History That Doesn't Suck - 122: Halloween Special II: H.P. Lovecraft – “The Outsider” & “Dagon”

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

“I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more.” This is the story of a lonely, isolated figure who escapes a decaying castle only to have a frightful realization. It is also the story of a WWI sailor meeting unknown terrors in the middle of the Pacific. Welcome to the mind of Edgar Allan Poe’s successor; one whose impact on popular culture defies quantification; an author whom Stephen King has dubbed “the twentieth-century horror story’s dark and baroque prince.” These are the horrific, gothic, science fiction, and weird tales of H. P. Lovecraft. Happy Halloween! ____ Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies and book recommendations join discussions in our Facebook community get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette  come see a live show get HTDS merch or become an HTDS premium member for bonus episodes and other perks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Red One... We're coming at you. ...is the movie event of the holiday season. Santa Claus has been kidnapped? You're gonna help us find him. You can't trust this guy. He's on the list. Is that Naughty Lister? Naughty Lister?

Dwayne Johnson. We got snowmen! Chris Evans. I might just go back to the car. Let's save Christmas. I'm not gonna say that. Say it. Alright.

Let's save Christmas. There it is. Only in theaters November 15th. How can you be sure you're making the right decision when choosing a university? The smart approach is to look at the facts. Like the fact that York U graduates have a 90% employer satisfaction rate. That's because across its three GTA campuses, York U's programs are strategically designed to prepare you for a meaningful career

and long-term success. Join us in creating positive change at yorku.ca slash write the future. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and as in the classroom, my goal here is to make rigorously researched history come to life as your storyteller. Each episode is the result of laborious research with no agenda other than making the past come to life as you learn. If you'd like to

help support this work, receive ad-free episodes, bonus content, and other exclusive perks, I invite you to join the HTDS membership program. Sign up for a seven-day free trial today at htespodcast.com slash membership, or click the link in the episode notes. Advisory. This episode contains one story that engages with morphine addiction and thoughts of suicide. Listener discretion is advised. It's a late, dark night, likely in the early 20th century. A wide window of time, true, but the man now transfixed by paralyzing terror will never bother to record the exact date of this horrid, nocturnal fright. Yet still, we can speculate on its approximate date intelligently. It might be 1904. Fourteen years old at the time, this is a year when the sufferer,

whose tail we are on the cusp of broaching, is filled with loneliness, sorrow, and pain. He grieves the loss of a father. Not his biological father, so long ago committed to a Providence, Rhode Island mental asylum and long since dead, but his true father figure and hero, his maternal grandfather, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. He too is now cold and in the ground. The boy is a wreck, and his and his mother's descent into a life of poverty is beginning as they're forced to abandon the family estate for a far humbler dwelling down the street. It's altogether fitting then

if this is indeed the year of the particular horrid manifestation that will so deeply and cruelly take hold of his mind. But perhaps it's 1908. This is the year the still teenage wretch endures such mental anguish, such episodes of panic, dread, and fright. A nervous breakdown will forever destroy his aspirations to attend Brown University

as he fails to complete his fourth and final year of high school. Yes, this year, so full of cerebral pains and untold fears, a veritable anus horribilis, it has all the ghastly markings of mental anguish that our tragic subject will soon experience. Still, I will note again, for accuracy's sake, we could yet be in an altogether different early year of this truly unfortunate soul's life. But considering how thoroughly tonight's horrors will tear at his mind, I am drawn to these specific years. And if either is right, if this is after the loss of his grandfather and childhood home,

then we are at 598 Angel Street in Providence, Rhode Island. And it's in this home, in his bed, that the most harrowing of terrors strike. The victim is now laying on his mattress, unable to move, barely able to breathe. His large, dark eyes may be shut or closed, but either way, he sees all, and the sight horrifies him. His bed, his room, both are gone. Somehow, while he's slept, everything transformed into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire. This thick, oozing dark sludge stretches across an endless expanse and has sucked his paralyzed body halfway in. And a rancid smell fills the air. It's an odor of rot, of dead and decaying fish, and the putrid boggy scent is overpowering. Ugh! Attacking every one of his physical senses, this slimy, drowning muck

clings to his immobile body, threatening to consume him. The paralysis ebbs. With the utmost exertion, the tortured figure manages to raise partially his film-covered body, then wiggle, writhe, and finally crawl through the black, oppressive sludge. He won't drown, yet breathing is its own form of punishment as the pungent stench of death invades his straight, prominent nose. This skin-cleaning sludge, this personal inferno, it cuts to his very core and knows no bounds. Is there no escape?

