Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 249 - H.P. Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, and the Horror You Love Today

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

Hope you have as fun listening to this one as I had making it! I had no idea prior to digging into this topic, that Lovecraft was so influential on modern horror. Like Stranger Things? Heavily influenced by Lovecraft. Like Stephen King's It? The cosmic monster who presents as Pennywise is a creature who could have come directly from the Cthulhu mythos. Much of the Twilight Zone, the X-Files, the BBC's Black Mirror and more - so influenced by Lovecraft. And, in a way, fictional universes like the Marvel cinematic universe and George Lucas's Star Wars universe - influenced by the cosmic worldbuilding of Lovecraft. We feel a lot of his influence today - but who was the man? We'll take a look at that as well - including the ugly parts. And we'll meet some of his creatures and dissect the structure of some of Lovecraft's most influential stories. A very Weird Tales edition of Timesuck awaits! The first Bad Magic Productions June charity we are proud to donate $7,050 towards is Trinity Stables. They run a specialty program in Georgia called Stable Moments, a weekly mentorship program that utilizes equine-assisted learning to achieve life skills that better prepare foster and adopted kids for healthy transitions into adulthood. To find out more, please visit: https://www.trinitystables.net/The second Bad Magic Productions June charity we are proud to donate $7,050 towards is Vintage Pet Rescue, a Rhode Island-based nonprofit committed to rescuing “vintage” aka senior pets from shelters and assisting their owners who can no longer care for their vintage pets. To find out more, please visit: https://www.vintagepetrescue.org/ Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/XFXFwZX6N2AMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste) Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear. And the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. This is what HP Lovecraft wrote in his essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, first published in 1927. And if there's one thing HP Lovecraft knew about, it was fear. The man lived in fear, afraid of his neighbors,

afraid of the world changing around him, afraid of losing his sanity, maybe even afraid of the mysterious monsters he wrote about. He sure knew how to write about monsters that scared others. He knew how to create monsters that were so terrifying they'd become the basis for monsters in film and TV nearly a century after he wrote about them. He knew how to blend details about the normal world we know with the details of a fictional world just beyond our comprehension that he made seem all too real. He knew how to make us doubt our perception of reality

and our ability to use words to describe things. HP Lovecraft was a master at mysterious, deeply unsettling horror. All of his fictional works would orbit one vital premise. We are all doomed if whatever is out there in space discovers us. Or as Lovecraft said, all of my tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human laws and emotions have no validity or significance in the cosmos at large. Fun. And one of those things out there in the cosmos at large would be the mythic monster Kathulu. In his short story The Call of Kathulu, he described it as, a monster of vaguely anthropoid

outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws unhined in four feet, and long, narrow wings behind a frightening creature. Not only scary because it's massive and destructive, but also because seeing it basically ensures that you'll go insane, get killed by a Kathulu's worshippers, or worse. We'll learn about Kathulu today, and some of Lovecraft's other gods and strange intergalactic creatures in the influence they'd have on the imaginations of later creators. Stephen King has said the best of Lovecraft's works are uniquely terrible in all of American literature and survive with all their power intact.

Lovecraft paved the way for people like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. We have Lovecraft to thank in part for so much stranger things, the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, the X-Files, so much more, all influenced in some way by Lovecraft's Cosmic Horror. Odds are your familiar with and possibly deeply love the work of someone Lovecraft influenced. But do you really know anything about HP Lovecraft? Who is he? Let's find out. On this week's Eldridge Tentacle Monster, cosmic tear, weird tales edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck.

Hold the stakes to time suck. Happy Monday, Metsack. Welcome to a strange and terrible weird, weird tales edition of Time Suck. I'm Dan Cummins, whore lover, Kathulu Tamer, Weird Tales tour guide, the master sucker, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, get in that cosplay outfit, Lucifina, praise boy, jangles and savours from an unimaginable fate. Triple M. A whole bunch of strange, we've been zucked real boy, Tiago. Shut down our original Facebook. Call to the Curious Group merch on the store right now. Speaking of

weird at badmagicmurch.com. We have some especially weird merch this week. We have a Tiago Facebook AI robot T in the store. We have a whole cool time zucked collection with T's, tanked tops and phone cases, different designs. Tiago, if you missed me talking about Tiago or don't remember, Tiago was the AI bot, who sent me weekly updates for a few months about our private Facebook, called to the Curious Group. We get to week, I got this message, let me know that our suspended group might come back. Hi, Dan, I hope to find you well.

Please allow me to update you and let you know that we haven't forgotten about your group's review request. As it is still under review by the relevant team, nevertheless, please allow me to mention that we have chased this matter and will inform you once we can provide more details. Thank you for your patience and wishing you a lovely day, kind regards, Tiago. Facebook groups admin support analyst. I actually thought Tiago was real for the longest time. I'm an idiot.

I would reply, I would never get a message back. Then my very last message from Thiago said, Hi, Dan, I would like to follow up with you, as we've now heard back from the relevant team. No one talks like that. And this time, we have new details to share with you. Thanks for your patience. Please allow me to inform you that after reviewing the Colt of the Curious Group,

we can confirm that the group has been taken down. It will not be restored, as the group violations apply to it were deemed to be accurate. As such, it is not possible to further appeal, and our team is unfortunately unable to further assist in this regard. I know this can be disappointed news, and that this wasn't the outcome you were looking for.

But please, do keep in mind that we are unable to submit another appeal as the decision is final. Thank you once again for contacting Facebook group supports. Should you have any new questions or concerns, I'd kindly ask that you please create a new support request by clicking on the group support in the support section. Although we can now restore your group, your feedback will allow us to continue to improve for the future.

And I would invite you to answer a short survey that you'll receive, kind regards to how I didn't take that fucking survey. Uh, finally I was like, there's no way this person is real. The tone's all over the place, verbi, just so weird. Please, please do keep in mind that we won't do fuck all to help you. Thanks for your patience. Now beat it. We don't want your felt in weird. Please do keep in mind that we won't do fuck all to help you. Thanks for your patience. Now beat it. We don't want your property business.

Please give some feedback. Thanks, Thiago, you real boy. So now of course we have Colt the Curious too, at least as I write this, and so many cool subgroups where meat sacks have downloaded the free subgroup social pack and made their own cool little communities, unofficial Colt the Curious groups,

groups like Colt the Curious investors, groups for meat sack investors and stock traders. Luciferia's Galaria, a Cultivated Curious art subgroup. Love seeing so many people find friends with similar interests. So hail Nimrod, hail all of you making those groups. And that announcement took longer than I thought it was going to as far as announcements. So fuck all the other announcements.

Let's just get off to the topic. A topic unlike what we normally do, comparable episodes to todays would be the Edgar Allen Poe episode from June 2019, maybe Dante's in Ferno from February back in this year. This is still pretty different than even those episodes, which is fitting because Lovecraft was, well, he's a different kind of dude. Also this episode is different because it's less about Lovecraft the man, although we will dig into his life for sure, and more about his most famous monster, the subgenre of literature he essentially created

and the influence he's had on, you know, much of the fantasy sci-fi and horror fiction we enjoyed today. This week we're exploring how HP Lovecraft and, you know, one of the most fascinating worlds in the history of creative world building was built. Let's call upon the great and terrible Kathulu, rise up from the ocean depths

and face us great, mysterious, monstrous God. We accept any madness that comes from your awakening. What is the most fascinating world? Who was Lovecraft? Who published his early works so that we now know of him. That's what we're starting today. Gotta talk about Weird Tales, a pulp sci-fi and horror magazine that was Lovecraft's main employer. Magazine very influential to a lot of modern shows that I love like the X-Files. I would argue BBC's Black Mirror.

Holy shit, I love that show. Smart scares. Weird Tales was a magazine very influential to the Twilight Zone, which in turn for sure influence black mirror. Then next I'll lay out what defines lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror. Cosmic horror also known as lovecraft in horror type of fantasy sci-fi horror. Common now that lovecraft pioneered and you might be more familiar with that sub genre than you think you ever watch stranger things. Lindsay the kids and I love that show that show is so influenced by lovecraft. I would play stranger things firmly in the world of cosmic horror. things. Lindsey, the kids and I love that show. That show is so influenced by lovecraft. I would play Stranger Things firmly in the world of cosmic horror. Matt Duffer, one of the Duffer brothers who created Stranger Things, said they took an HP Lovecraft sort of approach

to the series when creating the monsters that inhabit the upside down. He said this interdimensional being that is sort of beyond human comprehension. We purposely don't want to go too much into what it is or what it wants. That is a very lovecraftian, like textbook approach, as you shall soon see. The Demi-Gorgan, so lovecraft. The imagination of lovecraft is all around us. Going over the tenets of what defines lovecraftian or cosmic horror, we'll discuss some 20th century world building and world builders set forth the kind of immersive fiction that now dominates

film, television, gaming and more. Lovecrafts play amongst epic world builders like J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas. Talk about that. We'll jump into a timeline then of Lovecraft, the man's life. Before hopping out to dissect his dissect, excuse me, his most influential work, the beginning of his now famous Kathulu mythos, mythos, the call of Kathulu. Next we'll meet some of the gods and monsters from that mythos before looking at his second most famous work at the mountains of madness, so much madness today.

And before we recap, we will look at some lovecraft controversies, I'm sure many of you are very familiar with. It was very, very early 20th century in some of the worst ways. It was a weird and troubled dude. Hope you find all this is interesting as I do, and I hope it fires up your imagination, like it does mine.

Man, he is, Lovecraft is the imagination fuel. Hail Nimrod, protect this great God of time, suck from the horrors that await. All right, HP Lovecraft, Howard, Phillips Lovecraft, born in Providence, Rhode Island on August 20th, 1890 became the author of Fantastic and Macop short novels and shorter stories that would bring him a lot of A lot more fame and death than it ever did in life since the death at the age of just 46 back in 1937 He's become regarded as one of the 20th century masters of the Gothic tale of terror

Seen by many as the American successor to fellow New Englander, Edgar Allan Poe died a little over 40 years before his birth. Lovecraft, a science fiction author, was more interested in science and fiction as a young child, but lifelong health issues, a combination of both physical and mental health issues, it seems, prevented him from attending college and pursuing a more traditional career. He made his living. Well, he never really made a living. He made some money, primarily

as a ghost rider and rewrite man, despite being born into affluence. He ended up spending half his childhood and most of his adulthood in seclusion and poverty. He definitely was one of those tortured genius types, not a fun fate poor bastard. So many fans today, so few in his lifetime. What a terrible thing to become so successful as an artist, but never lived to see that success. 1923 on when he was able to get published most of Lovecraft stories would be published in the fantastic old magazine Weird Tales. So fun to explore Weird Tales for this episode. The first issue of Weird Tales was published in March of 1923. Lovecraft would get one of his short stories, Degon, published in

the October 1923 edition issue number eight. His first weird tales publication was also the first of Lovecraft stories to introduce the cthulhu a cthulhu metha's element. I never want to say metha's, metha's, meetha sounds better my mind, but the internet says metha's. He introducedD.T. Dagon, also the name of the ancient God of the Phoenicians and the Philistines associated with agriculture. And weird tales, love their covers. Maybe spent, haha, but too much time. Check it out their covers this week. Basically it's a mashup of pinup models

that I fucking love and monsters, which I also love, Hilars of Fina. The kind of shit I was doodling when I was in grade school in junior high, though not nearly as well as their illustrators. I'm pretty sure I've talked about weird tales somewhere before on time, so I just can't figure out where. I thought I brought it up and maybe Mothman or men in black, but can't find in the notes so well.

Weird tales is technically still around, but it hasn't existed in wide circulation since the original magazine folded in 1944 or 1954. There were some reprint anthologies in the 60s, four new magazine issues in the 70s, four original paperbacks in the 80s, and the publication picked up a little bit for the next few decades with semi-regular monthly issues, a collection of new tales. Issue 364 was just published in December of 2020. It's an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine and it was never extremely popular but it was most popular during the mid 1930s when Lovecraft was a steady contributor revered

by many horror and fantasy fans today. When it came out, it was so unique. It was just nothing like it. It had cult classic written all over it from the very outset and initially it was just the only monthly magazine in the US publishing science fiction stories. When it first came out, it was the only monthly magazine in the US publishing science fiction stories. When it first came out, it was the only one. So if that was a kind of shit, you were into you fucking love weird tales.

Oh my heck, you fucking flipping did. It was the only place you'd get your fill of new strange science fiction short stories every month. I picture a couple of 12 year old boys in 1923 racing their bikes down to the local five in dime. It carries a few comic books and pulp magazines like this, running into the store, grabbing the new copy of Weird Tales a day comes out, seeing story titles on the cover like the Phantom Wolf Hound.

The Moon Terror Part 2, The Grey Death, and The Blade of Vengeance. Those are all real titles from the fourth issue of Weird Tales in 1923. Picks those kids being pumped. Whoa, ain't this a beast, Nees Marty? Look at this broad cotton that tentacle. fourth issue of Weird Tales in 1923. Picks those kids being pumped. Whoa! Ain't this a bee's knees, Marty? Look at this broad cotton that tentacle. Doesn't she look just like Gloria Swanson? Why I think she just to cats pajamas?

What a Sheba! Look at all these monsters. Who thinks of this stuff? All this for less than two bits? Man, I love Weird Tales. Let's dust out. Seriously, I've had so many kids love this magazine. Some of them would later become sci-fi authors themselves.

You know, Weird Tales was imagination-fuel, like I said, in cheap paper form. What a beautiful thing to nourish creativity. Thank you, Nimrod, for publications like Weird Tales. I never traveled much at all growing up, other than camping trips to places where we could drive to in a few hours, shopping for clothes and a few hours drive.

I went on just one traditional vacation before graduating high school, went to Disneyland. Other than that, stayed where we lived. Physically, stayed where we lived. But in my mind, I went all over the place, thanks to my imagination and my imagination was fueled by strange stories, like those published originally in Weird Tales.

So, you know, for a weird dude who used to be a weird kid, thank you, Weird Tales. Even though I didn't read your stories, I didn't read many stories written by authors, clearly influenced heavily by your stories. And I loved them. The magazine, again, yeah, peaked in the 1930s, built itself as the number one magazine of strange, unusual stories.

There were other, many other pulp magazines, amazing stories came out a few years after weird tales in 1926, but also feature odd science fiction tales. That old pulp magazines still around, also just barely. We first talked about amazing stories. And in early 20th century American pulp magazines here on Time Suck, actually in the Scientology episode back in March of 2017. If you remember, if you heard that one, Elrond Hubbard, the fucking BDI'd Weasley con artist, founder of Scientology, worked for years as a pulp fiction author, cranking out story after story for magazines like Unknown.

Now, that came out in 1938, before giving up on Westerns detective stories, sci-fi, war stories, tales of exotic adventure, romance, and realizing there was more money and writing a new religion. And no JK there. Man, Elrond's pivot from pulp fiction writer to religious founder is the most blatant. I am clearly full of shit. A founding of a religion in history, thanks to all the documentation about exactly how he did it. Oh, Scientology.

So sad that you exist. Anyway, pulp magazines often referred to as the pulps. We're in expensive fiction magazines published from 1896 to the late 1950s. They were precursors to a lot of the sci-fi comic books and graphic novels that would come out later. Pulp magazines were the successor to 19th century dime novels. Popular fiction issued in a series of inexpensive paperbound editions. American dime novels tended to feature crime, detective tales over the top stories of wild west heroism

Train robbers and fights between cowboys and tribes Or also romance and war stories. I was like John Wayne movies, you know like that they came out of that You know the type of story that was originally published in these like Western pulp magazines. And all of that crime noir that a lot of us love now started off in America and these magazines. And there are stories where consider cheap lowbrow and quickly cranked out. In England, these stories were known as penny dreadfuls in Victorian England with their pension for ghost tales, gothic horror tales became popular in these penny dreadfuls by the end of the 19th century.

Lovecraft, a huge fan of those British horror tales and those penny dreadfuls. Publishers gear these books towards the uneducated lower class, producing stories with simple formulaic plots that open new worlds to the readers. Storylines were straightforward and told in physical language that brought up, brought to mind concrete pictures and people for the readers. Sounds like there being a bit insulting with this description. Like these were stories for dumb people, and I bet I would have loved them.

Easy on the symbolism and metaphors. Kick up the action, motherfuckers. I'm here to be entertained. Not enriched. Showbiz, stories were shorter than most novels, brightly illustrated, basically kind of, yeah, precursor like I said, geographic novels. Okay, so back to weird tales now.

