did it a lot. He didn’t careto mention it because people mightthink he was mad. He wasn’t. It jusso happened that when he fellasleep, he lost all control of himself,his body and mind. He had nochoice, no power to decide what wasgoing to happen. He travelled intothe past or future or to some othertime dimension, not the past, notthe future, just an atmosphere.

He was treated as a friendly visitorin times and places, or atmospheres.He couldn’t, or rather, did not knowhow or what to call those places.They were impossible to describe.Nothing in the wake world wouldcompare to what he could hear orsee in his sleep. In sleep, he had nofeelings, no fear, no joy, no sadness,no pain, no pleasure. He was a merevisitor, a passer-by, a traveller, anobserver, an outsider.

John steered the vehicle carefully,parked it easily in front of his cot-tage. What a sensation when hestepped out of the car! Soft, clean airmet his face, a dazzling scent fromthe pine trees filled his nostrils. Hetook a deep breath, inhaled thishealthy country air. His summercottage was not of luxury, far from it,but not too bad either. It was one ofthose ready-made log-house modelsthat you could buy as a set and haveit built on site. Two rooms down-stairs, a loft upstairs and a sauna,all situated directly on the water-front. John enjoyed taking a saunaand plunging into the cool waters ofthe lake from the steaming hotsauna. He was an excellent swim-mer.

A terrible surprise broke his mel-low plans of having a nice sauna anda swim. In the water, right there

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where he was going to leap into thewater, right there, he saw two bod-ies. He instantly understood thatthey were dead bodies. Vey dead. Hepuked. In a state of total shock hedialled 112.

The two bodies were theHartikainens. According to thepolice, they had been fishing. Theirboat had been found drifting. Whathad happened? What had madethem fall into the water? They haddrowned but that was not all. Theirskulls had been smashed with someheavy object, probably a sledge ham-mer. Next day, it was all over thenews. There were no leads, no sus-pects. It was described as an act ofcarnage, and a complete, terrible,insane mystery.

That night John Eira went to bedfeeling sick. After such a terriblescene in his very own shore, in hispeaceful environment, he was reallysick. Poor Hartkainens. The image oftheir bodies floating in the waterkept lingering on his retinas.

“Go in the peace of Christ. Go inthe peace of Hell.” John Eira wasstanding in front of a mirror. Themirror was nailed in on of the the logwalls of his cottage. Horrible imageskept changing in the misty mirrorglass. John tried to see his ownreflection but all he could distin-

guish was quickly changing imagesof monsters and beasts and figuresof no profile, chanting messages ofgoodness and evil at the same time,competing over each other.

John tried to sharpen his eyes todistinguish his own familiar face inthe mirror. To his horror, he realizedthat the fighting angels and demonswere a reflection of his own innerself. What? Was he now dreaming ornot? He tried to reason: This has tobe real because he’s afraid. If hewere dreaming in his sleep, hewouldn’t be afraid because in sleephe never had any emotions. But mir-rors don’t lie, not at least this much.So, which was it? Was he awake orin sleep? It wasn’t past nor future, itwas present, now, at the verymoment. Or was it?

“Go in the peace of Christ”, chant-ed the angels. “Go in he peace ofHell”, counter chanted the demons.A beast preached to him “Destroy allthe spirits of the wrong believers andthou shall be saved.” John’s bodyjerked. “Hell, have mercy!”, his lipsbarely moved when he uttered thosewords and collapsed on the floor. Hisbody wriggled, as if trying to getaway from an unseen giant graspthat was holding him tight.

At the general hospital of Näkkälä,police officer Rainer Kanerva was

studying an autopsy and DNAreports of a male body found recent-ly at a log cabin, by lakeNäkkäläjärvi. It was exactly thesame place where the bodies of Mrand Mrs Hartikainen had beenfound a few days earlier. Thedeceased was a certain Mr JohnEira. He had died in mysterious cir-cumstances. The autopsy reportcontained peculiar information. Itsaid that the brains of the deceasedwere turned green, like jelly, his eyeswere coloured yellow, his entrailshad severe marks of burnning andmost peculiar, there was no blood inhis veins. There was blood outsidehis body, stains on his clothes.

Some weeks later a DNA analysisproved that the blood stains on MrJohn Eira’s clothes were of threetypes and were identified as follows:1. Mr Hartikainen, 2. MrsHartikainen, 3. an animal, probablya cat.

After John Eira had reportedlydied from a heart attack, the policefound a woman butchered in thesame Näkkäläjärvi area. She wasidentified as Ms Maggie Magga. Herblood DNA matched the DNA bloodsamples that were analyzed onJohn Eira’s clothes.