And, oh God, what is that creature that towers before him? It's morning. He's in his bed, in his pajamas. No black oozing sludge. No overpowering smell of oceanic death. No creature. Just the icy cold of his own nervous perspiration. Was it all a dream? Yes, a dream. Well, a nightmare. But it was so real. He felt it. He can still feel it. That cold, filmy, black, endless sludge clinging, holding, and suffocating his entire body.

Yet, this young New Englander will make use of his pain. Mixing his dark, unwanted visions with his equally vivid imagination, he'll eventually leave behind a corpus of fiction. It will remain largely unappreciated during his brief and painful existence, but the day will come when his nightmarish stories will be hailed by some as literary masterpieces and form an important contribution to American literature. These are the gothic, horrific, science fiction, and weird tales of our sleeping sufferer, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck.

I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story. I paint what I dream. That's how Howard Phillips Lovecraft, better known as H.P. Lovecraft, described his writing process. He tells us this in an essay that counters critiques of his short story, Dagon. And in this essay, appropriately entitled In Defense of Dagon, Howard explains that the protagonist's suffering, which includes wiggling his way through suffocating sludge, was inspired by a dream. Yes, the nightmare we just experienced with him. To quote our macabre author,

I dreamed that whole hideous crawl, and can yet feel the ooze sucking me down. Sadly, HP suffered from a terrifying condition that strikes its victim somewhere between consciousness and sleep, rendering the individual unable to move during a dream, or rather a nightmarish-slash-hallucinatory state. This is called sleep paralysis. It's terrifying, yet HP Lovecraft channeled these horrors into his writing to become, essentially, Edgar Allan Poe's successor, or as Stephen King later dubs him,

the 20th century horror story's dark and baroque prince. Thus, we turn to H.P. for this year's Halloween special. But I realize he's a little less known than last year's featured author, Mr. E. A. Poe. So, very briefly, let me fill you in on this ghastly author, his life and his influence, before we enter his dark realm of fictional tales. As I touched on in today's opening, HP's pain extended far beyond his distressed sleep. His life was pain, mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Following the tragic loss of his grandfather and childhood home in 1904, he and his economically downgraded mother moved into a more humble dwelling down the street. She had no shortage of harsh words for her hideous son, as she called the boy. Yet, HP was bereaved as his mother followed in the footsteps of his deceased father by becoming a patient at the same asylum, Butler Hospital.

Indeed, his was a world of mental distress and death. Following a gallbladder operation gone wrong, she too died in this Rhode Island asylum on May 24th, 1921. Three years later, young and parentless Howard married a fellow writer, businesswoman, and Jewish-Russian immigrant, Sonia Green. But there's no happy ending here. She soon lost her business and health, and though they remained friends, economic necessity put them in a state of separation.

Sonia went to Cleveland, while Howard remained at their formerly shared home in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood. But was romantic apathy also to blame? Was Howard asexual or possibly gay? Scholars will forever wonder, but all we'll know for certain is that the couple amicably decoupled, minus a full legal divorce.

Howard returned to Providence in 1926. He saw other loved ones off to the grave, experienced the Great Depression, and wrote prolifically, but only for another decade before an excruciatingly painful stomach cancer claimed him. In 1937, 46-year-old H.P. Lovecraft died, poor, in pain, and, given his belief about humanity's smallness in the vast universe, which he called cosmicism, likely convinced that his collection of pulp fiction publications and one volume of fiction would soon follow him into oblivion. But Howard was wrong. Not only did his work survive, particularly thanks to a lifelong pen pal and fellow author, August Derleth,

but by the 1960s, a new generation fell in love with the turn-of-the-century New Englanders' gothic, horror, science, and weird fiction. H.P. was rediscovered, appreciated in a new light, resurrected. He influenced a whole new generation of writers and creators, including such creative masters of horror as Guillermo del Toro and, as noted above, Stephen King.