Weird tales focus not on romance or true crime, not on Westerns, but primarily horror, and specifically strange horror. Weird shit as the name implies. Tales of odd monsters from other worlds, tales of ghosts and dread, tales of madness. One of a weird tales, young fans was Rod Sterling. On a 1924, he enjoyed the heyday of weird tales when he was a young teen and preteen in the 30s. Undoubtedly read a lot of Lovecraft.

And if you don't recognize the name, Rod Sterling will fuck you! Get out of here! I'm sick of it! Turn it off! I'm sick of you not liking exactly what I like! Okay, of course you can. But I do love Rod Sterling. Huge influence on my imagination and the imagination

of so many of their fellow weirdos. Rod Sterling, we create and then host the original Twilight Zone series. The began in 1959, Twilight Zone, very influenced by the kinds of stories found in weird tales. Then as I said earlier, the Twilight Zone would later influence another show I love, you know, Black Mirror.

Weird Tales influences Rod Sterling, who creates the Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone, then influences Chris Carter, who then creates the X files Lovecraft, you know major weird tales presence for all of that Before really refocus on Lovecraft. Let me read you one of the short stories published in weird tales by someone else a few Once before Lovecraft's first story be published in the magazine just to get a taste of the world of weird tales The world that Lovecraft was such a part of. Get a feel for his weird literary peers and competition.

This comes from issue number three, May 1923. Later selected in 1997 is one of the best stories of 1923's weird tales, The Purple Hot by Hum Herman Sisk. I was weary of the fog that hung over me like a paw, fatigued to the point of exhaustion. Since early afternoon the chill wind had forced it through my clothing like rain, it depressed me. The country through which I had traveled alone was desolate and unpeople,

safe here and there, where some bushes assume fantastic form. The very air was oppressive, as far as I could see were hills, nothing but hills and those bushes. Occasionally, I could hear the uncanny cry of some hidden animal, as I pushed on, a dread of impending disaster fastened itself upon me. I thought of my home, of my mother and sister, and one dude if all was well with them. I tried to rid myself of this morbid state of mind, but try as I would I could not. It grew as I progressed until as length it became a part of me.

I'd walked some 15 miles, and was so weary I could scarcely stand when I came suddenly upon a log cabin. It was a crude affair, quite small and stood back some distance from the little used road and a clump of trees. A tiny window in a door faced the direction from which I approached. No paint had ever covered the roughly huge logs from which it was made, and the sun and the wind and the fog had turned the virgin wood to a drab brown. I felt it was useless to knock for the cabin had every appearance of being deserted.

However, wrap I did. No voice bade me enter, and with an effort I pushed open the door and staggered into the house. Almost immediately my weary legs crumbled under me, and I toppled and struck heavily on my face. When I regained consciousness, a rough room scantily furnished greeted my eye. There was an ill-looking table at the top of which was warped in rectangular and shape, standing in the center.

The one side was a rustic chair. Beyond the table was a bunk built into the wall, and on this lay a man with shiny eyes, in a long white beard. A heavy grey blanket covered all of him but his head. Showbiz, he said. You just die for some peanut butter! Now take off your pants and show me that fat bear bottom. I got the cat and I entails, I already warmed up.

No, that's not what happened next. That was serial killer and I put fish popping in for no reason apologies. Here's what really happened next in the story. It ran on time. He said in a high pitched voice. I looked at him closely. I don't know you, I said. Not how you, but I know you would come.

You are ill and need help, I asked? No. He replied in his strange monotone. But on this day, someone... Oh, his visit's here. No one has ever returned, but I've yet to be low on the night of the Santaversery. There was something so weird in the way he looked at me out of those big, watery eyes, I involuntarily shut it. What anniversary I asked? The murder of my father.

He answered. That happened many years ago. A strange man came with this cabin just as you have done. He paused. And then he said, wee! You're moody! I need any paranormal rape or pill? Mars will try and save someone while we're for Charles to get back with you.

He has moonshine contacts somewhere right here! Sorry. God damn it. That's where one of the strange puppets appeared in my mind, what he is not a part of Herman's original weird tale back to 1923. I said nothing. Who wished to stay our night, he asked. Yes I may, I replied.

A moment later I regretted it. Right so, said he, with the slight nod of his white head. That was with the very words he addressed to us. We took him in. When morning came I found my father dead in there, rolling his eyes and racing his head to indicate some point behind him, with a dagger in his heart. You can see the room of the open door behind me.

I looked at him a moment hesitating. When I went to the door and pushed it open, cautiously glancing into the other room, I saw there was nothing there but a bunk similar to the one the old man occupied. It won't be afraid, he said, evidently sensing my fear. Nothing will hurt you now. It's after midnight when it happens. What happens, I asked? I don't know. No true men have had the same experience. It all depends on one state of mind. You mean, I began?

Yes, he interrupted. One man saw hands reaching towards him and roped in the air. He was escaping the callos. Another saw face as a beautiful girl. He was on his way to a large church wedding. A third saw pools of blood in the white snow stained by human life. He was again living to a massacre in Russia. Do you live here?

No, no one does. The cabin is quite deserted. I come each year to welcome the evening's guest. Is there no other place to stay? I asked a sudden fear, ceasing me. None. Besides, it is growing dark without him. You would lose your way even if you could leave. There was something ominous in the way he uttered these last five words. Yes, he went on. As if I had asked the unuttered question in my mind, you may think you can go but you cannot. That is the curse in my father placed on this cabin.

And I come here each year to see that his word is obeyed. Who have entered that door yonder on this date must stay until morning and endure the agonies that only the rising sun can dispel. I looked about me to make sure that he and I were the only living things in the room. What is to prevent my leaving, I asked? Try to. He replied, in eerie note of glean, his queer voice. I walked in the door and gave it a mighty Poland to my utter amazement.

It was locked. I tried again. This time with greater determination, but the door remained unyielding. A sudden terror seized me. I turned the beseeched steel man to let me go, but he was not there. I looked quickly about me. He was nowhere to be seen. I ran into the other room. And then! What is big deal? I turned around to see a strange Ukrainian stroking his flaccid chain penis in the corner beneath his sweatpants. A mother no one. I joke for a bit. Then leave you back to the bow story.

Sorry, got to. Me again. 20th century, 30kph is not part of this tale! No more inside joke interruptions, I swear. It was as empty as before I rushed to the door there and pulled vigorously, but my efforts weren't vain. Returning to his bunk, I examined it closely to my great astonishment. Heavy grey blanket was gone. In desperation, I tried once more of the door through which I entered the cabin. It was still as inflexible as concrete.

Doctors fell fast and the room became very dim. I groped about and discovered some mattress and a candle on a shelf under the table. I struck a match and lighted the candle, letting some of the tallow drip onto the table, I made a stick for it. I then sat down in the edge of the bonk and anxiously awaited developments. But nothing occurred to me, the somber silence of my prison. Thus I remained until my watch pointed to the hour of nine. My journey had greatly fatigued me, but my fears

counterbalanced my weariness, so then I kept in wake, in spite of it. At length, however, my eyelids grew heavy, my eyes became blurry, so that the candle multiplied in my head drooped until my chin rested on my chest. But in the candle burn I lay back on the hard bunk. I was cold and very nervous and greatly felt the need of food and dry clothing. But my fatigue soon overcame me and I fell asleep. When I awake in a sense of suffocation and bewilderment hung over me, whereas the room had been cold when I lay down it now seemed close and hot. I pulled myself to a sitting posture. The room was dark. The candle was out. I jumped to my feet and started toward the table.

But in another moment I stood frozen to the spot my eyes arrested in my body palsied by what I saw before me. At the far end of the room was a purple glow in the shape of a human heart. It was stationary when I sought, but almost immediately began to move about the room. Now it was at the window, then beside the table. Again it moved quickly, but silently into the other room. I pulled my frightened senses together and broke my way to the table. I found a match, with trembling hands I struck it and lit the candle. To my surprise it was almost as tall as when I had fallen asleep.

I looked at my watch, it was one o'clock. A moment later the flame was snuffed out, when I had fallen asleep. I looked at my watch It was one o'clock a Moment later the flame was snuffed out and I was again in total darkness. I looked wildly about me. Horus! The purple heart was beside me. I shrank back in terror. It came closer. Suddenly I acquired superhuman courage I grasped for the specter. I touched nothing. I placed my left hand before me at arm's length. Low! It was between me and my hand Presently it moved away. A great calm settled over me and I began to sense a presence in the room. Now without any fear and with a steady hand, I again struck a match and lighted the candle. It was promptly extinguished.

I struck another with similar results. I now something brushed my lips and an arm was passed lightly about my shoulders, but I was no longer afraid. The room continued causally warm and a greater sense of peace came over me. Presently I lay down again and watched the purple heart as it came toward me and took its place at the edge of the bunk like some loved one sitting beside me. I must have fallen asleep again for I knew no more until broad daylight awakened me and I found myself lying in the middle of the room.

There was no fog, the sun was shining brightly and a broad beam was streaming through the dusty window pane. The candle in the match was no longer visible. Suddenly I thought of the locked door, springing to it, I gave a mighty pole, it opened easily! I snatched my cap from the rough floor and hurried into the warm sunlight, a short distance from me a man came, trudging along, he was a powerful looking fellow of middle age, was dressed in course working close. Do you know anything about that cabin I shouted as we drew closer? Sure, it's haunted. He replied he looked hard at me. Were you in there last night? I related my experience. That's queer. He muttered, but I ain't surprised last night was the night. What night?

I demanded. Ten years ago, an old man was murdered in that cabin, and his son swore on his deathbed he'd come back every anniversary and lull somebody into the cabin for the night and torture him. He shuddered, his white face staring at the cabin. Come away, he whispered! Come away! It's haunted! It's haunted! So, uh, so yeah, that was fucking weird tale.

A little weirder, you know, was my bullshit thrown in, but still plenty weird on its own. That was something that scared people back in 1923. That's the kind of story Lovecraft was competing with. And the kind of story, you know, that would influence later horror fantasy and sci-fi writers. I guess, yeah, I like the tone of the story, but uh, glowing purple heart? Was that scary? I think a hand would have been better, right story, but glowing purple heart? Was that scary? I think a hand would have been better, right?

Like a glowing purple head. A glowing purple head. Maybe a glowing purple head with no eyes. You know, no mouth or something fucked up. Maybe a glowing purple spider with a human head that crawled into fucking lifted as eyelids and crawled into his fucking brain, like a Rhino-free close.

I don't know. Maybe those weren't weird enough for weird tales. Lovecraft would, maybe they're too weird. Lovecraft would write a lot of stories that ended up in weird tales. Yeah, like I said, I counted 25, I think more than any other single author, as far as for the period he was alive.

The call of Cthulhu would first be published in the February 1928 issue, the Horrid Red Hook, first published in January 1927 issue the case of Charles Dexter Ward these are all some of his more famous stories a short novel written in 1927 will be published after Lovecraft died across the May through July 1941 issues. Not for weird tales who published him by far, you know, published him more by far than any other monthly pulp publication. We probably would not know of Lovecraft today. Uh, and dad, thanks to this exposure that helped him introduce, uh, get introduced to other

writers and critics. Lovecraft ended up being recognized as being so good at telling his own brand of weird tales that critics basically named a whole genre of horror after him called Lovecraftian Horror aka Cosmic Horror. A genre of horror slash weird fiction that emphasizes the terror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or shock. It's a kind of horror that tries to shake you to your core existentially. No jump scares, not a bunch of gruesome dismembering.

The core themes in atmosphere of cosmic horror were laid out by Lovecraft himself in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature, number of characteristics. Seven, identified as being associated with Lovecraft in horror, here are what seemed to be the seven most important. One, fear of the unknown and unknowable. Two, the fear at all we feel when confronted by phenomena beyond our comprehension, who scope extends beyond the narrow field of human affairs and boasts of cosmic significance. Here, horror derives from the realization that human interests, desires, laws, morality, that don't mean shit.

They have no meaning or significance in the universe at large. Consequently, it's been noted that the entities and lovecrafts and books were not evil because they lay outside human conceptions of morality. So interesting horror concept here. You know, what if you were being threatened about to be gruesibly tortured, likely killed by an entity that didn't see what it was doing to you or about to do to you as morally wrong. Your life and hopes and dreams, they don't mean anything more to it than a, than a net or a house lies life mean to you. Right? Your life is just viewed as totally meaningless. At this viewpoint is fixed,

the no amount of begging for your life, no amount of reasoning will spare you from any horror coming your way. That's why fictional monsters can often be seen scarier to a lot of people than real life ones. With some serial killer, for example, you can at least entertain the possibility that maybe you might get released alive. You know what's happened here and there, like with the truck stop killer, Nightstalker, Richard Ramirez, every once in a while,

those fucking psychos will release somebody or someone would escape their clutches. They're monsters you can at least speak to. Talk to the same language as, try and reason with them. But now with certain monsters, like a lovecraft you're monsters, if they get ahold of you, you're probably just going to die. Your destruction's almost inevitable.

Lovecraft continues in his description. Three, contemplation of mankind's place in the vast comfort list universe, revealed by modern science, in which the horror springs from the discovery of appalling truth. Reminds me of the call of Cthulhu. The narrator discovers that numerous men have died, not at the hands or rather claws and tentacles of Cthulhu, but rather at the realization that the fate of humanity is tied to a monster. When the stars are aligned, just so Cthulhu, destroying humanity is inevitable. The discovery of this truth that renders all kind of theological,

you know, truths they thought they knew before, just meaningless, drove these men unbearably mad. For a naturalistic fusion of horror and science fiction, which presumptions about the nature of reality are eroded. Five, that technological and social progress since classical times have facilitated the repression of an awareness of the magnitude and Melanity of the macrocosm which the human microcosm is contained a Calculated repression of the horrifying nature of the cosmos as a reaction to its essential Alphonus a lot of words basically we become so detached from nature and spirituality things to technological advances that we've forgotten The reality of certain ancient monsters

We've come to fall see think or nothing more than folklore and superstition. Lovecraft makes us wonder if monsters devote, monsters we've forgotten about are all too real! Six, having protagonists who are helpless in the face of unfathomable and unscapable powers, which reduce its humans from a privileged position to insignificance and incompetence. Your weapons and instincts are meaningless in the great face of Kathulu. Man is no match for this ancient beast. Seven preoccupation with, you know, visual textures, protein, semi gelatinous, substances and slime, as opposed to other more traditional horror elements such as blood bones or corpses.

Right, this is the weird part. Monsters with lovecraft, they always take human shape, rarely do, or even a shape they can properly be described, they don't have muscle bodies, or, you know, even a solid mass, they're just something else, something other, something our feeble minds can't possibly understand or articulate, pushing horror mystery here, you know, fear of the unknown. Cthulhu, arguably, lovecraft's most famous horror creation by Farwood Fit, almost all these categories to a T. Cthulhu is a fictional entity first introduced in lovecrafts, the call of Cthulhu, arguably Lovecraft's most famous horror creation by Farwood Fit, almost all these categories to it T. Cthulhu is a fictional entity first introduced in Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu, first published as I said in Weird Tales in 1928. Lovecraft transcribed the pronunciation of Cthulhu and said, the first syllable pronounced gutturali and very thickly,

the U is about like that in full and the first syllable is not unlike clueless sound. Hence the H represents the guttural thickness. Guttural thickness, nothing's lovecraft, you dickhead. Modern pronunciation of this word seems to have clearly settled on, Kothulu. Easy to write about how it's essentially impossible to say and you gotta get all guttural and shit, but you don't have to fucking say it.

When you don't live in the age of TV, film, podcast, and audiobooks. When you just get to write things. According to Lovecraft, this pronunciation is merely the closest that the human vocal apparatus can come to reproducing the syllables of an ancient alien language. Kathilu has been spelled in various ways over the course of many stories including Tulu, Kutulu. The creature described as a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus

like head whose face was a massive feeler, I said this in the beginning, a scaly, rubbery looking body, prodigious claws on hind and forefeet and long narrow wings behind. Basically, Kutulu said to resemble an octopus, a dragon, a human caricature, hundreds of meters tall, with webbed human-looking arms, legs, and a pair of rudimentary wings on his back. It's head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a gigantic octopus with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth said to be so terrible to behold that it destroys the sanity of those who see it. I still think Nimrod with his enormous size advantage, our God here on TimeSuck would kick the shit out of Kethulu. Nimrod's giant space ass quatch.