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n wings of spirit vision let me soarThrough cloud, through wind, ‘mong stars beyond the sky;On ether-piercing pinions let me fly‘mid galaxies, through Heaven’s farthest door.

Take wing, my soul, in ecstasies of flight,The tallest peaks receding far below,‘til e’en the highest winds have ceased to blowAnd there is but the still caress of night.

Past seething stars, titanic gems ablaze,Glide swift, my winged spirit, never tire,Where nebulae entwine with glowing hazeAnd novae burst with vortices of fire –

And earthbound eyes, a-gazing from afarWill see you in the firmament – a star.

ByEdmund S. Meltzer

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osmos enfolding cosmosFlesh transformedCosmos incarnateNested in itselfUnited with itselfEast West North SouthAbove and BelowReborn deifiedOsiris ascends from the horizonRising as Re

ByEdmund S. Meltzer

Twenty-ffirstDinasty Coffin

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ften I hear Lovecraft fans whining from the depths, “Whyisn’t there a good Lovecraft movie?”

To date, there have been many movies that are directlyinfluenced by, or adapted from, Lovecraft, the best known

being Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985). Many others, startingwith Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace, (1963), have continueda trend of using the master of horror literature to make a fewcheap thrills. Unfortunately, Hollywood will not recognizeLovecraft’s literary power, nor will they make a good adaptationout of a Lovecraft story (not a big budget one, with stars andsuch…nor would you want them to). Rumor has it that whenStuart Gordon approached a Hollywood studio with the idea toadapt “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”, the executives couldn’tunderstand the idea of a village of mutant batrachian humanoids,and suggested, as Hollywood execs are wont to do, “Why don’t youmake it a village of werewolves instead?”

The hope for Lovecraft cinema lies in the independent world.Here, fans of the genre, who have trembled after reading “TheColour Out of Space”, who play the RPG Call of Cthulhu with pas-sion, who analyze and critique HPL’s works with a scholar’s pers-picacity, are making movies that are honest, powerful, and evoca-tive.

To be sure, Lovecraft is NOT an easy author to adapt to film. Infact, adaptation, in general, is not easy, and someone always getshurt. Most of the time, it’s the die-hard fans who complain that hemovie is “not as good as the book”, that it “violates the idea andspirit” the author originally intended. How, then, does one captu-re the spirit (the ghost, if you will), of Lovecraft on celluloid?

In his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, Lovecraft con-cludes his first section by stating:

The one test of the really weird is simply this —whether of notthere be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and ofcontact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude ofawed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scrat-ching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’sutmost rim. And of course, the more completely and unifiedly astory conveys this atmosphere the better it is as a work of art inthe given medium.

In cinema, then, it is the atmosphere and tone of a film thatbrings it into line with Lovecraft’s philosophy on the apex of weirdfiction. But that is a high mount to climb, especially in film.

CelluloidCthulhuByAaron Vanek

Note: This is a revised essay originally printed in Italian in H.P.Lovecraft : Sculptus in Tenebris in 2001.

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Movies are a moving medium, motion pictures. Something needsto be happening, occurring, in a film, and years of tradition, cou-pled with today’s short attention span audiences, have broughtfilms into a fast paced, plot driven excuse for stunts, explosions,special effects, and computer graphics. Is it possible to evoke anorganic, deep-seated dread when you are looking at a perfectlyrendered image of something generated from a computer?

In Hollywood, where movies are geared towards the lowest com-mon denominator, the chances of getting a studio to give millionsof dollars and creative control to a picture whose original storyand inspiration contain the following elements are close to nil:

Intellectually advanced conceptsLoaded with verbose descriptions of history and backstoryLittle conflict between characters (and never a “love interest”)A psychologically based, internal conflictFirst person narrative (which begs for a voice over, usually a

death knell for a movie)A slow pace punctuated with a few elements of actionProtagonists that are often older bookish nerds and academics,

not beautiful teenagersShades of racism (a no-no for politically correct Hollywood)Many can argue that these ideas are not ubiquitous in

Lovecraft’s stories, but most of them are…nor am I suggestingthat Lovecraft’s stories fail because of those elements, instead Iassert that what makes a Lovecraft story strong is typically antit-hetical to a good narrative motion picture. A script, at best, con-tains only two things: action and dialogue. Lovecraft has little ofthat in his stories. Hollywood wants to see Saw or Hostel, notextended monologues by ghouls who cannot integrate into society(Lovecraft’s “The Outsider”). Ultimately, I doubt any studio exe-cutive would even be able to read the first page of any Lovecraftstory, much less greenlight a movie based on him.

Without Hollywood, then, where are the good Lovecraft filmsgoing to come from, if at all? Independent and foreign filmmakers.