His works have been translated into 25 languages and sold by the millions. In brief, if the name Lovecraft sounds unfamiliar, let me reassure you, you've been exposed to his works and his monsters in one form or another. The Twilight Zone, The Simpsons, and I would argue Stranger Things are all among a very long list of creative works that have directly referenced or indirectly drawn inspiration from this dark Baroque prince. On a heavier note, H.P. Lovecraft not only saw monsters in his dreams, he allowed himself to see false monsters in his fellow human beings. Howard completely bought into the nativism and social Darwinism that swept through the early 20th century United States.

He strongly supported segregation. He feared the Southern and Eastern Europeans arriving at Ellis Island, a fear that comes out in full force in some of his tales, like the horror at Red Hook. A growing recognition of HP's racism has left 21st century artists and scholars alike in a challenging position as they work in a genre soaked in his creative best, yet reckoned with this messy legacy. Without pardoning his racism, some have pointed out that Howard's disturbed creative mind was just that,

disturbed, and filled with a paranoia that convinced him the world was out to get him. Another point some have raised is that, in HP's best work, his own protagonists and their openness to complexity are inconsistent with their creator's most deplorable views. And of course, it's hard not to puzzle over Howard, an ardent racist and nativist, marrying a Jewish-Russian immigrant. While his impact on 20th century literature and popular culture to this day is undeniable and highly significant to the history of sci-fi, horror, and more, his is truly a tormented mind none would want to get lost in. An unquestionable master of his craft,

the most influential author of horror from the progressive era, but yes, we'll just visit and be sure not to get lost. Today's foray into Lovecraftian horror consists of two tales. The first of these is one of HP's most famous, The Outsider. Not only is it among his finest and most celebrated works, but I'm drawn to it because of its heavily Edgar Allan Poe vibe. This one taps into Howard's own sense of loneliness and alienation as we meet an isolated protagonist,

imprisoned as he sees it in a decaying, dark castle. His escape leads him to a new world, we might say, where he meets people. But this escape and journey of self-discovery doesn't have the outcome you'd expect. Our second tale will lead us back to HP's troubled dream from this episode's opening. Ah, yes, the short story, Dagon.

In it, we will meet a World War I era sailor. Captured by a German ship, he escapes on a small boat only to find that, when the sea brings its depths to the surface, it may contain horrors far greater than any enemy of war. And I'm not just talking about the sludge. That's merely a warm-up. Oh, and heads up, this tale will engage with morphine addiction and the sailor's contemplation of suicide. And with that, I've said my piece. You now know who today's ghoulish author is and his significance to our current HTDS era and far beyond. And so, without further interruption or commentary, I give you the existential horrors of H.P. Lovecraft.

Happy Halloween! From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had. But once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve? Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time. Our team of scientists digs

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the world. We walk the catacombs beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent under Teotihuacan. We walk the sacred spirals of the Nazca Lines in search of ancient secrets. And we explore mythology from ancient cultures around the world. Come find us at ancienthistoryfangirl.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The Outsider by H.P. Lovecraft Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books,

or upon odd watches in twilight groves of grotesque, gigantic, and vine-encumbered trees that silently wave twisted branches far aloft. Such a lot the gods gave to me, to me, the dazed, the disappointed, the barren, the broken. And yet, I am strangely content and cling desperately to those seer memories when my mind momentarily threatens to reach beyond to the other. I know not where I was born, save that the castle was infinitely old and infinitely horrible,

full of dark passages and having high ceilings where the eye could find only cobwebs and shadows. The stones in the crumbling corridors seemed always hideously damp, and there was an accursed smell everywhere, as of the piled-up corpses of dead generations. It was never light, so that I used sometimes to light candles and gaze steadily at them for relief. Nor was there any sun outdoors, since the terrible trees grew high above the topmost accessible tower. There was one black tower which reached above the trees into the unknown outer sky, but that was partly ruined and could not be ascended, save by a well-nigh impossible climb up the sheer wall stone by stone.