God here on TimeSuck would kick the shit out of Kathulu. Nimrod's giant space ass watch. The size roughly of an entire galaxy with the head of a Chubacabra, he rides a giant black unicorn, so big it has flaming suns for eyes. Still Kathulu, pretty scary, Lovecraft's world, and then he spent more time revealing his monstrosity than I have with Nimrod. Hail Nimrod! A great God would fucking rip Kathulu's watery balls off. Make him eat him in his octopus mouth.

A Kthulhu's characterizes the leader of the old ones, a species that came to earth from the stars before human life arose. The old ones went dormant and their cities slipped under earth's crust beneath the Pacific Ocean. They communicated with humans by telepathy, and hidden in corners of the world, uncivilized people remembered and worshiped Kthulhu in cultic rights. These groups had statues of Kathulu that seemed to be made of materials not found on earth, little idols, chanted the phrase, fling glu, fling glig, or nuff, Kathulu, relab, g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g- translated into a language people actually speak in his house at relay dead coutulu weights dreaming.

Conditions are right to city will rise and with the help of the eternal coutulu cold coutulu will awaken and again rule the world as the basic story with coutulu. The imprisoned coutulu is apparently the source of constant of constant subconscious anxiety for all mankind. So talk about that with your counselor. Right? If you're like, they can't figure out like why you're why you're experiencing anxiety, you know, my wife is bringing a Kuthulu. I could have been a sleeping monster god that's given me all this anxiety. I mean, you keep talking about like, you know, childhood trauma and stress from work,

but maybe we should touch on monster gods from a different world. Hmm? Does any of that talk I just kind of went over about the mythology there sound familiar in any way? Do you remember the name Madame Helena Blavatsky. We met her talked about her length in the Lost Native Atlanta suck back in 2017 in July that year. The main original of the Ossofy, she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. As presented by Blavatsky, theosophy teaches that there is an ancient and

secretive brotherhood of spiritual adepts known as the masters who, although found across the world are are centered in Tibet. Ancient masters are used to live in secret cities that are now lost or hidden. All kinds of wacky doodles now reference these ancients all over the web, present themselves as, you know, channels for these ancients, kind of like old ones. You know, they try to sell you their secret knowledge, which I was kidding. According to Balazki's teachings, these masters were alive long before archaeological evidence to human civilization existing, like a long time before.

They had futuristic and magical cities like Atlantis, you know, four and a half million years ago. They were a different form of human, far more magical and full of supernatural abilities than humans today. There were the Lemurians, believed by some, to still live somehow inside Mount Shasta and some parallel fucking vibrational frequency or some shit. Thought of by some as an ancient alien race, thought of by others like Blavasky

as an ancient form of human existing in an advanced state long before the Atlantians even. Another root race, quote unquote, as Blavasky would teach. And they first lived about 35 million years ago. That all sorts of magical powers, like the ability to astral project, speak through telepathy. There were, you know, great monsters in their time that they fought against that also had magical powers on D&D

shit. Bummer that we've been apparently devolving instead of evolving or getting less cool as our species goes on, you know, as time goes on. It's almost like, it's almost like, well, that's, he was crazy and full of shit. And literally nothing that manipulative lunatic ever wrote was true. She was incredibly full of shit if you're not familiar. Pathological liar who didn't even try and make her lies believable yet so many believer. In addition to maybe helping fuel the imagination of lovecraft, which is speculation on my part, she definitely fueled the unfortunate imaginations of many a wacky doodle who doesn't understand

that she was just making that shit up. Anyway, these ancient races she spoke of they lived in long forgotten cities. Like I said, ancient cities that might still exist, but are hidden, either not visible thanks to some parallel dimension like trickery or their deep under the Earth's surface and the hollow earth. Like we talked about in the hollow earth theory, Suck, there's a long and rich mythology in theosophy. And Lovecraft references the Theosophyst by name and call of Cthulhu, and I have to think

he was extremely familiar with the written work of Lovatsky and other noted theosophists. His entire Cthulhu mythos feels very, very theosoph...theosophy inspired to me, you know, inspired by their kind of wacky doodle world building. He just didn't like they did present all that shit as being real, you know, when he spoke of ancients, hidden cities, magical powers, all the same stuff, the Blavasky and her, you know, sick of ants wrote about, I guess she was a world builder too, just in the religious not fictional sense.

Too much, she didn't have weird tales to write for. Maybe she could have got it out of her system in a different way. Probably not. There's more money in religion, and there is a, you know, pulp fiction. Now that I've brought up world building again, let's dig into Lovecraft's important to the history of world building here. Lovecraft's contribution to world building comes in the form of the Kisulu mythos,

which I've referenced several times, which refers to the collected works of HP Lovecraft that reference Kisulu, sort of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Eldridge Monsters. Eldridge Monsters are creatures who are uncanny, unearthly, and weird in a supernatural way. The Cthulhu Omeethos is a series of tales that describe ordinary New Englanders and counters with horrific beans

of extraterrestrial origin. And what made these stories so good and made H.P. Lovecraft such an influential horror writer was how Lovecraft blended his intimate knowledge of New England's geography and culture with this elaborate and original mythology He had an extremely abnormal and mystifying monsters invading the lives and dreams of very normal mundane New Englanders

They made of you know, he made it feel like you as his reader could easily see your reality destroyed and watch your mind descend into madness He created a world so fantastical and tangible that it drew people in kept them contributing to his mythos, the extended universe long after his death. The term Kethulu, mythos coined by writer August Dirluth, frequent contributor to the mythos for many years after Lovecraft died. August Dirluth corresponded in great admirer of Lovecrafts. He used the creature's name to identify the system of lore employed by Lovecraft and his literary successors. In 1937, Durleth wrote, the short story, The Return of Hoster, and proposed two groups of opposed cosmic entities.

The older ancient ones, he wrote, the elder gods of cosmic good and those of cosmic evil bearing many names, and themselves of different groups as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them. For there are the water beans hidden in the depths, those of air that are the primal lurkers beyond time, those of earth, horrible, animate survivors of distant eons. Durless was an early sci-fi and horror and fantasy world builder himself, but he and his contemporaries didn't call it world building back then. The term world building as it applies to fiction can be traced back to the 1960s. Richard A. Lupov, sci-fi author and literary expert. First, use that term in the way we think

of it today as 1965 book Master of Adventure, the worlds of Edgar Rice Burrows. Lupov actually passed away last year in 2020 in Berkeley, California, age 85. Now let's talk about that world builder Burrows, the subject of 1965 1965 book for a second. Burrows was acted from 1911 to 1950, mostly famous for his Tarzan series of books and his John Carter of Mars sci-fi series and also the land that time forgot a bunch of shit. The first books set in a literary universe centered around the island of Caprona also also noticed Caspac. Virals was a pioneer of world building, a titan in the field of sci-fi and fantasy fiction. And Lupop was a fellow sci-fi writer and fan of and expert regarding him and another world builder.

He held an equally high regard, HP Lovecraft. J.R.R. Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame also referenced as a pioneer of world building and numerous sources as his CS Lewis creator of Narnia And there are other far older world building authors in some sense, you know, like those French and British writers who wrote stories of Arthurian legends such as the 12th century British cleric Joffrey of Monmouth when we talked about in the main 2019 legend of King Arthur suck But they didn't invent new worlds and all new creatures the way 20th century world builders did. They drew inspiration directly from folklore and legend and existing worlds of old stories,

you know, passed down orally for many generations long before they were born. The mythology like with the Norse sagas before Snory Sturleson or the Greek gods before Homer developed through an oral storytelling tradition for centuries and I'll likely had before pen was put to paper. Tolkien, Lewis and Burroughs took things further and built out worlds without linking their worlds to old legends. They had inspirations, of course, and influences, of course, that included old legends, but their stories were more original. And they never claimed their worlds to be anything other than fictional. And because of that, they were able to take more creative license to build their worlds however they pleased. And their worlds would inspire others later like George Lucas

to build out the Star Wars universe. Bring all this back to Lovecraft, Burrow built his worlds before Lovecraft. The land of time forgot was published in 1918. John Carter of Mars first showed up back in 1912. Tarzan initially showed up in 1912. And while Lovecraft did not likely influence him, he likely influenced Lovecraft. Lovecraft could have influenced both Tolkien and Lewis. They created their worlds after Lovecraft began creating hits. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937. The Lord of the Rings trilogy would follow in 1954 and 1955. He said he began writing about Middle Earth in the early 1930s, began writing Lord of the Rings in 1937. C.S. Lewis published the Chronicles of Narnia between 1950 and 1956. Lewis said he first conceived of Narnia in 1939. The call of Cthulhu first published 1928, nine years before the Hobbit.

And then in the early 30s, other contemporary writers including Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Robert Block, Frank Belnapp Long, Henry Cutner, Henry S. Whitehead, Fritz Lieber, a group referred to as the Lovecraft Circle. Many of them highly influential authors in their own right added to the lore of Kthulhu and the many other great old ones. Lovecraft's Luths Pantheon of ancient powerful deities from the space who once ruled the earth and who have since fallen into a death-like sleep. Lovecraft didn't write an amazing long-form novel, like certain other authors like Tolkien. He didn't create the beautiful, imaginative seven-book world of

Narnia like Lewis, but he did create a mythos that drew in other lovers of weird and dark shit. He created the Pantheon of fake gods and monsters, you know, because he was one of many, powerful enough to capture the imaginations of his peers, and together they built a world before Tolkien and Lewis and other great world builders like Stephen King So his his world may have been the first of its kind in the horror space specifically and his creative world ended up influencing my Imagination long before I'd ever heard of him or read his work He influences I said earlier my favorite child at author Stephen King I'll explain how here a little bit Stephen King's dark tower series over 1.3 million words long

heavily influenced by Lovecraft. King built a huge world centered around rolling the gunslinger and his quest to reach the Dark Tower. Movie was fucking terrible. Books here he's so great. He had the Dark Tower. He had Nexus of all universes, the Dark Tower. In addition to the seven sequential novels of the series, plus the Little Sisters of

Luria, many of King's other books give nods to the same world and feature the same characters under different names. King's most frequent villain and the dark tower villain, the Necromancer, known by many names, most consistently Randall Flagg, described as an accomplished sorcerer and devoted servant of the outer dark. He generally aims to bring down civilizations or destruction or sowing discontent and conflict in humanity. He's the man in black in the dark tower, the nemesis of all that is good and pure.

This figure directly mirrors lovecrafts outer god, uh, Near Lethitep. It was likewise the most frequently featured entity in the Kathulu mythos. Unlike most of the outer gods are great old ones who rarely take a form fathomable to the human mind. Near Lethitep often takes human form in order to collect devotees and spread chaos. He's deceptive and manipulative, he even uses propaganda to achieve his goals. He influences the deeds of men, carries out the evil of larger outer gods as their messenger, as well as the wishes of cults devoted to him.

King has all but said that Randall Flag, especially in the stand in the Dark Tower series, is one of the many guises ofar Lethahtep, it, which King wrote in 1986, one of my favorite books of kings, seen by far as the author's most lovecraftian work to some, setting up the idea of a macroverse, later called the totash darkness of the Dark Tower series, and ancient otherworldly beans from outer space, a different plane of existence of these entities. The most prominent is it itself, an ancient creature that feeds off a fear, and then ultimately people themselves.

And it is seen as King's equivalent to Lovecraft's Kuthulu. And in addition to Lovecraft, influencing many modern authors, many have also contributed directly to the Kuthulu Mithas, like British authors, Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, big fans of both of them.

Gaiman known primarily for writing the Sandman graphic novel series, fantastic. The novel's American Gods and Coraline. I didn't realize Coraline was his when I first saw that animated movie. The young adult fantasy novel, the graveyard book. He's won a ton of fiction awards. He's married to creative musical bad ass Amanda Palmer as well.

A Patreon pioneer who helped inspire me to double down on each content early in the formation of Times-Uk so thank you Amanda. Hail Amanda Palmer! A game and wrote a study in Emerald. A short story published in 2003 that sets a Sherlock Holmes type detective story in the universe of Kathulu and won a Hugo Award in 2004. He also wrote I Kathulu, a humorous short story, published in 1997, where Cthulhu dictates his autobiography to a human slave, telling him stuff like the story of his birth on the planet, and no one knows how to fuck to say this word.

Kakerfah, because of the clock. Saying, no, of course, I don't know how to spell it, write it as a sounds. Talks about a father who was eaten by his mother and a mother who was subsequently eaten by Cthulhu himself for a few thousand years, young Cthulhu, the color of a young trout and about four of your feet long slung through the swamps of his home planet, eating and avoiding being eaten, gaming and introduced lovecraft to many of his own fans as many other contemporary authors have done.

Alan Moore, you may know him, He wrote the watchman, V for vendetta from hell and more highly acclaimed graphic novel author who's done some really cool runs with Batman and swamp thing too. I love his shit. I got from hell sitting at home waiting for me to dig in right now. In his neonamicon for issue run in 2010, 2011, he sets an FBI investigation in the middle of the Kathulu mitas. In March 2012, the series became the first recipient of the newly created graphic novel category at the Brahm Stoker Awards for horror fiction. And there are others I can mention. If I wanted to turn this whole episode into one big Lovecraft jerk off best, which it kind of is. By the turn of the 21st century, the Kathulu Mithas had become a cultural phenomenon. In addition to the Mithas inspired music, a lot of it instrumental.

I was fucking blown away how much love, crafty, and music there is on YouTube and Spotify right now. So much. Horror movies, you know, perhaps most notably games, including board games, card games, magic, the gathering has tons of, you know, love, crafty, and monsters as cards. Tabletop role-playing games, you know, love, crafty, and creatures have significantly influenced the world of, you know, lovecraftian monsters as cards. Tabletop role-playing games, you know, lovecraftian creatures have significantly influenced the world of, you know, Dungeons and Dragons. The only reason there are not a ton of lovecraft editions of AD&D is because of some publishing

rights, battle bullshit. There's lovecraft video online games from software's 2015 game Bloodborne. That bar was heavily from Lovecraft's fiction. Pits, you know, players against the hordes of Eldritch beasts. In October 2018, focus home interactive release to role playing survival horror video game called Call of Cthulhu. And currently, of course, there is the HBO series Lovecraft Country based on the 2016 novel the same day, executive produced by JJ Abrams, Jordan Peale and others. Jordan Peale, one of the reigning fucking champions of cinematic horror right now, between writing and directing both us and get out, JJ Abrams, pretty familiar with world building, between

his work on the cinematic universes of both Star Trek and Star Wars, and he created lost alias and other shows. And all that speaks of the gravitational pull the Lovecraft has, right? He has two of the world's biggest horror and sci-fi heavyweights right now choosing to spend their time in his mythos. Season two of Lovecraft Country as I record this has not been greenlit, but does look like it probably will be. Are you fans? So what is it about Kaisulu, the Kaisulu mythos that just pulls so many creative people, so many really critically acclaimed talent people into its orbit? I think the way his universe has both a definite tone

of dread and anxiety and fear with defined entities, but still leave so much room to play is what makes it so fun, right? There's both, you know, there's some boundaries, kind of some rules, but also somebody unanswered questions that leave room for you to add your own imagination and voice to it. Let's talk about this mythos a bit more. The essence of the mythos is that the human world and our role in it are an illusion. Humanity is living inside a fragile bubble of perception unaware of what lies behind the curtains, or even of the curtains themselves existing.

And our seeing dominance over our world is a luxury and a femoral. According to these writers, humans are blessed in that they do not realize what lies dormant in the unknown lurking places on earth and beyond, right? That whole ignorance is bliss. As Lovecraft famously began the call of Cthulhu, the most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. Now and then individuals can, by accident or carelessness, catch a glimpse of, or even confront the ancient extraterrestrial entities, which the mythology centers around,

usually with fatal consequences, because of the limitations of the human mind, these deities, appearances are so overwhelming, overwhelming, they can easily drive a person insane and often do. Other times, they encounter their non-human worshipers and servants whose existence shatters the worldview of those who stumble across them. Human followers exist as well in this universe. Lovecraft's gods and creatures are portrayed as neither good or evil within the mythos, these concepts are just meaningless. They're just concepts invented by our own consciousness as a way to explain what truly are inexplicable intentions and actions. The call of Cthulhu was the premiere story in which Lovecraft realized and made full use of these

themes, which is why his mythology would later be named after the creature in this story as a defined a new direction in both his authorship and in the horror fiction genre. I had Kyler listened to an audio book presentation of this, uh, Kala Kathulu story with me in the truck on the way to school recently. And horror is not his thing, but it really had his attention. It was very cool to see, uh, not looking at his phone, not getting bored, not talking, very unlike him for a typical drive. You know, there's just an X factor with lovecraft on an analytical level. I don't feel like I should like a lot of his stories as much as I do. Like when it comes to a satisfying ending or even the level of terror, I feel

like I should be based on the words on the page left pretty un-pressed, but I'm not. Pretty un-impressed, excuse me, but I'm not. And I can't stop thinking about them later, just such a linger effect with these stories. They get better with each reading. They stay with me. There's something intangible, at least to me, about a story that makes them really special. And I said a few times already, he just gets your imagination going. I found myself writing seeds for a possible horror story of my own, developing some, you know, some ideas I had previously a little further just just really got me in that mode. Ah, I get why so many are drawn to him.