From those who operate outside the rules, who think audiencesare intelligent and don’t need to be spoon-fed everything from thevery beginning. From those who are willing to take a risk. Also,the independent filmmakers, often operating without benefit ofmoney, cannot afford to include those great explosions or CGmonsters, so they have to use shadow and suggestion instead ofpixels and polygons.

I posit that 1999’s summer indie blockbuster, The Blair WitchProject, directed by Dan Myrick and Ed Sanchez, is one of themost Lovecraftian-styled films to come out in a long time. A criti-cal analysis of the picture will reveal the elements that make itsimilar to Lovecraft’s fiction, and suggest ways that other inde-pendent filmmakers might approach a more direct adaptation of aLovecraft story.

The film suggested a larger, ancient horror beyond which wasrevealed in 90 minutes. There was a mythology, that of the BlairWitch, that affected the small New England town with strange andtragic occurrences. When investigators from the local college(remember, this was a class film project they were working on) tryto unravel the mystery of the Blair Witch, they suffer a terribledemise as they get in over their heads. What is left but the videorecord of their travails? Compare the video documentation of theirfinal moments to the “crabbed, scribbled notes” that Lovecraft’sprotagonists leave to warn the world. They are the same, exceptthat The Blair Witch Project utilizes a modern medium, the videocamera. Also, The Blair Witch Project leaves much to the imagi-nation—there was nothing seen, really. This is akin to Lovecraft’smonsters, who are only hinted at, and far too horrible to describeor remember. Many critics attacked the movie for the samething…they didn’t SEE anything. But what is more horrifying thenyour own personal Blair Witch, the one you create in your mind?For that is what Lovecraft wanted to tap into in his stories, thatdark image of dread, that worst nightmare that is personal toYOU, the reader, and that he (Lovecraft) can only try to suggestand capture with words. Same with the BWP, the filmmakersknew that anything they would show would be a poor substituteto the frights in the viewer’s mind. Also, many, at first, believedthe BWP movie to be real, that the events they saw actually occu-

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rred (in fact, one private investigator contacted the filmmakersafter seeing the film, determined to find the missing students). So,too, many believed that the Necronomicon was real (it is, now),and Lovecraft’s use of actual places, gods, demons, etc., only lentcredence to those who thought that even though his work waslabeled as fiction, there was an element of truth to it.

In an interview I conducted with BWP directors Dan Myrick andEd Sanchez in the summer of ’99, Dan said: “We didn’t want toshow anything that was going to give away that this was fiction,that this wasn’t real. We didn’t want to show ghosts, and we didn’twant to show Bigfoot running through the woods, and we didn’twant to show the Blair Witch, because as soon as you show it,people are like ‘Oh, it looks like a guy in a suit, or that’s a goodCGI move there, or that’s a special effect,’ or whatever. We wan-ted to keep it real.”

That is what independent films can do best, for they rely on cre-ativity, not committees, to make the horrors, the lurking demonsjust beyond our consciousness, real. I believe that The Blair WitchProject, whether you love it or hate it, is one of the most originalyet similar stories to Lovecraft’s style to ever come out. I also belie-ve that it could never have been made by the Hollywood system.

Lovecraft’s roots are in the pulp magazines, the cheap, fly-by-night productions that, more often than not, featured hackworkpadding the occasional gem. That same indie spirit of Lovecraft’swork, and his steadfast refusal to allow editing of his pieces, mat-ches the idea of the independent film, which is made by auteursin their basements and their backyards without interference froma marketing department full of focus groups demanding youchange your ending to a more positive conclusion, and oh, chan-ge the main character to a lesbian (or a “village of werewolves”).Although it is difficult to mount a full feature production sanscash (even video taps costs money), self-financed projects ensurethat there is purity of vision and clarity of purpose, somethingalmost unheard of in mainstream movies.

If there will be a “best Lovecraft film adaptation,” it will comefrom an independent, non-studio financed outfit. That means thefans need to keep their heads up to what is coming out, for these

indie filmmakers do not have large PR machines showering thea-ters with splashy trailers revealing the entire plot of the movie, oractor guest spots on talk shows, or hit soundtracks by pop bandsscreaming the opening title credit song every few minutes on everyradio station in the country. The word of these films spreadsthrough self-published zines, horror and gaming conventions, andespecially, the Internet.

