The Lovecraft Vault

THE GRINNING GHOUL is a short story by the American author, Robert Bloch. First appearing in Weird Tales back in June of 1936, the story was described as follows: “A story of stark horror in the subterranean depths beneath the tomb.” Artwork by David Last:  davidlast.net

TENTACLES is presented as an episode of a fictional podcast called "Finders Creepers with Lana Thompson", in which the host investigates supposed evidence pertaining to mysterious and supernatural events. This particular show, focuses on the strange disappearance of a paranormal investigator.

THE AQUARIUM is a Cthulhu Mythos story by Carl Jacobi, first published in DARK MIND, DARK HEART in 1962. "When a painter and her friend move into a spacious London house, the strange aquarium left behind by its former owner begins to exude an influence both unnatural and terrifying."

THE SHADOW OVER INNSMOUTH⁠ , first published by Visionary Press in 1936, tells the strange story of an unnamed student, whose visit to a decrepit Massachusetts seaport—the crumbling town of Innsmouth—leads to a number of shocking and personal revelations… It forms part of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

TWO BLACK BOTTLES is the result of a collaboration between H. P. Lovecraft and Wilfrid Branch Talman. It was first published in Weird Tales Magazine in August 1927. In the story, the narrator, Hoffman, recounts a trip into the Ramapo Mountains of New York, following the death of his uncle.

SPAWN OF THE GREEN ABYSS is a Cthulhu Mythos story by C. Hall Thompson, first published in the November 1946 edition of Weird Tales. "An accursed house, a soul that is no longer one's own, and a boundless doom that comes from the sea."

BELLS OF OCEANA is a short story by Arthur J. Burks, first published in the December 1927 edition of Weird Tales. It tells of an encounter with something deadly in the uncharted waters of the North Pacific. The story is imbued with a touch of 'outsideness', as noted by Lovecraft in a letter to the magazine in 1928.

THE CRAWLING CHAOS is a short story based on a dream once described to Lovecraft by fellow-author, Winifred V. Jackson, in which the consequences of dabbling with opium were experienced. It was first published in the 1943 collection, Beyond the Wall of Sleep.

THE STRANGE HIGH HOUSE IN THE MIST was written on November 9, 1926, and first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales. It concerns a character traveling to the titular house which is perched on the top of cliff which seems inaccessible both by land and sea, yet is apparently inhabited.

THE RED BRAIN is a short story by Donald Wandrei, first published in the October 1927 edition of Weird Tales Magazine. The story tells of a strange, menacing cosmic dust that engulfs the universe.

Forming part of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, THE DUNWICH HORROR , first published in the April 1929 edition of Weird Tales, takes place in the decaying village of Dunwich, a Massachusetts backwater steeped in rural superstition and dark whispers. When a strange child named Wilbur Whateley is born under mysterious circumstances, a series of bizarre events begins to unfold, drawing the wary attention...

PICKMAN'S MODEL was first published in the October 1927 edition of Weird Tales. In the story, the narrator recalls his friendship with Richard Upton Pickman, an eccentric painter whose grotesque and disturbingly lifelike canvases of ghouls and nightmarish scenes earn him both fame and infamy.

THE ABYSS is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Robert Lowndes. The story was described by Stirring Science Stories back in February 1941 as follows: “A tale of a ghastly journey down a little strip in the center of a rug!”

FROM BEYOND tells of Crawford Tillinghast, a man whose curiosity leads to a fate ‘horrible beyond conception’. First published in the June 1934 edition of The Fantasy Fan.

THE SALEM HORROR is a short story by American author, Henry Kuttner. The tale first appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in May 1937, and tells of an author who rents a quiet house in Salem in order to finish his latest novel—a house that once belonged to a witch—a witch whose presence has far from faded.

HERBERT WEST–REANIMATOR was first serialized in February through July 1922 in the amateur publication Home Brew. The story concerns the gruesome adventures of Herbert West, a young scientist consumed with the ambition of bringing the dead back to life.

THE SECRET IN THE TOMB is a short story by American author, Robert Bloch, first published in the May 1935 edition of Weird Tales. In the story, a man answers an inexplicable summons from beyond the grave.

THE CALL OF CTHULHU , first published in Weird Tales in 1928, is a foundational tale of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Told through a series of manuscripts and testimonies, the story traces a hidden pattern of strange dreams, cult activity, and archaeological discoveries that point toward the existence of an ancient cosmic entity: Cthulhu, a monstrous Great Old One.

UBBO-SATHLA is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by Clark Ashton Smith, forming part of Smith's Hyperborean Cycle. It tells of a man, who, in a state of trance, ventures back to the very beginning of time, where he encounters the primal one, Ubbo-Sathla. The story first appeared in the July 1933 edition of Weird Tales.

First appearing in The Philosopher in 1920, POLARIS is an early entry in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle. The story’s narrator, haunted by the cold, pulsing light of the North Star, dreams of a majestic marble city called Olathoë in the land of Lomar.

First published in Weird Tales in 1924, IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS is a first-person tale ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft for the escapologist Harry Houdini. In the story, Houdini recounts how, while visiting Egypt, he is kidnapped and thrown into a deep shaft beneath the Great Pyramid of Giza. Struggling to escape, he encounters vast underground chambers filled with monstrous, half-human entiti...

THE HAUNTER OF THE GRAVEYARD first appeared in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1969. "The story of a TV presenter who encounters a malign spirit in a cemetery."

THE TEMPLE first appeared in the September 1925 edition of Weird Tales. Told through the final log entries of a doomed German U-boat commander during the First World War, the story charts a descent from prideful rationality into madness and the embrace of the abyss.

THE DEATH WATCH is a short story by the British born, American author, Hugh B. Cave. The story, which first appeared in Weird Tales in its 1939 June-July edition, was described as follows: "What ghastly thing was it that came clumping into the big house out of that wild night of storm?"

THE MUSIC OF ERICH ZANN was first published in the March 1922 edition of The National Amateur. In a shadowed quarter of a mysterious Old World city, a poor student takes lodgings in a crooked house on the Rue d’Auseil and becomes entranced by the strange nocturnal music of his neighbour: an aged, reclusive viol-player named Erich Zann.