Uh, the call of Kathulu also the first and only story by Lovecraft for humans and one of the cosmic entities called the great old ones come face to face. And all right, meat sacks. Now that we've learned a bit about fictional world building and Lovecraft's contribution to it, we're all fucking nerded out. Let's meet HP Lovecraft to the man. Let's get a little biographical and try and gain some insight into how he arrived at his unique understanding of what made horrifying things horrifying.

Let's hop into today's time suck timeline right after today's sponsor break. Thank you for listening. Now let's meet Mr. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was born Howard Phillips Lovecraft, 8P. 9am, August 20, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Rhode Island at his family home at 454, then numbered 194, Angel Street. It's spelled with two L's. His mother was Sarah Susan Phillips, Lovecraft, who could trace her ancestry to the arrival of George Phillips to Massachusetts, way back in 1630. According to Wikipedia software pioneer Bill Gates can also trace his lineage to Englishmen George Phillips.

Yeah, a guy came from Britain to Massachusetts. Dude apparently had good genes when it came to thinking of new shit. Lovecraft's father was Winfield Scott Lovecraft, another descendant of English settlers, traveling salesmen for Gorman and Co. Silversmiths of Providence. And Lovecraft loved that both of his parents were British like so much. Not sure anyone loved being British more than HP or of British heritage. More about that at the end of the episode. Lovecraft had an unusual childhood marked by tragedy, possibly sowing the seeds of what made him such a great horror writer later.

He's traveling salesman father developed a type of mental disorder caused by untreated syphilis when HP was around the age of three. And short, he lost his fucking mind and started talking to people who weren't there and referencing things that never happened. And he got real paranoid suffering from paranoid delusions and hallucinations for a few years before being committed to the mental ward of a local hospital in 1893, Butler hospital and Providence where his mind would deteriorate further, where he would remain until his death on July 19, 1898. Terrible way to be introduced to the world. Your earliest and only members of your father are of a man

who is completely out of his mind by the time you meet him. Progressive syphilis really not pretty. We talked about it a long time ago in the Alcapone's Valentine's Day mask or suck back in February of 2017. Tripanema pallidum is the bacterium that causes syphilis and subsequently often used to develop into neuro syphilis, a bacterial infection in the brain or spinal cord. Neurocyphilis tends to develop about 10 to 20 years after the initial infection with the bacterium. There are five different forms of neuro syphilis with the most common type being asymptomatic. Populovcraft wouldn't luck out and get to know symptom kind. Another form, general parisis, is probably the type that populovcraft had.

This form leads to, often leads to, numerous and severe health problems, including paranoia, mood swings, emotional troubles, personality changes, weakened muscles, and a loss of the ability to use language, and dementia. Holy shit, not a fun way to go out, To have both your mind and body just deteriorate. With the death of Lovecraft's father, the upbringing of the boy fell to his mom, his two aunts who had remained close to for the rest of his life, Lillian and Annie, and especially his grandfather, prominent industrialist, Whipple Van Buren Phillips. Holy shit, that is a name. It's not a nickname, that's a birth name. Who the fuck names their kid Whipple?

Good ol' Whipple. It's not like his dad had some crazy name. His dad's name was Jeremiah, and Jeremiah named his son Whipple. Whipple to me sounds like a weird, highly caffeinated form of Snapple or something. I just got all the taste of Snapple with the kick of Red Bull or monster energy, but times like a thousand Whipple when you need to whip your day in his shape and get shit done. You pound a can of Whipple you lazy fuck Picture Whipple having a very aggressive verbally abusive marketing campaign

Stop sucking your mom is dick you bitch. But while you mouth free there get out there do something to your life drink Whipple Drowning in a sea of despair stuck in the mud of paralyzing depression will get the fuck over it wash your feelings down with some fucking Whipple! Drowning in a sea of despair, stuck in the mud, Apparalizing depression, will get the fuck over it! Watch your feelings down with some fucking Whipple! Got a bad case in the Mondays, fuck you! Fuck your family, Whipple! Knock one back and throw yourself on my cliff, you piece of shit! Whipple! New Kick and Crambory flavor now available. He's letting me get that Whipple nonsense out of my system.

That was fun for me. Whipple, the man sounds like, Good was fun for me. Whipple demand sounds like a good dude. God I love that name. And I've gone over this so many times and every time it gets me, I can Whipple. At the age of 14, with his mom already deceased, his dad got accidentally crushed to death in a corn gristine mill. That sounds terrible. Thank God being crushed in a corn gristine mill.

This is no longer a common way to go out. Whipple was now a panellist orphan. After moving briefly to Illinois, he returned home to Western Rhode Island, started a grocery store, married into a banking family, parlayed some meager investments into some lumber sales, Dodged service in the Civil War, partnered into a railroad, became a postmaster, later made a sum of money in coal, even made some money off of some Idaho mining investments.

Then the height of his career in the early 1870s, a new England depression and some odd business deals, pushed him into bankruptcy around 1874. Whipple was done, but not out, because he's fucking Whipple! He busted his ass, rebuilt his life, started over, became a schoolteacher. Remember the Rhode Island legislature?

He began a sewing machine sales shop, rebuilt his finances. By 1878, he met a sewing shop, repairman, and inventor Jesse Lincoln, season on the novel invention of a hand operated home silk fringer. God, God, I wouldn't give for a home silk fringer. I don't even know what that is. Phillips catapulted the item to make a fortune. Then he got gold fever. It is golden in the eyes.

Hills, in the early 1880s, which led him to Idaho. His early mining interest actually led him into the snake river Valley of Idaho territory. We talked about that place in the 19th century. Idaho gold boom that happened there in the episode about Idaho, my grandpa, war mother fucking hall, hail pop a ward. Then he came back to Rhode Island, invested in some railroads. He was doing great when Lovecraft was little. He's been willing up to pay for HP's, you know,

if dad's medical bills and raised young Lovecraft in his home. Lovecraft was little. He was doing well enough to pay for HP's, you know, if dad's medical bills and raised young Lovecraft in his home, Lovecraft was a percocious youth. He was reciting poetry at the age of two, reading age three, writing age six or seven, and oh, Whipple introduced him to unnamed early science fiction authors in addition to giving him the classics.

And they had quite the library in the Whipple home. And he fed young HP's imagination. He would read Young Lovecraft, got the core fiction, a HP loved it. His grandpa apparently loved to tell a good story. It was a good storyteller, and sometimes even ad lib stories of gods and ghosts and monsters. Oh, Whipple. He was so much more than overly caffeinated snapple. Yeah, he passed the love of literature and specifically fiction to his percocious grandson.

Lovecraft would later recall reading the Arabian Knights by the age of five. In 1896, the age of six, HP was reading Greek mythology, and then Roman mythology, planned early seeds for his invention of his own pantheon of gods later. Lovecraft later said that as a child, he was enamored by the Roman pantheon of gods, except them as genuine expressions of divinity, and forgoing his Christian upbringing in an early age. He recalled at five years old being told the Santa Claus was not real and he retorted by asking, God is not equally a myth. Let's do this at five. Also at the age of six his grandmother, Roeby died, Whipple's wife, by his own account, her death sent his entire family into a gloom from which it never fully recovered.

That's some darkness infused, more darkness into his early life between dad and this. His mother is an aunt swearing to black morning dresses terrified him. And it is at this time that Lovecraft approximately five and a half years old started having nightmares that would inform his later writing. And he started writing his own weird fiction right around the time of his grandmother's death. First weird story he likely wrote was the noble eavesdropper, possibly dating to 1896. He unfortunately later later destroyed the story.

Like his father, Lovecraft himself was also, I'd say, I want to say fragile some ways during this long period of his childhood or a long period of his childhood and then early adulthood following his father's death. Lovecraft was thrown into an unhealthily close relationship with his mom who is still suffering from the trauma for husband's illness and death. She developed a pathological love, hate relationship with his mom, who is still suffering from the trauma of her husband's illness and death. She developed a pathological love, hate relationship with her son. She had to be around her only child or sweet baby boy all the time. She coddled him, also could be cruel to him, lashing out, overly criticizing him, destroying

his confidence. She had her own struggles with mental health, a lovecraft witness. She was a nervous person, a fearful person who comes across in descriptions as being very melodramatic, wild mood swings. She was mentally ill, a borderline agoraphobic, terrified apparently of the world outside her home. She was also very puritanical, rigid, not affectionate. She sounds like she was a lot to deal with. And lovecraft's relationship with her may have factor in his own later romantic problems with women. He was not a lady's man. He was a weird loner. Mother, why? Why am I supposed to put lady troubles into my feeble boybrain mother?

Lovecraft would spend many of his school years at home too ill to go to school He suffered from bouts of crippling anxiety and depression. That was that fragilness I mentioned earlier and homie became an avid reader devouring works on a variety of texts lovecraft Love the works of Edgar Allen Poe Also developed a special interest in astronomy. And around the age of eight, and I, 1898, he discovered science, first chemistry, then astronomy. He began to produce hecticraft journals, the scientific is that in the Rhode Island Journal of Astronomy, for distribution amongst his friends. Industrialist kids, so he's, you know, he's struggling

with some stuff, but also getting some stuff put out there. Then on March 28th, 1904, when Lovecraft is at the impressionable age of 13, Grandpa Whipple dies of a stroke at the age of 70. But then they feed him some of his own blood and he's fucking back, cause of fucking Whipple. No, this would be devastating, HP. He had been born into affluence. I'm sure it develops certain expectations for how prosperous his future would be

and now these expectations are smashed to pieces. Lovecraft and his mom and her sisters, his aunts, are shocked to discover that Whipple's fortunes were synod feared. By 1900 Whipple's various business accounts or concerns had suffered a downturn. His wealth was fading. It was forced to let his family's hired servants go,

leaving Lovecraft Whipple. Whipple and one of his aunts alone in the family home. On spring of 1904, a few months before he died, Whipple's largest business venture had suffered a catastrophic failure, and then he just ran out of time and life before he could rebuild his wealth again. Love cram to his mom were forced to move

out of their lavish Victorian home almost immediately after his funeral. Some sources say they were kicked out to the very next day. I feel a little dramatic to me, but maybe. And they moved into the comparatively cramped quarters of one half of a duplex at 598 Angel Street. Lovecraft later called this time one of the darkest times of his life.

He said he thought about killing himself. He said the only reason he didn't was because he still wanted to learn so much about the world. There was more to learn. Curiosity kept him around, truly, according to what he wrote. Hail Nimrod, good to be curious. Oh, he thankfully kept writing.

Things got a little better by 1906. Lovecraft's first appearance in print occurred in 1906 at the age of 16 when he wrote a letter on an astronomical matter to the Providence Sunday journal. Shortly thereafter, he began writing a monthly astronomy column for the potucket Valley Gleaner, a real paper. He led a real columns for the Providence Tribune, the Providence Evening News, as well as the Asheville, because Asheville Gazette News. Then in 1908, just prior to his graduation from high school, Lovecraft's troubles returned,

already suffering from sort of a sort of nervous tick for the past several months, if not years, and a sudden spastic movements his classmates would later describe, he suffered a full on nervous breakdown. They compelled him to leave school without a diploma. The mental health of this family. So fragile. And fragile is probably not the best word. I don't want to mean like week they just susceptible, maybe just extra susceptible to mental illness. He now didn't get into Brown University like he'd once hoped. And this fact and his conscript failure to ever finish high school resources a great shame to love crafts later in life. He fell into a deep depression in 1908, later writing,

he could hardly bear to see or speak to anyone and like to shut out the world by pulling down dark shades and using artificial light. So he was just hanging out in the house with mom and his aunts, got the shades drawn, real depressed, poor bastard, he was struggling, stuck at home with, you know, mama whose own mind was deteriorating and she'll soon see.

Lovecraft became a reclusive figure for several years. Staying up late night, you know, late into the evening studying, reading, writing, and sleeping late into the day, living off of a dwindling inheritance from 1908 to 1913, Lovecraft was a virtual hermit doing very little other than pursuing his astronomical interest and maybe some poetry writing

and thinking about some future stories. In 1914, Lovecraft joins United Amateur Press Association, so it's big for him, a decision that he said will save him from becoming a lifelong recluse. He wrote, In 1914, when the kindly hand of amateur dumb was first extended to me, I was as close to the state of vegetation as any animal well can be. With the advent of the United, I obtained renewal to live, a renewed sense of existence, as other than a superfluous weight, the way these fucking flower language be.

And found a sphere in which I could feel that my efforts were not wholly futile. For the first time, I could imagine that my clumsy groupings after art were a little more than faint cries lost in an unlisting world. So dramatic! But good writer. I found his community. It's all on cold to the curious. Found some like-minded folk, and they saved him from oblivion.

Have you found your tribe, Jeremy Tzak? If not, you better get to looking. It seems better than constantly feeling like the odd one out, doesn't it? A lot of different folks in the world. Whatever kind of person you are, there are other people like you out there. 1915, the following year,

Lovecraft launched his self-published magazine, The Conservative, for which he wrote several essays and other pieces. He was extremely conservative. We'll reference that kind of at the end. In 1916, Lovecraft published his early short story, The Alchemist, in the main UAPA journal, while he dabbled in fiction early on, going back to early childhood, Lovecraft has now become more serious about writing stories. In 1917, he tries to join the army, but Mama says no. She interferes in some way that

his letters don't make exactly clear and he's not enlisted. The fact that she interfered at all when he is 27 years old speaks volumes about their dysfunctional relationship. There is no way my mom would be messing with my shade at the age 27. If she showed if I was trying to get in the army and she shut up the recruiting office, I'd be like, get the fuck out of here, mom. Go on, get! Skept! Skept! What are you doing here? You lost your mind? Maybe I just pretend not to know her. My mom, I don't know the fuck that craze, ladies. You should call the police. I will press charges. Go on, get lady! Get going, get Skept! Lovecraft Thin Attempts to Enroll in the Rhode Island National Guard and is rejected

for medical reasons. Possibly, also due to his mom interfering in 1918 still living at home with mother Lovecraft witnesses Suzy his mom suffer a full-on nervous breakdown and then move out to live with her other sister Lillian neighbor and friend Clara Hess interviewed 30 years later in 1948 recalls instances of Suzy describing weird and fantastic creatures That rushed out from behind buildings and from corners at dark. Sounds like more than nervous breakdown, like a full schizophrenic episode. These creatures influence HP Lovecrafts later works. Was he, you know, talking to his mom about all this fuel in her imagination with his own creatures?

Was she fueling his imagination with his things that she's seeing? We don't know. In the same account, Hess describes a time when they cross paths in downtown Providence, and Susie was excited, and apparently did not know where she was. By excited, I think she means like frantic, you know, it just doesn't know what's going on. So both parents suffering from extreme, severe mental illness.

I wonder if she also ended up with syphilis, that's never said in sources. Both parents speaking of things, no one else can see. That's what he sees growing up. His mom claiming to see actual monsters. He would later devote the bulk of his writing to characters being driven mad by mysterious entities, which most of the time could not be seen.

No coincidence there, I am sure. Clearly all of this weighed heavily on his psyche. How could it not? Suzy was admitted to Butler Hospital, same place her husband, HP's father, where he stayed and died. Lovecraft would visit her there often, walk in the grounds with her. Also spends more time writing now that is a little breathing room away from mom. 1920 Lovecraft begins publishing the earlier stories that fit into the Kathulu mythos, the poem, Nihar

Letha Tepp and the short story, The Crawling Chaos, are written in late 1920. Following an early 1921 comes the nameless city, the first story that falls definitively within the Cthulhu mythos. In it is found one of Lovecraft's most enduring bits of writing, a couplet recited by his creation, Abdul Alzared. That is not dead, which can eternal lie and with strange eons, even death may die.

Pretty cool. May 24th, 1921, when HP is 30, Lovecraft's mom dies where his father has died, Butler Hospital. She dies after a bungled gallbladder operation. Lovecraft's initial reaction expressed in a letter nine days after Susie's death was that of extreme nervous shock that crippled him physically and emotionally.

