It's all over "Arthur Jermyn" and "The Rats in the Walls", but also shows up in "Pickman's Model". And "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" is *literally* the sins of your ancestors taking you over and turning you into someone else!
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"The Thing on the Doorstep" and "The Shadow Out of Time" have possession narratives similar to CDW, although the latter also has the scifi themes of deep time, like "At the Mountains of Madness". AFAICT, it's all rooted in the way HPL's father went mad (probably from neurosyphilis)...
aug 31, 2025, 8:18 pm • 3 0 • view
...and how his mother ended up in an asylum, dying there. This anxiety about something lurking *within you*, which can warp you or turn you into something or someone else, is a big part of what makes a lot of his stories so effective as horror, IMO.
aug 31, 2025, 8:18 pm • 2 0 • view