H.P. Lovecraft is by far, my favorite horror story novelist and writer of all time. His stories hit a certain nerve with anyone who reads them. Most have to deal with the Cthulhu Mythos, which center around malevolent aliens that can shatter our feeble minds and ideals of reality just by viewing them. But there is more to his stories than just the aliens. His characters are always investigators who have had some encounter the macabre. They then have to discover and deal with terrors well beyond their wildest dreams.
Cthulhu is actually a minor god sent down from the stars and he inhabited the earth. He looks like a squid headed, bat winged, green, clawed hand man. That may sound like a lot of bullshit, and believe me it kind of is. But it's just the idea that one look at him can drive you mad that interests me. He reaches people who are sensitive and susceptible to this kind of occult sense by their dreams. He sleeps under the ocean but to quote the mad Arab Abdul Hazzred.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."
This pretty much sums up a little bit of the eerie crap that H.P. writes about. There is many elder gods and beings, all of which are evil and extremely powerful. Lovecraft doesn't use gore and thrills or any of that crap to scare the reader. He uses the power of the unknown. That out there, in the farthest corners of the world, lies an ancient, maddening evil, just waiting to kill us all.
My favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories:
Call of Cthulhu
Dagon
Shadows Over Innsmouth
The Lurking Fear
The Nameless City
At the Mountains of Madness
The Dunwich Horror
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