And he again remarks that he finds no reason to continue living, but he thankfully does and keeps writing. Just a few months afterwards, he meets the only known romantic interests of his life. Sonya Green, a Russian Jewish woman, seven years lovecraft senior, a Pulp fiction author herself, not only successful, amateur publisher. She would later remark that Lovecraft was a perfectly capable lover, but that she taught him how to, well, pleasure woman before her.

It sounds as if he, you know, just never had sex. Not only that, never had been romantic with any other woman in any other way. He was such a loner. He was able to resist the temptations of Lucifina. That's how he's able to write so many stories. Begano Lucifina. Right? If I was asexual, I probably could have written 75 novels by now instead of zero.

Yeah, that's what I'll blame. 1923, this is a big year for Lovecraft. That's when the new horror fiction magazine Weird Tales buys some of his first stories, given him his first taste of literary success. Previous publishing of his fiction had only occurred in amateur publications. Following here another big one, March 3rd, 1924, he marries Sony Green, moves into Sony's apartment in Brooklyn. His odds are not pleased. Family does not approve of this relationship, but initial prospects for the couple seem good. Lovecraft again to

foothold as a professional writer. Sony had a successful hatch shop. Back when people had successful hatch shops on Fifth Avenue in New York, He even gets a job riding with previous time suck topic, fame, escaped artists, and medium debunkered Harry Houdini. To them, wrote, imprisoned with the pharaohs. A short story commissioned by Weird Tales founder and owner JC Hennepurger. Lovecraft was paid a hundred bucks, a little over 1500 in present-day dollars, and that was the most money he would ever receive for an advance. Which kind of speaks to how much how much money he was making by tying this into a recent seven wonder sucks at 1910 Egypt in this tale, Houdini finds himself kidnapped by a tour guide who resembles an ancient Pharaoh and is thrown down a deep hole into the great sphinx of Giza. While attempting to find his way out, he stumbles upon a gigantic ceremonial cavern and encounters

the real life deity that inspired the building of the spinks becomes face to face with the God. Facing financial problems, Hennepurger wanted to associate the popular at the time Harry Houdini with the magazine to try to boost readership. Makes sense. Houdini would hire a lovecraft for two more small jobs before Houdini died in 1926. Lovecraft's bright fortunes don't last long in New York. The hat shops soon goes bankrupt. Lovecraft turned down a chance to edit a companion magazine to weird tales.

Sonya's health took a downturn. The force for to spend some time in a new Jersey sanitarium. A lot of things going wrong. Lovecraft's attempted to secure work locally, but few were willing to hire a 34 year old man with almost no job experience. And in the few that were,

he turned down the jobs that were offered. All right, he had a job offer in Chicago in 1924. Fucking turn that down. Stubborn dude. Very stubborn dude. Stubborn, hey, that's stubborn dude. Probably because he had some family money. Money, Jesus Christ, I can't talk to you. Get some family money early on. Come on, motherfucker. Get the pronunciation out. And yet some family money, early, family money, early on. There we go, slow down, maybe I had too much coffee this morning. And any didn't have kids. So maybe there wasn't quite the same pressure to work, but even then, as you'll see,

some of the times he struggles through and just refuses to take some other jobs, he really was committed to his craft. He was so passionate about the stories he was writing. Even though they were making him very little money, he refused to take any jobs that would take him away from writing more of these stories. It is admirable in that artistic way.

January 1st, 1925, HP's wife Sonia moves to Cleveland for a job, and now 34-year-old Lovecraft is alone. He stays behind, the two of them will never get legally divorced, but will separate and never spend time with one another again. The two actually agreed to an amical divorce a few years later, and Sony would later remarry not knowing the divorce was never finalized. Lovecraft now moves into a single apartment, and you're a rundown Brooklyn area called Red Hook.

His estranged wife actually helps him pay his rent for a while. He's so poor, still, even with that help that according to one letter he wrote, he lived for three days off a one loaf of bread, one can of cold beans and a small hunger cheese. Shortly after moving into this apartment, his apartment is burglarized, leaving him with only the clothes he's wearing. I said, that's his only possession over the next year due to poverty and stress. He loses almost 40 pounds.

Yic. Also writes the outline for the call of Cthulhu. It's a sad man disillusioned with life life thinking of stories revolving around human insignificance and despair Finally in early 1926 plans are made for Lovecraft to return to Providence. The Providence he misses so keenly He returns to live with his two aunts if mommy is around all live with aunties. Fuck yeah Nice He returns to live with Lily and Annie And they never again who had never proved was merits, they're happy to seem to come back.

And I think his uncle Ed, he's never listed specifically, but marriage record show, you know, Ed was married to Annie. Sorry, sources aren't terribly clear on this marriage. He just, he just mentioned a few times. Lillian is a widow, Annie is, I think, Mary dead. Crazy how creatively successful this dude is viewed as now, but how financially unsuccessful he was in life. It is a nice reminder that money alone

does not dictate success, right? Just because something isn't financially rewarding you, it doesn't mean that what you're doing is good or valuable. Doesn't mean it's not great. When Lovecraft returns to Providence on April 17th, 1926, at the age of 35, settling at 10 barns street north of Brown University, he starts writing some of his most, you know, what will be some of his best known pieces.

The call of Cthulhu comes out again in 1928, and we'll return to that story in a bit. On his final years, Lovecraft continued to remain barely able to support himself. He gets numerous stories published in Weird Tales and other similar pulp magazines that are sprung up, but again, they just never pay much and they never lead to anything more substantial in his lifetime. In 1933, not long after Lillian dies, Lovecraft and his other aunt Annie and I sue Uncle Ed, moved to a smaller house, continues to write prolifically, but now his stories become increasingly lengthy and complex.

And a lot of the things he's writing now won't get published in his lifetime. We'll go over one of these stories later at the mountains of madness. The stories become more difficult to sell. He's forced to support himself or at least make a little bit of money through ghost writing, stories for others, a little bit of poetry, a little bit of nonfiction. By 1936, the illness that would cause his own death, cancer of the intestine, had already progressed so far that little could be done to treat it. Lovecraft attempted to carry on in an increasing pain, refusing to see a doctor because doctors

in hospitals scared him. I don't blame him considering what happened with his own parents. On June 11th, 1936, Lovecraft, good friend and fellow fantasy writer Robert Howard takes his own life. Howard is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery fantasy subgenre. Most famous work is Conan the Barbarian. He built that universe. So thank you Robert.

I love that universe. Robert liked Lovecraft very close to his mom and when his mom fell into a coma, he was just 30 years old. In a moment of extreme despair, he walked out to his car, grabbed his pistol, and quickly shot himself in the head. Lovecraft at this point already very ill and now he's heartbroken. He and Robert had written many, many a letter back and forth over the years. It become very close. And then he is lovecraft is finally forced to enter Jane Brown Memorial Hospital due

to his cancer and providence on May, excuse me on March 10, 1937, where he will die just five days later at the age of 46. He's then buried, March 18th, at the Phillips family plot at Swan Point Cemetery. He died after never having had a true book published in his lifetime, but he did leave behind more than 60 short stories and a few novel novellas, including the case of Charles Dexter Ward. Lovecraft's passing was mourned by a small, but devoted following of colleagues

and aspiring writers with whom he corresponded and collaborated to these friends, August D'Eurirleth, excuse me, and Donald Wondray, formed a publishing company called Arkham House to promote and preserve Lovecraft's work. Eventually Lovecraft's work became available in paperback and was translated into a dozen languages, so many could more could hear of Lovecraft now. And Arkham, if it sounds familiar, was a fictional Massachusetts city in Lovecraft country. The new England setting used by Lovecraft and his stories, many of his stories, an Arkham, if it's not familiar, was a fictional Massachusetts city and lovecraft country. The new England setting used by Lovecraft and his stories, many of his stories, and Arkham asylum, fictional institution, and DC Comics Batman stories, part of the DC Comics Universe,

named after Lovecraft's Arkham. A psychiatric hospital in prison, fitting nod to Lovecraft's obsession with madness. Let's now hop out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. Now that we know a little bit more about HP Lovecraft, the man, it's examined the short story that would introduce the, uh, Kthulu, me, Thos to the world and build a began, yeah, to the world.

Uh, you said he got this idea for the first chapter, or he got the idea for the first chapter of Call of Kthulu from a Dream. The first seed of the stories, first chapter of the horror and clay came from a dream he had in 1919 when he was 28, which he described briefly in two different letters, sent to his friend Reinhard Kleinner on May 21st, in December 14th, 1920. In the dream, Lovecraft is visiting an antiquity museum in Providence, attempting to convince the aged curator there to buy an odd kind of a fast relief. Lovecraft himself had sculpted who initially scoffed at him for trying to sell something recently made to a museum

of antique objects in the dream. Lovecraft answered the curator with a response. Why do you say that this thing is new? The dreams of men are older than brooding Egypt or the contemplative Sphinx or garden girdled Babylon and this was fashioned in my dreams. And dude had way smarter dreams than I do. Apparently made a lot more sense. I hardly ever remember my dreams and when I do remember my dreams It's usually something super random and fucked up like I'm dating my former mother-in-law, but I don't want to be dating her, but I have to, because that's how I keep my dog alive. And I can't go to France, you know? Everyone's mad because the train is late, and I don't even want to be on the train because

you know, I got to be back in the office to make a sandwich. I don't get a seed for a cool short story. I just wake up with a feeling of, what the fuck is wrong with me? Lovecraft then used this dream for a brief synopsis of a new story outlined in his notebook first in August of 1925, which developed organically out of the idea of what the base relief in the dream might have actually depicted in a footnote for his writing of this dream Lovecraft finishes with a suggestion, add good development and describe nature of base relief. Wrote that note to himself for future reference.

Once he drafted the call of Cthulhu H.P. Didn't love it actually. He didn't hate it either, but it just wasn't his favorite story. Lovecraft regarded the short story as rather middling, not as bad as the worst, but full of cheap and cumbers touches. Initially weird tales rejected this story. It was only after a friend of Lovecraft's lied to the editor, told him the Lovecraft, was thinking of submitting it elsewhere

that he got it accepted for publication. That's a good friend. Now, let's go to the story point by point. It's not a long tale. Let's dig into the beginning of HP's World of Cosmic Horror. The story is narrator, Frances Whalen Thurston, recounts his discovery of various notes left behind by his great uncle, George Gamal Angel,

prominent professor of Semitic Languages at Brown Brown University who died in the winter of 1926. And I love that the professor's name is spelled with two Ls, just like the street lovecraft lived on with a pop-a-wipple and the house after that as well. Love little personal touches like that. So the story begins. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of a black sea of infinity, and it

was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences each training in its own direction have hro, haund us little, but someday the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality. And of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new, dark age. These opening lines, some of the most famous words H.B. Lovecraft have erode, work to frame the fear, an awe-inspiring cosmological scale of the Kathul-o-Mitthas revelations that are to follow.

The unfathomable power, remoteness, and magnitude of Lovecraft's beasts remind Thursid of mankind's insignificance as nascent colonizers of a planet hanging in the midst of black seas of infinity. I think I said it singular earlier and I messed up. Thurston's nihilistic tone betrays the gravity of his findings even before he has related them to the reader. Now we get into the story. It's actually several stories. All the notes of people who have in one way or another interacted with these strange beings. The first chapter, horror and clay, concerns a small base relief, right, the sculpture, things came from his dream,

found among the notes. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol represented a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature. I cannot be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing." Cthulhu! It's just Thurson's depiction, or description of the ceramic sculpture of Cthulhu, that his grand uncle possessed. Here's where the theme of language first comes in.

Thurson can describe other people's descriptions of it, but he still starts to doubt his sense of language and reality. Despite the fact that Thurson can see what the creature looks like, its appearance is still baffling and otherworldly. In fact, the statue is so strange that Thurston feels the need to justify what he sees by blaming his extravagant imagination. The sculpture is the work of Henry Anthony Wilcox, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, who based his creation on a dream Henry had of great cyclopian cities of Titanic blocks and skyflung

monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with latent horror. Before his death and aerator's uncle angel had also discovered reports of mental illness and outbreaks of group folly or mania around the world, including a group of people who dressed in white robes while awaiting a glorious fulfillment. Cote, Cote, Cote! Second chapter of the tale of Inspector Lagras, discussed the first time the professor had heard the word Cthulhu and seen a similar image. At the 1908 meeting of the American Archaeological Society in St. Louis, Missouri, a New Orleans police official named John Raymond Lagras, asked the assembled antiquarians to identify an

idle car from the series Greenish Blackstone. La Grasse had discovered the relic months before in the swamp south of New Orleans during his raid on a voodoo coat. The idle resembles Wilcox's sculpture from the first chapter and represented a thing which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy was of a somewhat bloated corpulence and squatted evenly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecifiable characters. On November 1st, 1907, the grass led a party of fellow policemen in search of several

women and children who disappeared from a squatter community. Lovecraft now writes. Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noise it's heard by the grass as men as they ploughed on to the black morass Toward the red glare and the muffled tom-toms There are vocal qualities peculiar to men and vocal qualities peculiar to beasts and it is terrible to hear the one when the source should yield the other Please found the victims oddly mod bodies being used in a ritual with a hundred men, all of a mentally aberrant type were brain, bellowing and rising, and repeatedly chanting the phrase for them to get in the mood.

Pithulu. Pithulu, Pithulu, Pithulu, Pithulu. After killing five of the participants in arresting 47 others, La Grass and Terrigate of the men. Before learning the central idea of their loathsome faith. They worshipped so they said of the great old ones who lived ages before where there were any men and formed a cult which had never died. Hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world to the time with the great priest, Cthulhu.

From his dark house in the mighty city of Arle, under the waters should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Someday he would call, when the stars were ready in the secret cult, would always be waiting to liberate him. The prisoners identified the confiscated idol as Cthulhu himself, and translate the mysterious phrase, I was saying that,

but that I'm not, that I'm not the fucking gibberish, into in his house that relay dead Cthulhu weights dreaming. One particularly, talkative cult cultist known in the story as old Castro named the center of their cult as Iram, the city of pillars in Arabia, and referred to a phrase in the Necronomicon. That is not dead, which can't eternal lie

and with strange eons of even death may die. Yes, that that earlier, the Necronomicon, a fictional grandma or book of curses that appears in several of love crass tales for Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi fans this necronomicon would be the inspiration for the evil dead trilogies necronomicon fuck yeah also known as the book of the dead and the notrum the notrum de mento it's an ancient samarian text that has the power to harness the kandarian demon an ancient demonic spirit that is the primary source

for the creation of deadites, and several other types of supernatural occurrences upon the world of living. Basically in the Evil Dead, some college kids find this book, accidentally released a bunch of demonic entities, all hell breaks loose and chaos ensues. And it's very, very fun, cult classic campy,

you know, be horror franchise. This is my boom stick. Quote from Army of Darkness. How can you not love ash? And the book is based, the book this, you know, trilogy is based around is inspired by lovecraft. So that's how that was cool. Okay, back to Inspector LeGrasse. He's spoken with some cultists. Now he's counted the 1908 meeting of the American archaeological society in St. Louis. Asked them if they knew anything about this, Cthulhu. if they recognized a small carbon idol,

the cultist Louisiana, where found worshipin. One of the academics present at the meeting, a guy named William Channing Webb, professor of anthropology at Princeton University, states that during an 1860 expedition to the Western coast of Greenland, the mystery builds. He encountered a singular tribe of degenerate Eskimos. And by the way,

he's referring to this one group as a degenerate because of their worshiping, not as all eschimos being degenerate, whose religion a curious form of devil worship chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness and repulsiveness. Webb claims that Greenland cult possessed both the same chant and a similar hideous fetish. Thurston, the narrator, reflects that my attitude was still one of absolute materialism, as I wish it still were. Meaning by this time, reading his grandfather's notes, he was still a skeptic, but he'd soon no longer be.