There are many sources of info for Lovecraft cinema, but thebest is Craig Mullin’s “Unfilmable” (at: www.unfilmable.com).Craig started his website after attending the H.P. Lovecraft FilmFestival, held annually the first weekend in October in Portland,Oregon (US). The festival has run for more than a decade, and isstill going strong. The head of the festival, Andrew Migliore, laun-ched a Lovecraft film website last century. On it he reviewed themany Lovecraft movies he has seen. I chanced upon the site, anddiscovered one listing for a short called The Music of Erich Zann,directed by John Strysik. I had not seen the film, but after emai-ling Andrew, I was able to obtain a copy of the movie, which I loved.It just so happened that I had recently made my first Lovecraftshort in film school, and adaptation of The Outsider (which my tea-chers hated). I showed it to Andrew, who then paired John’s andmy film with Re-Animator, flew actor Jeffrey Combs up to Portland,and staged the first HP Lovecraft Film Festival.

Since that first festival in 1995, hundreds (if not thousands) ofother filmmakers have used their video and film cameras to maketheir own Lovecraft films, as well as some semi-professional com-panies (Cine Qua Non in Canada made the great Out of Mind forthe Bravo cable network). Andrew has shown them all. He alsocollects sand distributes these movies on video, both PAL andNTSC format (available to order from the Lurker Films website:www.lurkefilms.com). Andrew and John have culled together theirknowledge of Lovecraft in films, as well as many great interviewswith the creators, into a book called “The Lurker in the Lobby: TheGuide to the Cinema of HP Lovecraft.” They have revised the book,and the second version, published by Night Shade Books, is avai-lable from Amazon (ISBN1892389355) and is indispensable forthe HPL-movie enthusiast. With Andrew providing an exhibitionvenue for the filmmakers who continually pump out solid

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Lovecraft films, the festival is growing, and the films are appearingat other fests and cons around the world (Canada and England,for example). With exposure on the Net, international films havebeen appearing in Andrew’s mailbox, and some of the best DVDsfrom Lurker Films came from non-American creators.

Now is the perfect time for young Lovecraft fans to break outtheir lenses and start creating their own favorite Lovecraft films.We are in a golden age for horror movie fans to see truly disturbingimages that are unlike anything Hollywood will crap out. If you likeLovecraft, and you like movies, you can waste time complainingthere’s nothing out there, or you can order some of these indiefilms, or even, if you dare, make your own. I can’t wait to see it.

Some links to listings of Lovecraft films (with clips, interviews,and reviews):

Lurker Films: http://www.lurkerfilms.com/Unfilmable: http://www.unfilmable.com/H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival: http://www.hplfilmfestival.comShoggoth.Net: http://shoggoth.net/

The best Lovecraft adaptation to date arrived after this essaywas first written, and it came from an independent source, TheH.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, helmed by Sean Branney andAndrew Leman. It is a black and white, silent film adaptation ofLovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu story. They are currently working ontheir first feature, an adaptation of The Whsiperer in theDarkness.

More info: The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society: http://www.cthulhuli-

ves.org/toc.html

There are many, MANYmore independentLovecraft films out there.Take some time to lookfor them. You won’t besorry.

Aaron Vanek is a filmmaker and writer living in Los Angeles. In 2000 he won the “Howie” award from the H.P. Lovecraft FilmFestival for his contributions to Lovecraft cinema. His movies include: The Outsider and My Necronomicon (both part of the bonusfilms on the H.P. Lovecraft Collection vol. 3, featuring Out of Mind, from Lurker Films), Return to Innsmouth (currently out of printon VHS only), The Yellow Sign, based on the story by R.W. Chambers (the feature on the Weird Tales Collection Vol. 1, from LurkerFilms), and Call of Tutu, a short Lovecraft-inspired Super-8mm film (viewable on YouTube).

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It’s widely known that musicunites cultures and overcomeslinguistic barriers. Musiciansfrom every part of the world areable to connect and understandeach other thanks to the twelvesemitones of the western chroma-tic scale, the true musical Rosettastone. It’s also common knowled-ge that the absence of music in afilm may cause confusion and dis-tress in the viewer, because in anunconscious way, the humanbeing adds melody to almost allactivities he/she does.

We find ourselves usually hum-ming something heard on theradio or the television. Who hasn’texperienced the – sometimes -shameful moment of taking alongthe musical baton of that hornyand catchy tune someone wascrooning nearby? And who hasn’texperienced either the anguish –whose traumatic level is inverselyproportional to the quality – of notbeing able to stop singing the cur-sed hit that the media has been

bombarding us daily with?Unless you are a musician or a

music lover, in which case anot-her completely different worldopens, dominated by weird sca-les and complex harmonic pro-gressions, music is an uncons-cious part of us while we’re rea-ding a book. A lot of readersswitch on their music player setbefore starting to read, and thisis because our brain adds theoriginal soundtrack to the para-graphs and thus enriches theexperience.