I must have lived years in this place, but I cannot measure the time. Beings must have cared for my needs, yet I cannot recall any person except myself, or anything alive but the noiseless rats and bats and spiders. I think that whoever nursed me must have been shockingly aged, since my first conception of a living person was that of something mockingly like myself, yet distorted, shriveled, and decaying like the castle. To me, there was nothing grotesque in the bones and skeletons that strode some of the stone crypts deep down among the foundations. I fantastically associated these things with everyday events and thought them more natural

than the colored pictures of living beings which I found in many of the moldy books. From such books I learned all that I know. No teacher urged or guided me, and I do not recall hearing any human voice in all those years, not even my own. For although I had read of speech, I had never thought to try to speak aloud. My aspect was a matter equally unthought of,

for there were no mirrors in the castle, and I merely regarded myself by instinct as akin to the youthful figures I saw drawn and painted in the books. I felt conscious of youth because I remembered so little. Outside, across the putrid moat and under the dark, mute trees, I would often lie and dream for hours about what I read in the books, and would longingly picture myself amidst gay crowds in the sunny world beyond the endless forest. Once I tried to escape from the forest, but as I went farther from the castle, the shade grew denser and the air more filled with brooding

fear, so that I ran frantically back, lest I lose my way in a labyrinth of nighted silence. So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then, in the shadowy solitude, my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted, entreating hands to the single black ruined tower

that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last, I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might, since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish than to live without ever beholding day. In the

dank twilight, I climbed the worn and aged stone stairs till I reached the level where they ceased, and thereafter clung perilously to small footholds leading upward. Ghastly and terrible was that dead, stairless cylinder of rock, black, ruined, and deserted, and sinister with startled bats whose wings made no noise. But more ghastly and terrible still was the slowness of my progress. For climb as I might, the darkness overhead grew no thinner, and a new chill as of haunted and venerable mold assailed me.

I shivered as I wondered why I did not reach the light, and would have looked down had I dared. I fancied that night had come suddenly upon me, and vainly groped with one free hand for a window embrasure that I might peer out and above, and try to judge the height I had attained. All at once, after an infinity of awesome, sightless crawling up that concave and desperate precipice, I felt my head touch a solid thing, and I knew I must have gained the roof, or at least some kind of floor. In the darkness, I raised my free hand and tested the barrier, finding it stone and immovable. Then came a deadly circuit of the tower, clinging to whatever holds the slimy wall could give, till finally my testing hand found the barrier yielding and I turned upward

again, pushing the slab or door with my head as I used both hands in my fearful ascent. There was no light revealed above, and as my hand went higher, I knew that my climb was for the nonce ended. Since the slab was the trapdoor of an aperture, leading to a level stone surface of greater circumference than the lower tower, no doubt the floor of some lofty and capacious observation chamber. I crawled through carefully and tried to prevent the heavy slab from falling back into place, but failed in the latter attempt. As I lay exhausted on the stone floor, I heard the eerie echoes of its fall, but hoped when necessary to pry it open again. Believing I was now at a prodigious height,

far above the accursed branches of the wood, I dragged myself up from the floor and fumbled about for windows, that I might look for the first time upon the sky and the moon and stars of which I had read. But on every hand I was disappointed, since all that I found were vast shelves of marble, bearing odious oblong boxes of disturbing size. More and more I reflected, and wondered what hoary secrets might abide in this high apartment so many eons cut off from the castle below. Then, unexpectedly, my hands came upon a doorway, where hung a portal of stone, rough with strange chiseling. Trying it, I found it locked, but with a supreme burst of strength, I overcame all obstacles and dragged it open inward. As I did so, there came

to me the purest ecstasy I have ever known. For shining tranquility through an ornate grating of iron and down a short stone passageway of steps that ascended from the newly found doorway was the radiant full moon, which I had never before seen, save in dreams and in vague visions I dared not call memories. Fancying now that I had attained the very pinnacle of the castle, I commenced to rush up the few steps beyond the door, but the sudden veiling of the moon by a cloud caused me to stumble, and I felt my way more slowly in the dark. It was still very dark when I reached the grating,

which I tried carefully and found unlocked, but which I did not open for fear of falling from the amazing height to which I had climbed. Then the moon came out. Most demonical of all shocks is that of the abysmally unexpected and grotesquely unbelievable. Nothing I had before undergone could compare in terror with what I now saw, with the bizarre marvels that sight implied. The sight itself was as simple as it was stupefying, for it was merely this. Instead of a dizzying prospect of treetops seen from a lofty eminence, there stretched around me on a level through the

grating nothing less than the solid ground, decked and diversified by marble slabs and columns, and overshadowed by an ancient stone church whose ruined spire gleamed spectrally in the moonlight. Half unconscious, I opened the grating and staggered out upon the white gravel path that stretched away in two directions. My mind, stunned and chaotic as it was, still held the frantic craving for light. And not even the fantastic wonder which had happened could stay my course. I neither knew nor cared whether my experience was insanity, dreaming, or magic, but was determined to gaze on brilliance and gaiety at any cost. I knew not who I was or what I was or what my surroundings might be, though as I continued to stumble along,