Now onto the third chapter, the madness from the sea. Thurston reads an article dated to April 18th, 1925 from the Sydney Bulletin in Australia newspaper. He begins by expressing his deep regret that he ever found the Sydney Bulletin article that led him to to Johansson's diary. It begins, if heaven ever wishes to grant me a boon, it will be a total eff, a, a, a facing of the results of a mere change which fixed my eye on a certain stray piece of shelf paper. The article reports the discovery of a derelict ship in the Pacific Ocean with only one survivor, a Norwegian sailor named Gustaf Johansson, a second made on board the Emma, a schooner, which had originally sailed from New Zealand. On March 22nd, the Emma encountered a heavily armed yacht, the alert, crude by a quote, queer and evil

looking crew of canakas and half casts from the need in New Zealand. Canakamine South sea islander in this context, you can also mean native Hawaiian. The need in New Zealand. You're not coming South Sea Islander in this context. You can also be native Hawaiian. The need in that city of 135,000 people look so fucking cool, by the way. Beauty of the city. Holy shit, I looked it up and I wanted to know how to pronounce that word. My instinct was to say,

Dundin, what the hell? And fell in love with the place. Anyway, you cannot, you cannot, not comment on how beautiful that city looks. Back to the puzzle of Lovecraft's narrative is piecing together now. I've been attacked by the alert without prov- uh, prov- uh, oh my god, provocation. The crew of the Emma killed everyone aboard, but lost their own ship in the battle.

Commentary in the opponent's vessel, the surviving crew members travel on and arrive at an uncharted island now. With the exception of Juhansen and a fellow sailor who then died as they made their way back to Auckland due to madness from seeing whatever was on that uncharted island, the remaining crew members perished on the island. Johansson never reveals their cause of death. Thurston travels to New Zealand and then Australia, where at the Australian Museum he views a statue retrieved from the alert with a cuddlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings and hyrule glyph, hyrule glyphed, pedestal. F**k in, get through, lieu again. Same monster, those cold weirdos and Louisiana were worshiped, same monster from Greenland.

Therson now travels to Oslo, Norway, another gorgeous city, holy shit, where he learns that Johansson died suddenly. Johansson's widow provides Therson with a manuscript written by her late husband, which reveals the fate of everyone on board the Emma. Therson writes these lines after apprehending Johansson's diary, I now felt, now and it's my vitals, that dark terror which will never leave me

till I, to him, at rest, accidentally or otherwise. In the diary, the uncharted island Johansson comes across, and the South Pacific is described as a coastline of mingled mud ooze and weedy cyclopian masonry, which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of Earth's supreme terror, the nightmare corpse city of Rile. Dun dun dun dun! Cthulhu City.

The cruise struggle in comprehending the non-uclidean geometry of their surroundings. When one of the sailors accidentally opens a monstrously carbon portal, he releases none other than Cthathulu himself. A thing cannot be described. There was no language for such abysm- there was no language for such abysms of shrieking in immorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter force and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. It lumbered, slobberingly into sight and gropeingly squeezed its gelatinous

green amensity through the black doorway. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vingtillians of years, made up with whatever, great Kathulu was loose again and ravening for delight. So Johansson and a sailor named Briden now climb aboard the yacht before sailing away. However, Kathulu dives through the ocean pursues their fleeing vessel. Johansson then streams, he turns his yacht around, rams directly into Kathulu's head, which burst with a slushy nastiness as of a clove in sunfish, only to immediately begin regenerating.

You can't kill Cthulhu. The alert escapes from relay with Bride and having gone completely insane. There's that lovecraftian madness again and dine soon afterwards. After finishing the manuscript, Thurston realizes he's now a possible target, thinking, I think Professor Angel died because he knew too much or because he was likely to learn too much, whether I shall go. And now as he did remains to be seen, for I have learned much now. Thurson realizes he has discovered more than he can safely withstand, and fears he's

become a target for assassination by Cthulhu Cultus. His final line is a send-off. Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity, and see that it meets no other eye. This final line implies that the reader too has now become cursed by knowing too much about the Kathulu cold fuck. I've read this story four times now. I'm triple cursed. Actually, five times. Damn it. I'm more than, what did I say triple after four?

I'm Quinn double. Forget about it. Don't worry about math. Get him Nimrod, come on, fuck us all up. Okay, now that we know the contents of the story, what about the story made it so scary to initial readers? What about it still creeps out so many in a lingering, memorable way? Literally, literally. I cannot talk. There's too many old timey words mixed up with modern words. Oh, well this story was voted up by the space losers.

That was part of the fun I know was, how is he gonna say all this shit? Literary, literary, mother fucker! Literary analysts have some thoughts. They feel a lot of the fear and the fear with cosmic horror in general. Hinges on the premise that we use language to interpret reality and these monsters are beyond language.

Definitely, definitely beyond my grasp of language. So they're beyond our reality. Fear of the unknown is so instinctively strong and they are super unknown. My wife, Lindsay, is super afraid of the possibility of alien species visiting our world in this way. I find it exciting. She finds it terrifying because of the unknown.

In her mind, if aliens are real and if they show up here on Earth and if they encounter us, we have no idea what their intentions are and she thinks they're probably bad, right? What they might do could do to us. Like if she was a kid in the 1920s, 1930s, weird tales would have scared the shit out of her. I'm willing to roll the dice.

I'm so curious, right? I wanna see him. The theme of what is real. What is reality begins with the fact that Lovecraft composes the call of Cthulhu in the epistle, epistolary format written as the series of documents. Specifically Lovecraft's story follows a recursive epistolary. Bucket nailed it, structure of letters and letters within letters and so forth. The further Thurston delves into these manuscripts and the reported memories and dreamscapes they

unfold, the more tenuous his own grip on sanity becomes. More documents he reads, the more he wonders what is real, what is not real, is he real? Again, I think of Lovecraft's own experiences with insanity here, but the time he wrote all this, his own father had gone mad, died in a mental hospital. Then his mom also went mad and they've died in the same mental hospital. He had a nervous breakdown himself, several other episodes of severe depression, several long bouts of crippling anxiety, of course one of his greatest fears is going to be to lose your mind. Lovecraft's fiction in this story and others imagines reading and writing is cursed acts and represents the theme of the human quest for forbidden

cosmological knowledge to be at once irresistible to a certain kind of intellectual seeker and a cursed enterprise. You can know things about the universe, but only at a price. And there's no guarantee that you'll even understand what you learn. And sometimes the price you'll pay for trying to understand is having your grip on reality permanently and irrevocably loosened. What makes Lovecraft's monster unique, especially for the time he wrote them in, is that they simply defy human comprehension, which explains why they're many fondly detent by the story's characters to describe them in detail, via oral and written forms of communication inevitably fail. What pours out of Kathulu's monoliths is described as a darkness, almost material.

A literalization of something unknown and insensible to the human mind. Awareness of Kathulhu's reality changes everything the characters think they know about the world. What if all the old religions are wrong? What if there are gods? But just not the gods we've been told to worship. What if there are terrifying gods and what if they never left the earth?

They've been right here with us the whole time, sleeping and now they're awakening again. And a terror we never even dreamt of is awakening with them. Yeah, it's scary shit. Lovecraft would write more about Kthulu, and he would introduce new gods and monsters into his growing universe that other authors would then add details to after his death.

So who are some of the other beings in this strange fictional universe? Let's meet some of them, but first, and I apologize, because I know you already heard some sponsors. One final sponsor. Today's time suck is brought to you by Whipple, made from the makers of Snapp one final sponsor. can keep you alive indefinitely even if your heart is entirely removed. Let Wipple move your blood around. Wipples for winners. Stop hanging off your daddy's nuts. Take your excuses and shove up your cry baby dickle. Wipple! Drink bleach each shit and die. Drink Wipple! Can't work cause you have an slap to five days. Fuck sleep. Sleep is for losers. Drink Wipple and burn that bed.

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that i agreed to read all that okay let's start off with the broad category, to which Kathulu belongs, the great old ones when talking about his other monsters. An ongoing theme in Lovecraft's work is the complete irrelevance of mankind in the face of the cosmic horrors that exist in the universe, with Lovecraft constantly referring to the great old ones.

A loose pantheon of ancient, powerful deities from space who once ruled the earth and who have since fallen to a death-like sleep. The majority of these have physical forms, that the human mind is incapable of processing, simply viewing them, renders of your incurably, can you guess? Yes, insane. Madness again. Dozens of these, just going to mention a few, starting off with Cassagtha, Cthulhu's sister and mate.

Of course, that big monster is a sister fucker. She described as literally just being a big pilot tentacles and in turn gives birth to Niktosa and Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, Niko, monster's lovecraft nerds, not even lovecraft knew how to say this shit. Get the fuck out of here. As for Kassaga, Kassaga herself, her abilities are ill-defined, but she can grab her victims with her tendrils, yank them into devour them whole, also noted for being particularly bad temperate and violent, causing other old ones to tread carefully around her. Love it.

Love that other weird, creepy monsters like, well, fucking, what's Kassaga's problem today? That's how she was doing, she ate a city. She stared at me and said, you're next. Love that other weird, creepy monsters like, well, fucking, what's Catholic's problem today? That's how it's for how she was doing, and she ate a city. She stared at me and said, you're next, don't you? Next great old one, the blind idiot god, as a thoth, basically a sentient singularity, setting it the very center of the universe.

As a thoth lies constantly in a deep slumber, kept there by other powerful deities who have to constantly sing to the creature to keep him in his induced internal hibernation. It's very important. Keep singing him for if Azathoth ever were to awaken the entire universe would end just like that. All of it gone, right?

The moment his fucking eyes open, boom, everything gone, no pressure on those other gods to keep singing. I had a very hard time digging through the Meathos to figure out what song Lovecraft said they had to sing and when I found out what song it was Really not what I was expecting but now that I know it, you know, of course I mean what other song could it actually possibly be? We're not in love anymore I keep forgetting things will never be the same Oh, again, I keep forgetting how you made that so clear I keep forgetting

Never thought you knew Never thought I see you smile Yes, of course there was a Michael Motherfuckin McDonald. Who else? Who else could sue the great God, but Triple M? Been far too long since I McDonald's you. Hail Triple M, continue to crew and as a thoth to sleep and save the universe. Great deity of time, so a bard of time suck.

Next God, you golleneck. God of pure evil and sadism. Straight up and joy is torturing humans. He gets off on dozens of perversions. It can barely be conceived by human imagination and perception. They're so fucked up. His axe stretched the limits of human comprehension.

Sounds like somebody that Albert Fish, Bob Bridella, truck stop killer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Ng, Leonard Lake, other torturous serial killing derbed recovery would have enjoyed worshiping. He takes a physical form through possessing human hosts, manifesting as an obese man, without a head or a neck. So, wheat with a mouth in the palm of his hands. That sounds horrific. He seeks humans with similar perverse taste to become his servants, coming to them when

they read forbidden literature. So, careful what you jerk off to. True form is sealed behind a wall of bricks, deep in ancient ruins, beef, earth. I love this guy's fucked up imagination. Yog Sothoth is another incomprehensible being. Defies visualization, although it does appear to humans usually as a mass of glowing orbs

or other strange tendrils reaching out from the abyss. There was an agreement between many writers and fans that Yog Sothoth is an um Nessiant being outside of the material realm, meaning that it is ultimately a God that knows all, I love it that there's like nerd fights over stuff like this. You know, you can, if you find the right chat room, you can just find people that go,

I mean, ha, okay, no, that's not Yogsothoth. There's no way, there's no, I mean, omniscient, not, not, maybe on the present, but fuck, get out here. Here's the description of this outer god coming from a lovecraft fan site. It was an all in one and one and all of limitless being itself. Not merely a thing of one spacetime continual, but allied to the ultimate animating essence of existence is whole unbounded sweep. The last utter sweep which has no confines,

in which outrageous fancy and mathematics alike. It was perhaps that which certain secret cults of earth have worshiped as Yogg Sathoth, and which has been a deity under other names, that which the crustaceans of Yuggath worship as the beyond one, in which the vaporous brains of the spiral nebula known by an untranslatable sign. Two more, great old ones. Nihar Lethatep, also known as the crawling chaos,

we talked about the son of a bitch earlier. Nihar Lethatep is an evil god that can shape shift into over a thousand different forms. The character was found in Lovecraft's poem titled Nihar Lethatep first. All right, this is the one who influenced Stephen King different forms. The character was found in Lovecraft's poem titled Near Leth, Near Leth a Tepp first. All right, this is the one who influenced Stephen King when he came up with Randall Flagg. That first poem was published in 1920, part of the original Lovecraftian canon. This being also appeared in a few other stories published throughout the years. The beast is so

scary that the site of a, a Basilisk, Basilisk, or the like the site of a Basilisk, Basilisk, Jesus Christ. One glances himself to drive a man insane. When it assumes the form of a human, it turns into an Egyptian Pharaoh interesting. And last one referred to as the bearer of the cup of the blood of the ancients, there's Raghog. Raghog is a black leafless oak tree, hot to the touch,

and with a single red eye at the center and what does this giant leafless tree thing do? Well, it's a mean of darkness. It's a... Hold power. What kind of power? Don't fucking, don't worry about it. Unimaginable.

Bad. Now to some other of the non-god creations. Let's talk about the mego, strange alien types, and extraterrestrial species from the planet Yuggath, implied to be the dwarf planet Pluto. With an appearance like a cross between fungus and lobsters, okay? Migos are fucking weird! They fly to the vacuum of space, zooming between Earth and Pluto with the aid of their supernatural wings, worship other Lovecraft gods, active servants to them, classified as hostile, and a rather vicious alien species. Not many nice things. In ancient times, they waged war here on earth against the older things, a different alien

species, long before humans came into existence. And there's the humanoid gasped. Not exactly the first monster that people conjured when they think of one of Lovecraft's monsters, which is the shame since Lovecraft gave us a huge collection of awful beasts to choose from, the gasped have no nose or forehead. But they have a pair of kangaroo legs with hooves. What's the hop around on and scoop up all the delicious little gugs they can eat? Speaking of gugs, another one of these creatures banished the underworld for appalling offenses

done against the great ones, these giant monsters live in huge towers in their underworld home where they hide from the gas. Their arms split into multiple four arms with massive talons, talons, and razor sharp tooth-filled mouths that open vertically. They're fucking terrifying, but they're still gas food, which speaks to how scary those fuckers are. Right? So if you have your choice between, you know, door number one is gonna be a gug who's gonna attack you. Door number two is gonna be a gas.

Yeah, you pick gug. Four more starting with Shogas. The Shogas were created by the Elder Things as a slave race, taking the form of grotesque blobs, covered in dozens of eyes. They have tremendous strength and are nearly invincible against forms of physical attack. Eventually, they developed a consciousness of their own and rebellious elder things resulted in them

roaming the dark spaces of the world in the modern day. Creators of the monster is Shogas' race. The Elder Things aren't actually all that evil not compared with other world in the modern day. Creators of the monstrous Shogethraith, the elder things, aren't actually all that evil not compared with other monsters in the Lovecraft universe. Despite the fact they just lay in eyes upon their starfish, plant hybrid alien forms will drive the viewer to madness. So much madness. Lovecraft was mostly about madness.

Talking about these monsters, I just can't stop thinking about Dungeons and Dragons, Magic of the Gathering, Stranger Things. Just like the me go, the elder things are actually aliens who built colossal cities and societies that predated all human civilizations. The elder things had a history of chaos and war between the me go and the great race of Yith. Another great race of aliens.

The great race of Yith. A foe that battles with the me go and the shogoths. The planet Yith set to be destroyed billions of years ago, but the inhabitants used their psychic powers to install their consciousnesses into the hardiest race of creatures they could find. So the great race of Yith became forearmed, conical earthbound creatures. One set of arms had claws, the other set had horns, sounds pretty impractical to walk around on.

Then their head, head eyes,, ears and tentacles. Everyone has tentacles, not everyone, but a lot of people. And where are these bastards today? Well, they're not around. They only exist in the past. They're kind of around. They're not in the presence, but they do exist in the past and in the future. Check this out. Because this great race can travel through time. They foresaw their own destruction by the flying polyps, f**k in polyps, yet another group of weird destructive fucked up aliens, and before the fateful day of their demise, the youth transferred their best brains, consciousnesses, whatever, through time into the bodies of

beetle folk, the colliopterous race, earth, dominant species in the future after mankind is destroyed, sometime between eight and 50 million CE. So we got some time. Before becoming beetle folk, the youth collective minds, they, they, they, they chilled out on mercury for a while as a vegetable species. Nice. Now for the wassidenax keeps getting weirder. The wassidenax were, were like a strange cross between frogs, leopards, salmon, and small tanks. Next we're like a strange cross between frogs leopard salmon and small tanks a race of cyborgs from

Guitola stuc they have mechanically enhanced bodies shape like atoms They secreated the substance similar to custard it made a meep tweet kind of sound meep tweet that signal telepathic thoughts of terror Their tongues came out of their eyes and their eyes were where tongue should be making them vulnerable to attack while eating because that's when they were kind of blind And it's the only time you could hope to kill one before it killed you. And their primary function in the Kathulu mythos was to suck lovecraft dick. You heard me. That's probably why it wasn't terribly interested in earth women. You had a cosmic heart on for the waside necks.