The powerful influence ofmusic is always present in H.P.Lovecraft’s stories. The master ofProvidence always showed thatin his mind music and lyricswere equal companions, as wecan see from the weird litaniesproduced by the Deep Ones tothe unsettling effect caused bythe myriad of whippoorwills sen-sing the fatal end of the storyand its terrified main character,not to mention Erich Zann’s vio-

The music of H.P. Lovecraft

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lin’s suggestive cacophony. It’s interesting enough the concept

HPL had about his own relationshipwith the music, which is made quiteclear in the letter he wrote to AugustDerleth – one of the authors belon-ging to the so-called Lovecraft’sCircle, on November 21, 1930.

“In matters of music, I wouldexasperate you –since I am absolu-tely without the first rudiments oftaste. It is simply a blind spot in me,and I candidly recognize the fact. Myaesthetic emotions seem to be whollyunreachable except through visual channels. Whenever Iseem to appreciate a strain of music, it is purely throughassociation -never intrinsically. To me, ‘Tipperary’ or ‘Rule,Britannia’ has infinitely more appeal than any creation ofLiszt, Beethoven or Wagner. But at least I do not fall in thePhilistine’s usual pitfall of expressing contempt for an artwhich I cannot understand. I recognize and regret my limita-tion in enjoyment-capacity, and profoundly congratulatethose more broadly favoured by Nature…”

Some prestigious writers have added music to theirbooks. Some Spanish examples are the excellent (butsomewhat scarce) work by Carlos Ruiz Zafón in thespecial edition of “The Shadow of the Wind”, whichincludes a 4- song CD written and performed by theauthor, or the last work of Andreu Martín “El Bluesde la Semana más Negra”, which comes with a CDspecially composed and played by Dani Nel·lo (ex-saxophonist of “Los Rebeldes”).

The music suggested by the Cthulhu Mythos hasbeen captured by dozens of performers since the six-ties. Anonymous musicians, bands with very diffe-rent styles and well known artists have wanted toshow the world their particular interpretation of a

paragraph or a story. Amongst others, “BlueOyster Cult”, “Caravan”, “Cradle of Filth”,“Halloween”, “Ktulu”, “Marillion”, “Metallica” or“N’Gai-N’Gai” are only a few examples.

Each one of the aforementioned plays with theMythos in their own way, some taking a lovecraf-tian chanting for the mantra (the repeated chorus),some including part of the prose as the song lyrics,some simply creating soundscapes evoking the ill

fates of the characters.In some cases, like the

reputed guitarist YngwieMalsteem, who simply men-tions HPL in the thanks sec-tion of some of his albums,there’s only a slight butworthy tribute to one of hiscomposing influences.

The musical canvas hasalso treated the zany part ofthe Cthulhu Mythos, whoseindisputable kings – atleast for the moment – arewriters and directors SeanBranney and AndrewLeman, who have recorded

some CDs with humorous songsbased on the Mythos.

Only a reduced number ofartists have based all their compo-sing work onto the literary mate-rial, being H.P. Lovecraft (thehomonymous American band) theperfect example. The five recordsthey issued – the band only workedthrough the 1967-1969 period –contain a mix of titles inspired by

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the stories as well as by anything Mythos-related.A special mention is deserved for modern bands as different as

“Nox Arcana”, “Modelo Pickman” or “Richard Band and theArkham Philharmonic Orchestra”, the latter being responsible forthe original soundtrack of “From Beyond”, a horror movie bydirector Stuart Gordon, second in the saga initiated with theacclaimed “Reanimator”. “The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets”and their adaptation of “The Shadow Out of Time”, the obscureDirk von Lotzow and his strange “Pickman Model” or the unclas-sifiable band “Aklo” are obvious examples of the musical alivenessof the universe inspired by Cthulhu’s stories.

A series of divertimentos are my personal contribution as alovecraftian musician. The first of these is ready to listen, alt-hough it’s an early mix. “The Whisperer in Darkness”(http://www.myspace.com/aj4music),is an attempt to depict the English transcription of the infamouslost gramophone record received by the main character in thatstory from Henry W. Akeley. The reason to do it in English is thatHPL conceived a very accurate poetic prose for the invocations

and the Spanish translation, although interesting, doesn’t reflectthe power the Anglo-Saxon intonation has. Currently I’m workingon a theme inspired by “The Music of Erich Zann”.

May Cthulhu have mercy on me.

September 2007

English translation supervised by Yolanda Rubiales.

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Lovecraftian webzine of the

© 2008

web: dreamers.com/logiaforo: gritos.com/logia

correo-e: nuevalogia_lovecraft@hotmail.com

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