I became conscious of a kind of fearsome latent memory that made my progress not wholly fortuitous. I passed under an arch out of that region of slabs and columns and wandered through the open country, sometimes following the visible road, but sometimes leaving it curiously to tread across meadows where only occasional ruins bespoke the ancient presence of a forgotten road. Once I swam across a swift river where a crumbling, mossy masonry told of a bridge long vanished. Over two hours must have passed before I reached what seemed to be my goal, a venerable ivied castle in a thickly wooded park. maddeningly familiar yet full of perplexing strangeness to me. I saw that the moat was filled in, and that some of the well-known towers were demolished,

whilst new wings existed to confuse the beholder. But what I observed with chief interest and delight were the open windows, gorgeously ablaze with light and sending forth sound of the gayest revelry. Advancing to one of these, I looked in and saw an oddly dressed company indeed, making merry and speaking brightly to one another. I had never, seemingly, heard human speech before and could guess only vaguely what was said. Some of the faces seemed to hold expressions that brought up incredibly remote recollections. Others were utterly alien. I now stepped through the low window into the brilliantly lighted room, stepping as I did so from my single bright moment of hope to my blackest convulsion of despair and realization. The nightmare was quick to come, for as I entered, there occurred immediately one of

the most terrifying demonstrations I had ever conceived. Scarcely had I crossed the sill when there descended upon the whole company a sudden and unheralded fear of hideous intensity distorting every face and evoking the most horrible screams from nearly every throat. Flight was universal, and in the clamor and panic several fell in a swoon and were dragged away by their madly fleeing companions. Many covered their eyes with their hands and plunged blindly and awkwardly in their race to escape, overturning furniture and stumbling against the walls before they managed to reach one of the many doors. The cries were shocking, and as I stood in the

brilliant apartment alone and dazed, listening to their vanishing echoes, I trembled at the thought of what might be lurking near me unseen. At a casual inspection, the room seemed deserted, but when I moved toward one of the alcoves, I thought I detected a presence there. A hint of motion beyond the golden arch doorway, leading to another and somewhat similar room. As I approached the arch, I began to perceive the presence more clearly. And then, with the first and last sound I ever uttered, a ghastly ululation that revolted me almost as poignantly as its noxious cause, I beheld in full frightful vividness the inconceivable, indescribable, and unmentionable monstrosity which had by its simple appearance

changed a merry company to a herd of delirious fugitives. I cannot even hint what it was like, for it was a compound of all that is unclean, uncanny, unwelcome, abnormal, and detestable. It was the ghoulish shade of decay, antiquity, and desolation, the putrid, dripping eidolon of unwholesome revelation, the awful bearing of that which the merciful earth should always hide. God knows it was not of this world, or no longer of this world, yet to my horror I saw in its eaten away and bone-revealing outlines a leering, abhorrent travesty on the human shape,

and in its moldy, disintegrating apparel, an unspeakable quality that chilled me even more. I was almost paralyzed, but not too much so to make a feeble effort toward flight. A backward stumble, which failed to break the spell in which the nameless, voiceless monster held me. My eyes, bewitched by the glassy orbs which stared loathsomely into them, refused to close, though they were mercifully blurred and showed the terrible object but indistinctly after the first shock. I tried to raise my hand to shut out the sight, yet so stunned were my nerves that my arm could not fully obey my will. The attempt, however, was enough to disturb my balance so that I had to stagger forward several steps to avoid falling. As I did so, I became suddenly and agonizingly aware of

the nearness of the carrion thing whose hideous, hollow breathing I half fancied I could hear. Nearly mad, I found myself yet able to throw out a hand to ward off the fetid apparition, which pressed so close when in one cataclysmic second of cosmic nightmarish and hellish accident, my fingers touched the rotting, outstretched paw of the monster beneath the golden arch. I did not shriek, but all the fiendish ghouls that ride the night wind shrieked for me as in that same second there crashed down upon my mind a single and fleeting avalanche of soul-annihilating memory. I knew in that second all that had been. I remembered beyond the frightful castle and the trees, and recognized the altered edifice in which I now stood. I recognized, most terrible of all, the unholy abomination that stood leering before me as I withdrew my sullied fingers from its own.