The vaginas were made of metal, shaped like an inverted donut crossed with a parallel ogram. That seven breasts made out of the smell of poppy seed muffins, shaped like aluminum, the taste like teal. Can you picture all that? No, of course not. There's too much for your feeble human mind to comprehend idiot. Think not of the aside next for you will go mad.

And also it is very much a waste of time to think about them because I made that one up. And I wonder how many lovecrafts, super fans just acted like they knew what I was talking about because they didn't want to be outside, you know, the cool kids club. Now, before I got to the blowjob part, they were like, no, yeah, fucking, what's next? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's one of my favorites, actually. Because I know, yeah, I know everything, lovecraft.

Uh, yeah, Guitars Duke. Uh, mm-hmm. Yeah, that's where I thought that I thought they were from. Oh, last one comes from the first story, lovecraft had published in Weird Tales, Dagon. Father Dagon, as he's called by his worshipers, is a deity who rules over the deep ones, an ocean dwelling race of fish people who liked fuck humans. Not kidding this time, they find us super hot.

Cultists can entice him to the surface through ritualistic orgies. Hailu's a fiend, I think, maybe not. Father Dagon is a gigantic sea creature that dwells in the seas worshiped by a devout cult of humans and deep ones. Dagen only appears physically in the short story named after him, where he erupts from the ocean to embrace an unholy monolith. His existence, though, casts a long shadow

over other stories, even though you don't see him. There are just, these are just some of the creatures. The populates universe, lovecraft created and inspired many of his contemporaries to build on, you know, onto towards the end of his life and after his death. A universe author still sets stories in today. A universe that continues to inspire the imaginations of those drawn towards lovecraft's cosmic horror.

Now, to once more showcase the strange world these creatures lived in, let us dig into one last story and to arguably his most famous story outside of the call of Cthulhu at the mountains of madness. I wonder all of madness. I won't do all of it. I was written in February, March, 1931, rejected that year by Weird Tales editor, Farne's Worth Right.

Farne's Worth Right, that's a 1931 name. On the grounds of its length, you don't mean a lot of Farne's worth is today. Apologies to all of my Farne's worth listeners. I was originally serialized in the February, March, in April, 1936, serialized in the February, March, and April 1936 issues of another pulp magazine, astounding stories, astounding stories. And it's been reproduced in numerous collections since.

In this tale, on September 2, 1930, the Pobody expedition from a Meese-Catonic University in Arkham, set off for Antarctica. Small advanced group led by Professor Lake discovers the remains of 14 prehistoric lifeforms, previously unknown to science and also unidentifiable as either plants or animals. Six of the specimens have been badly damaged while another eight have been preserved preserved in pristine condition. The specimens stratum places them far too early on the geologic time scale for the features of the specimens to have evolved to where they are. When the main expedition loses contact with Lakes' party, a geologist named Dyer and his

colleagues investigate. Lakes' camp is devastated, with the majority of men and dogs slaughtered, while a man named Gedney and one of the dogs are absent. Near the expeditions campsite, they find a star, a six star-shaped snowmounds with one specimen under each. They also discover that the better preserved life forms have vanished, and that some form of dissection experiment has been done on both an unnamed man and a dog. Missing man is suspected of having gone utterly insane and having killed and mutilated all the others. One sanity.

Their undergraduate student named Dan for the flying airplane across the mountains, which identifies the outer walls of a vast abandoned stone city alien to any type of human architecture. For the resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, the builders of this lost civilization are dubbed the Elder Things. By exploring these fantastic structures, the men learned through hieroglyphic murals that the Elder Things first came to Earth shortly after the moon took form and built their cities with the help of Shogaths, biological entities. We spoke of earlier, created to perform any task, assume any form and reflect any thought. There's a hint that all earthly life, from cellular material left, that all human, all earthly life evolved from cellular material left over from the creation of the shogaths.

So we are all part shogaths! Team Meetsack is Team Shogath. As more buildings are explored, the explorers learn about the Elder Things conflict with both the star spawn of Kathulu and the Migo, who arrived on Earth shortly afterwards. The murals also allude to an unnamed evil, lurking within an even larger mountain range located beyond the old city. This mountain range rose in one night, and certain phenomenon incidents deterred mountain range located beyond the old city. This mountain range rose in one night, and certain phenomenon incidents deterred the elder things from ever exploring it. What scared the elder things when Antarctica became uninhabitable even for the elder things, they soon migrated into a large sub-training ocean. As one does,

dire and Danforth eventually realized that the elder things missing from the advanced parties camp had somehow returned to life And after slaughtering the explorers and have returned to their city They're ultimately drawn towards the entrance of a tunnel into the subterranean region depicting the murals Here they find evidence of various elder things killed in a brutal struggle and blind six-foot tall penguins wandering placidly around apparently used as livestock penguin cows Those evil creatures fed on some of our cutest not even real animals. Of course they do probably some kitten puppy cows, you know, they're two if you

look hard now. The men are then confronted by a black bubbly mass would see identify as a shogeth. Oh, shogeth in black bubble form and escape aboard the plain hive of the plateau Danforth looks back and see something which causes him to lose his own sanity That concludes the other things are survivors of a bygone era who slaughtered lakes group and they their self-defense or scientific curiosity Their civilization was eventually destroyed by the shogas which now prey on the enormous penguin cow things He warns the planners of the next proposed Antarctic expedition to stay away from this cursed site. And here's a cool passage from the story. This is Dyer recalling his and Danforth's escape from the ancient and evil Antarctic city as best his feeble human mind can. Danforth and I have recollections

of emerging into the great scopes of hemisphere and of threading up back trail through the cyclopian rooms and corridors of the dead city. Yet these are purely dream fragments involving no memory of volition, details, or physical exertion. It was as if we floated in a nebulous world of dimension without time, causation, or orientation. The grey half daylight of the vast circular space sobered us somewhat, but we did not go near those cached slidges, or look again at poor Gendy in the dog. They have a strange titanic mausoleum, and I hope the end

of this planet will find them still undisturbed. It was while struggling up the colossal spiral inclined that we first felt the terrible fatigue and short breath, which all race through the thin plateau air had produced Were not even the fear of collapse could make us pause before reaching the normal outer realm of sun and sky There was something vaguely appropriate about our departure from these buried epics For as we wound our panting way up the 60 foot cylinder of primal masonry we glimpsed behind us A continuous procession of heroic sculptures in the dead races early and undecade technique of fair well from the old ones written 50 million years ago Finally scrambling out at the top we found ourselves on a great mound of tumbled blocks with a curved walls of higher stonework rising westward and the brooding peaks of the great mountains

Shuing beyond the more crumbled structures toward the east. The low Antarctic sun of midnight appeared readily from the southern horizon through rifts in the jagged ruins and the terrible age and deadness of the nightmare city, seemed all the starker by contrast with such relatively known and accustomed things as the features of the polar landscape. The sky above was a churning and opal-lessent mass of tenuous ice vapors, and the cold clutched at our vitals. Wearily resting the outfit bags to which we had instinctively clung throughout our

desperate flight, we rebuttoned our heavy garments for the stumbling climb down the mound and walk through the eon-old stone mage to the foothills where our arrow plane waited. But what had set us free from the darkness of our secret and our cake gulfs we set nothing at all. And less than a quarter of an hour we had found the steep grade to the foothills, the probable ancient terrace by which we had descended, and could see the dark bulk of our great plane amidst the sparse ruins of the rising slope ahead. Half way uphill toward our goal we paused for a

momentary breathing spell and turned a look again at the fantastic, paleo-g-entangle of incredible stone shapes below us, once more outlined mystically against an unknown west. As we did so we saw the sky beyond, had lost its morning hazing-ness, the restless ice vapors have been moved up to the zenith, where their mocking outline seemed on the point of settling into some bizarre pattern, which they fear to make quite definite or conclusive. They're now lay, revealed on the ultimate, white horizon behind, the grotesque city of dim, elven line of pinnacle violet whose needle-pointed heights loomed dreamlike against

the beckoning rose- color of the western sky. Up toward this shimmering rim, slope the ancient table land, the depressed course of the bygone rivets reversing it as irregular ribbon of shadow. For a second we gasped an admiration of the scenes unearthly cosmic beauty, and then vague horror began to creep into our souls. For this far violet line could be nothing else than the terrible mountains of the forbidden land, highest of earth's peaks and focus of earth's evil, harbors of nameless horrors, in archaic secrets.

Shundan prayed to by those who feared to carve their meaning, untrodden by any living thing of earth, but visited by the sinister lightings, and sending strange beams across the plains and the sinister lightings and sending strange beams across the plains in the polar light. Beyond the unown archetype of that dreaded cadets in the cold waste. Beyond a warrant laying, whereof unholy primal legends hint evasively, we were the first humans to ever see them, and I hope to God we may be the last. More madness! More hints of cosmic horror, too terrible to properly describe it. I fucking nailed those pronunciations in that one.

I couldn't do that again. Save my life. That was a miracle. I think Lovecraft is great at turning on your imagination because it doesn't spill out all the details, right? Like I said earlier, he lets you fill in the holes you see fit. He provides that backdrop of tension, despair spare anxiety. The dark mood of impending doom makes it clear that horror awaits unimaginable, powerful evil horse. He stops short of

spilling out exactly what those horrors are. He just gives us the vague shape to the monsters knowing the reader will want more before to come up with the rest of the details on their own. The tailoring the story to the darkest imaginings of our own minds, well played, lovecraft, well played. Catath by the way is some unknown and horrible ancient city in his universe, laying as a cold-airid plateau on which that city may sit. In the posth...

Oh boy, that word I fucking hate so much. In the posth... You know what? Fuck it. I'm not even trying to say it today. In a story published after he died, the dream quest of unknown catath, both of these places are mentioned.

It's not, I see it's posth-post-miss, I fucking hate that word. I looked at the pronunciation guy a thousand times, but then I won't say it for a while, and every time I encounter him, I'm like, go, what? Anyway, it's not clear if these places exist only in dreams or in the real quote unquote,

lovecraft universe. Okay, so that's all the nerd fiction stuff, which I love. I say nerd in a good way. Now time to address some controversy regarding real life, lovecraft. I referenced earlier before wrapping this baby up. Lovecraft was not surprisingly a bit of a lunatic. He was a crazy anglophile, a person who loves all things British. He felt that the world's best writers were British, the world's best culture was British. He supported the British monarchy in his lifetime. He actually opposed democracy. I thought America should be governed by an aristocracy, a British aristocracy. He probably only jerked off to erotic thoughts of British women.

He proudly proclaimed that his bloodlines had not been tainted by anyone but the British. He was almost correct. He had a tiny bit of Irish, tiny bit of Welsh in the family tree. He was close. He was so into being British that his pride turned into racism. He thought anyone and everyone who were not of British descent were inferior to various degrees. That's what the guy who spent the majority of his life living with mommy and or his

aunt's thought that he was superior. Even though he married a Jewish woman, he was actually incredibly racist. Even by the standards of his own era, lovecraft's bigotry is most evident in his volumous correspondence. He wrote somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 letters in his lifetime. So many fucking letters. Numerous letters a day. And in his letters, he candidly expressed contempt for Jews, black people, non-white immigrants, voice and overwhelming fear of miscedination

or marriage between races. He praised southerners for, quote, resorting to extrelegal measures such as lynching, such as lynching in their efforts to keep the race as separate, writing, anything is better than the mongrelization, which would mean the hopeless deterioration of a great nation. So yeah, fucking eek, cringey. 1912, we actually wrote a poem called on the creation of N word, which imagines black people as beasts, wrought by the gods in semi-human figure filled with vice. Dude was so racist, I had a cat named N word man, that cat ran away when

he was 14. So actually, his family had that cat. He was raised in a super racist household. His family never approved of his marriage to stone you green because she was Jewish. So why was he so racist? Well, part of it was the time he lived in. A lot of people were very racist at some degree in the early 20th century. Also, clearly he's upbringing had a lot to do with it.

When your family's okay with the name of your cat, being what it was, when you're raised in a way that is almost undoubtedly, you know, when you're raised in that way, it's almost undoubtedly going to turn you into somebody who's aggressively racist. Especially when you don raised in a way that is almost undoubtedly, you know, when you're raised in that way, it's almost undoubtedly going to turn you into somebody who's aggressively racist, especially when you don't have a lot of outside influences. There were so clannish and borderline agoraphobic. They had their little echo chamber in their home there.

And then there's all the mental illness, you know, his mom, super anxious, fearful person, afraid of the world around her. He was afraid of the world around him, of people different than him, filled with fear all the time, fear that also made his fiction great. He was a weird recluse for almost his entire life. Hold up in a home. You know, just most of his friendships were based on letters. He was holed up physically in a home with family who were super racist. So should we sick cancel culture on Lovecraft now in some revisionist way? Why? Well, good with that too.

I think we addressed it, talk about it, and then we move on. Dude's long dead. He's not gonna fucking care. If we scrap his words now or not, like what is it proof? Racists are not, he wrote a lot of great shit. You know, being racist doesn't mean you can't also be a great author.

That's not how shit works. He wrote a lot of things that people of all races have since enjoyed. And think about this, especially woke listeners, probably cringing right now if you haven't turned this off. Currently, a black man, an executive producer, Jordan Peel, a reference earlier, is making far more money off of Lovecraft via the show Lovecraft Country on HBO. The Lovecraft ever made himself.

Lovecraft Country, a series about a young black man, Atticus Finch, who traveled across the Segregated 1950s in the US in search of his missing father, learning of dark secrets, plaguing a town on which famous horror writer, you know, Lovecraft supposedly based location of many of his fictional tales in cancelling Lovecraft now would be a logical and B. It would take a lot of work away from a talented cast full of black actors and a lot of behind the scenes, you know, with writers and producers, there are also people of color. You know, there's Jonathan Major to play that at his finish. Actors of numerous other non-white races play a lot of the other characters.

All these actors making more in life now than Lovecraft ever did. The show is helping support, you know, a lot of non-white, non-British families advance, you know, it's taking a lot of non-white, non-British careers further. So in a way, Lovecraft's already been punished. And he lived a pretty punishing life. I mean, you heard me talk about it. Dude never did basically anything but struggle. And then died a painful and young death.

What more punishment do you want? I also like to think that if you were revived somehow and could meet the cast of this show today, he would see the error of his early 20th century ways. And if he didn't, well, you know what? Then he'd be a racist son of a bitch who still wrote some great cosmic horror long time ago. I like to try to separate art from the artist as much as possible. It's hard enough to find artists I really like. If I have to also approve of all of their personal stances to enjoy what they create well then fuck. I'm going to be left with almost no one.

So let's recap. HP Lovecraft has been sucked, born in Providence. Lovecraft struggled to make ends meet almost his entire life. It was not conventionally successful. He dabbled in publishing, never paid the bills. But that would not stop him from basically, you know, inventing a new sub subgenre of horror. Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror. The premise of which is that the true workings of the universe are beyond human comprehension and the humanity's place in the cosmos is terrifyingly insignificant. Key feature of many of his stories is the existence of powerful extraterrestrial or supernatural entities that influence or threaten the human world in subtle ways, and whose mere perception

by human observers often drives the latter to madness. The Thelu is one of the great old ones, a group of powerful beings from another place that now inhabit Earth, waiting to rise up when the stars are right and destroy the human race so they can rule the planet. Story that would put Cthulhu on the map was the 1928 short story, The Call of Cthulhu. In it, it is said that Cthulhu currently lies in a dreamlike state in the underwater sun considerate of relay. It's like our apostrophe, L-Y-E-A, or E-H.

Waiting for the time when the old one shall rise again. It would be this story in many others that would be the seeds of the seeds of the Kithulu mythos and expansive fictional world that many people have contributed to. And although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. And he is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror authors of the 20th century. Lovecraft's stories have had a profound impact on popular culture, from movies to television, to books, from Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Stranger Things, X-Files and more. Even heavy metal bands, video games have been inspired by HP Lovecraft. Weird British

hard on having reclusive, stupid racist or not, hard to imagine the world of horror without him. Now let's head on over to today's Top 5 Takeaways. Number 1, HP Lovecraft was a master of horror. And there's a deeply terrifying monsters were terrified not only because they represented a physical threat to us, but because they could make us doubt our own sense of reality. Number two, Kassulu is a scary fucking ancient being, trappy beneath the earth, and it's basically a giant cluster of fuck of tentacles and other animal features. He's also the source of all human anxiety, just seeing him will drive you insane.

And he is the object of a bunch of cult. Cult, cult, cult! Object number one to cult worship. Number three, HP Lovecrafts influence on a horror, hard to understate. He's influenced so many authors, filmmakers, Cult! Object number one to Cult worship. Number three, HP Lovecrafts influence on horror, hard to understate. He's influenced so many authors, filmmakers and others. Basically invented again, Cosmic Horror. Plays on people's fear of the unknown. As it relates to space and whether or not something much more powerful lurks somewhere out there.

A theme that has been explored in countless pieces of media since. Number four, the Cthulhu, Mithas. Truly is one of the most expansive pieces of lore ever created written by a number of science fiction and horror writers. You too can contribute to the Kthulu mythos unless you're afraid of what knowledge you might discover. Number five, new info. Kthulu has also entered the world of politics. The monster has appeared as a parody candidate in several elections around the world, including the 2010 Polish presidential election. Love it.

I would love it if Kutulu became president Poland. And the 2012 and 2016 US presidential elections. The faux campaigns usually satirize voters, voters who claim to vote for the lesser evil of Kutulu. In 2016, the troll account known as the dark lord Kutulu submitted an official application to be on the massachusetts presidential ballot. The account raised over $4,000 from fans to fund the campaign through a go fund me page. Go fund me remove the campaign, refunded contributions. Come on, go fund. Have a sense of humor. The cthulhu party in the UK and other pseudo

political organization claimed to be changing politics for evil. When they parody the Brexit parties, changing politics for good slogan. Another organization, Cthulhu for America, ran during the 2016 American presidential election. Of course, in that win. Here's why some members of this organization thought Cthulhu would be a good president. Cthulhu has destroyed no less than 50 sapient species in this galaxy alone. He'll remove big money in politics by removing all masters of the universe from existence. Experts say Kutulu's plan to eat Wall Street accounts is the toughest and most bloody of all presidential candidates. Who needs to build a wall when consuming the planet in endless madness is just as effective?

If not Kutulu, then who? Near Letha-Tep? Shogeth? Please. Cthulhu would not institute a Theocracy in America as a real God, Cthulhu would have no need to force people to believe in it. After you were eaten, your effective tax rate will be zero. Because the nihilism of cosmic terror is preferable to the nihilism of the two-body system, as my favorite.

And then last, it's willing to do what no other candidate will. Time suck. Top five takeaway. Good, Thulu and Lovecraft have been sucked. I hope I did that justice. I feel, you know, for what I'm able to do in a week, I feel pretty good about that one. Of course, I was going to fuck up some words. There's this ridiculous word salad of an episode. And I know that some of the words I messed up were words that nothing was lovecraft, but I found this one really fast, and truly inspiring in an imaginative sense. It's, I didn't realize how much of what he wrote about influenced so many other creators that influenced my imagination so much. So that

was some cool history at least for me to learn. So thanks nerds for nerding that one out and voting it up. Thanks to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help and making time suck, Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsey Cummins, Reverend Dr. Joe Paisley for Audio Engineering, Script Keeper Zach Flannery, Sophie Faxxorcer Evans, she ran point on research on this one, Biddelixer, Liz Hernandez, beef steak and Logan the art warlock Keith. Also quick and grads to our first three time time suck trivia, champ Bodie 210, one round 11 with 7476 points, a monster at trivia.

And now in the 12th round, he may get to, you know, top of the point total for the entire first year of trivia and become the first annual knowledge in Nimrod's super supreme grand champion of the world. Best of luck to all competing for that. Next week on Time Suck, we delve back into the realm of true crime with notorious English serial killers Fred and Rose West. Holy shit. I've been deep in research with that topic as well. Yeah. Frederick Walter, Fred West, Rosemary Pauline, Rose West, were an English-married duo of serial killers

and serial rapists who killed at least a dozen young British girls, including several of their own daughters. They're full on evil, such a crazy story. Both of these people had horrific childhoods, Steph Cox-Gurvey, father-worthy childhoods. But Fred's own account, sexual abuse of various kinds, was common and made to be presented as normal in his house.

They claimed his dad had sexual relationship with his daughters, which had been Fred's sisters. Fred also had sexual relationship with his sisters that his dad taught him about bestiality. Rose meanwhile was a daughter of Bill Letts, a schizophrenic who constantly sexually abused her, her siblings and her mom Daisy. Then Fred and Rose meet in 1968 and bond in the worst of ways and create a new, terrible normal in their household. Their future home would be a terrifying one for both their children and their victims,

nicknamed the house of whores by the British press, so much sex. So much abuse, they beat molested their kids, lived in a house that was more of a sex 10 for Rose's prostitution clients and other people that came to their orgies and fucking swinger parties They hosted and all kinds of shit than a real home They're picking up young women taking them back to their house for sex murdering some and their seller fucked engine It's an insane story that we're telling next week on time suck and now let's head on over to this week's time sucker updates Let's start off with an awesome update to a recent update. Remember Cummins Law victim and Barbecue master, Jacob Lubbers? We talked about him losing out on a bunch of tasty sauce sails to schnucks, to schnucks

grocers. Thanks to an ill-timed Bluetooth situation, well, things are turning around thanks to the time-soc community. Jacob Wrights, Sir Dan, thank you so much for reading my story on the pod. Proving once again, the cold to the curiases the best squat on the planet. I was flooded with online orders, love it,

for full bore barbecue. I also received many emails of support from the listeners and even was contacted by four different friends from my high school. I had spoken to in some time. I did not know where time suckers. I likewise found the awesome spin off page, cooks of the curious on Facebook and have been chatting that up with folks on there. No word yet from schnucks, but there is hope. Thank you from FullBorBarberCute to everyone who reached out and

supported and suck on. That's Jacob lovers. And you can check it out fullboreBBQProducts.com. You want to get yourself some sweet, sweet sauce. Yeah, Jacob, love this. Praise Bojangles. Fantastic. You were flooded with orders. I hope you're flooded with more. Thrive.

Full bore barbecue. Thrive. I hope you're stuck in the kitchen to the wee hours of the night making more sweet sauce. Now I'm hungry. Happy for you, dude. Super sucker Blake McCall did not get Cummins Law, but the recent Carl Denky sucked it. Fuck up his day a bit.

Here's Blake. Hey, suck master. How's it going? My name is Blake McCall. I'm going to listen to you at least two years now and I wanted to write it until you have fuck this is. Well, listen to Carl Denky's suck. You mentioned grilled ass cheeks when describing Denky's apartment and what police found inside.

When describing it, it was around lunchtime for me at the manufacturing plant I work at. And when describing the apartment, I began to smell the food from the kitchen that was being prepared. LM AO on top of that, the daily special was pork tenderloin. And you started talking about how pork sales dropped in the area. Dinky was from this made my decision to skip lunch. As all I could think about was a large man with a beer with a beer grilling ass cheeks on like a Weber grill standing out front,

people walking by sniffing the air like when your neighbor's, when your neighbor barbecues, LOL, then he nods like, oh yeah, smells good, right? Thanks for the unforgettable laughs, you awesome sucker. Thanks for doing what you do. You make learning so much better. Hailbo Jangles, praise for BLM. I tip my hat to Lucifina. You're forever listening to Blake Am. Thank you, Blake. Man And you picked the wrong day. Listen to the Yankee. I hope you can enjoy pork again now. Thanks to the kind words.

I'm glad we can share some info with you. I learned so much each week as well. It's so fun to love it. Anyways, wish I can remember more, you know, always with the episodes. But I guess, you know, remembering some of this knowledge we go over is better than none. He'll never out of my friend.

Recently single and hopeful sucker now, Josh Treon wants to thank some of you. He writes, Hello, suck master. I'm a regular for both scared of death and time suck. Probably going to end up adding to that soon. I've loved time sucks since the moment I found it. My first suck was the Operation Paperclip. Three out of five suck.

And I've always just jumped around between work and married life. Became an official space a couple months ago. Got some sweet merch between work and married life. Became an official space a couple months ago, got some sweet merch, between then and now, my wife asked me for a dissolution of marriage. I was absolutely distraught and binge the suck so hard, and I gotta say your sweet, sweet boys got me to do some dark moments. I even posted the Cult of the Curious 2 page because I wanted to be respectful of timing when I started to date again, asking for advice,

and I just gotta say, gosh dang, everyone's helpful. I was at a weird spot when I posted it, but the group really got me out of a funk by the end of it all. I just wanted to contact you and say, thank you for building such an amazing content machine and on top of that, a community that absolutely kicks ass. Sorry for the long message, Hail Nimmrod, praise for jangles,

Lord be to triple M. Again, thank you, suck master, couldn't be, I couldn't imagine a better person to suck with, Josh, for you. Well, thank you, Josh. So glad you're doing so much better. Glad you had some cult members have been helping out. That should always make me heart feel so good.

I love seeing all the support. Life is often such a dark mother fucker and some kindness delivered at the right time can truly save lives. It just goes such a long ways. We don't eat cathulolous, it's scary, right? The forest, death, disease, despair. We have enough words to start with D. to fill our days with more than enough fear. Thank

you all. We also have plenty of C words like care, compassion and kindness. I know the last one started with a K, but it sounds like a C. My least of being a bless your romantic endeavors, Josh. Now smart sack Jason Miller has an update regarding a fear I shared in the Mao Zedong episode. Let's get smarter. He writes, Dan, I'm Jason Miller. I have to listen to your Chairman Mao podcast. You mentioned that you were worried about the Chinese holding so much of our bonds.

I want to know why you feel that way. I've heard folks say that they fear China calling the debt due and for bonds, this is impossible. If this is your stance, you have bad information. How bonds work is that the issuer, USA, has a deficit to meet its needs and issues bonds to generate cash to meet its need. The issuer issues the bonds with the following items, FV, the face value.

The amount you buy the bond, typically $1,000, and the term, the length of time issuer will hold the funds, I slash Y, the interest, the percent amount of the face value paid to the holder at set intervals as payments. Generally twice a year, FV times Y or I slash Y equals PMT divided by two. The holder China pays the face value, waits for the term to be met, receives interest payments for the bonds, then the face value back. For simplicity's sake, thank you. We will not get into discounts and premiums for the issuing of bonds and assume everyone buys at the par value and nor how the bond market moves in verse to the interest rate. The important thing to remember is that the further out a bond is from the maturity date, the less it is worth.

In the finance field, we have two formulas yield to maturity and yield to date to figure out the value of the bonds. With China holding that much debt, they have no reason to act against the debt issue or the USA, which could trigger a bond default. The only thing that China can do is sell their existing stockpile of bonds at a discount, the nuclear option of selling the debt means nothing. Be afraid of the time when China stops buying bonds. Due to the USA being addicted to the Chinese cash to pay for its overspending.

2020 revenue, 3.4 trillion, that's the income, 2020 budget, 6.5 trillion, 2020 deficit, 3.1 trillion. YEEK, and he gave it a bunch of sources for extra reading. Jason, thank you for sharing this information. Yeah, I guess that particular fear I have is unfounded. I did fall thanks to some economic ignorance on my part into the, well, when China calls in his debt, we're going to be fucked. I fell into that camp.

What you wrote makes sense. The possibility of China refusing to continue to, you know, kind of fund our debt is terrifying. The way those bonds work, it's, yeah, it's in China's economic interest for the U.S. to thrive and always be able to pay our debts back, right? And that way, they should root for us to prosper. Also, thanks for the sources you left to further, you know, dig into this. I'm going to. I'm going to leave those in the show notes so that other listeners can find them if they choose. You

just go on the Times.com app, download the show notes under the episode description. There's a little, you can just click around. I don't have a written in front of me, but it's not that hard to figure out. And then you can link these other sources. And I linked a little bit, learn that Japan owns about as much of our debt as China does in the form of these bonds. I did not know that. I was words of the Chinese government owns too much of our land. Uh, I was also worried about that. And I do worry about foreign land investment and learn through bouncing around things to your sources that foreign investors, much of them corporations do own at least 28.3 million acres of just farmland in the US valued at 52.2 billion. About the size of the state of Ohio as of 2019.

China specifically in 2019 owned 191,000 acres of farmland in the US worth almost 2 billion. That scares me at first glance, but I guess that these investors trying to use that land as some kind of club to beat down America with the government could take a backer, do something else, something with consequences of course, but still. I just want you to have the ability to become more independent. And I think that no matter what country I lived in, right, it is scary in moments to think about how interconnected the world is and how the economy of one country is tied to the economy of so many others.

And yeah, yeah, at least worry less about foreign debt. Now thanks to your message. Now one last message, some cool extra seven wonders knowledge from another smart and caring sucker, Amanda Winter, and also a reminder to be tolerant. Amanda writes, hello suck master, flex and team. I'm writing about the ancient wonder suck and the pyramids at Giza.

I graduated three weeks ago with a master's degree in astrophysics. Holy shit, congrats. And every Friday night I give lectures and star tours at my local planetarium. I always include the pyramids of my programming. You mentioned that some people believe they pointed to the stars on Orion's belt. While that's a common misconception, the pyramids do line out with the trio of stars in the Draco constellation, the main star being Thuban. We all know that Earth spins, but most people don't know that the Earth also wobbles like a top.

However due to the size of the Earth also wobbles like a top. However due to the size of the Earth in space itself, this wobble takes tens of thousands of years. Back when the pyramids were being built, the pull star was actually the polaris, or as the North Star does today. And in approximately 10 to 20,000 years from now, our current North Star, polaris, will no longer be the pole star as the Earth continues its wobble. That's the fun fact I thought you might enjoy hearing. Current North Star, Polaris, will no longer be the pole star as the Earth continues its wobble.

That's the fun fact I thought you might enjoy hearing. Keep up the excellent work. Amanda Winter, PS, as you know, June is Pride Month. LGBT plus youth as especially trans youth have an exponentially higher rate of suicide than their cis, straight peers. I volunteer for an organization called Free Mom Hugs. We work with LGBT plus meat sacks of all ages who've been rejected by their parents.

Sometimes it's as simple as a hug, sometimes we even take in youths who have been kicked out of their homes or assaulted by their own families. It would mean a lot if you would give a few words of encouragement to your LGBT plus listeners and let them know they are loved and supported exactly as they are, Amanda.

First off, what a fucking great organization. Yes, LGBT plus listeners should be reminded. There are plenty of people who love you just as you are and don't care what legal, consenting holes you want filled or to fucking buy whom. All right, so silly to worry over shit like that. God, God doesn't care. I feel like a lot of it comes from, you know, people's,

I feel like misdirected religious notions. Direct to anyone who thinks God cares about that stuff to me. Have them send me some scripture to back up their arguments and I will send back more scripture to prove to them that they are wrong about their own belief system. You know, good members of religions should not care about shit like that and don't. There's plenty who don't now. Don't worry about people saying that they're praying for you. You pray for them.

Nimrod assures me that he and Luciferina love the shit out of you. Triple M has hugs for all as well. Yeah, very loved here in the Times that community, the LGBT plus community. There are so many, so many, so many, so many more important things to worry about than what somebody's sexual preference is. Like, what does the fucking matter?

That kills you and somebody like, especially a parent. How fucked up? Good for you with this group, you know, Amanda to be part of this group that just gives, you know, people hugs you, aren't getting it from their own families. Like, somebody's not gonna hug their son or daughter because they're gay or trans or whatever. Fuck you. What a fucking asshole you are. Like seriously, that's what you're gonna take to your grave. That kind of is silly hate. The fuck is wrong with you? I was younger, I used to have a bunch of stupid thoughts that way, and I'm so glad I lived long enough to get past them.

I would have died in ignorant fuck. I'll die less ignorant fuck, hopefully now. But yeah, there's just, you know, life is short. You know, be angry for shit that deserves anger, and it's not that. And be loving when you can. Thanks for all the cool star info as well, Smarty Pants, so many big brains and even bigger hearts

in the cult. And I love it, Hail Nimrod, to you all. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast, Meat Sex. Don't name your pets anything super racist this week. Thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast meet sex. Don't name your pets anything super racist this week.

You know, throw out some hugs. You know, focus mostly on writing cool stories, maybe, and continuing to keep on sucking. It is I the was side a knock the creature from the place Goot-Turla stoop. I now sometimes I have a devil head for a hand and a drill or maybe I don't it appears that way doesn't it? You know why you see me this way and not to my real form because you're stupid. You're fucking stupid. If you want to get smarter, drink Whipple!