But in the cosmos, there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is Nepenthe. In the supreme horror of that second, I forgot what had horrified me, and the burst of black memory vanished in a chaos of echoing images. In a dream, I fled from that haunted and accursed pile and ran swiftly and silently in the moonlight. When I returned to the churchyard place of marble and went down the steps,

I found the stone trap door immovable. But I was not sorry, for I had hated the antique castle and the trees. Now I ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night wind, and play by day amongst the catacombs of Nefer and Ka, in the sealed and unknown valley of Hadath by the Nile. I know that light is not for me, save that of the moon over the rock tombs of Neb, nor any gaiety save the unnamed feasts of Nitocris beneath the great pyramid. Yet in my new wildness and freedom, I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. For although Nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider, a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.

This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame, stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass. Ever wondered what it's like to be in the room with top Al-Qaeda terrorists plotting their next move? Do you want to know how the history of Islamic fundamentalist thought informs the way the world works today? Well then, dear listener, Conflicted is the podcast for you. I trace the epic battles between Muslims and the West. What are the Houthis' objectives in the Red Sea?

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So turn to the nerds to answer your real-world money questions and get insights that can help you make the smartest financial decisions for your life. Listen to NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Dagon by H.P. Lovecraft I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer, and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think, from my slavery to morphine,

that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages, you may guess, though never fully realize, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German Sea Raider. The Great War was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation, so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners.

So liberal indeed was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken, I managed to escape alone in a small boat, with water and provisions for a good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coastline was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun, waiting either for some passing ship or to be

cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastness of unbroken blue. The change happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know, for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infestedested was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished. For there was, in the air and in the rotting soil, a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core.

The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within hearing and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime. Yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty, as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat, I realized that only one theory could explain my position.

Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might, nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things. For several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground

lost some of its stickiness and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for traveling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. On the third morning, I found the soil dry enough to walk upon with ease. The odor of the fish was maddening, but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight and evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day, I forged steadily westward, guided by a faraway hummock, which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert.

That night, I encamped, and on the following day, still traveled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening, I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance. An intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so wild that night, but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon

had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon, I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy. Indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset.

Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me, but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world, peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of paradise lost, and of Satan's hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness. As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined.

Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy footholds for a descent, whilst after with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated. All at once, my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about a hundred yards ahead of me. An object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself. But I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour and position were not altogether the work of nature.

A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express. For despite its enormous magnitude and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived, beyond a doubt, that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist's or archaeologist's delight, I examined my surroundings more closely.

The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith, on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me and unlike anything I had ever seen in books, consisting, for the most part, of conventionalized aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, mollusks, whales, and the like.

Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of Adore. I think that these things were supposed to depict men, at least a certain sort of men,

though the creatures were shown disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto or paying homage at some monolithic shrine, which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail, for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline, despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flappy lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiseled badly out of proportion with their scenic background, for one of the creatures was shown in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself.

I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size, but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe, some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the silent channel before me. Then suddenly, I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith,

about which it flung its gigantic, scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat. At any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows, I was in a San Francisco hospital,

brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing. Nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once, I sought out a celebrated ethnologist and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the fish god, but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries.

It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine, but the drug has given only transient surcease and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow men.

Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm, a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man of war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideous, vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind. Of a day when the land shall sink and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium.

The end isn't here. I hear a noise at the door as if some immense slippery body lumbered against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window! HTDS is supported by premium membership fans. You can join by clicking the link in the episode description. My gratitude to you kind souls providing additional funding to help us keep going. And a special thanks to our members,

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Justin May, Kristen Pratt, Karen Bartholomew, Cassie Conecco, Kim R., Kyle Decker, Lawrence The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. Sharon Theisen, Sean Baines, Steve Williams, Creepy Girl, Tisha Black, and Zach Jackson. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of The Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic characters in modern history. Look for The Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts.