Showing results by narrator "Adriel Brandt" in All Categories

Basil Elton is a lighthouse keeper prone to fantasies - especially one recurring fantasy of a man in white robes on a white ship that only appears on a full moon. During this fantasy, Elton goes with the man on his ship, following an azure bird. Despite the man’s warnings that no man has ever returned from one of these realms, Elton asks that he take him to legendary land of hope. Their journey takes them to the end of the world, and instead of toppling over the side and dying, Elton wakes up on the rocks of his lighthouse next to the first shipwreck in his time as lightkeeper.

Lovecraftian themes abound in the tales of an intern at a madhouse and an illiterate madman. Slater, the madman whose unspeakable crimes led him to the madhouse, is continuously awakened in this story by surprisingly literate hallucinations of a glowing entity seeking revenge. Inspired by Slater’s uneducated background and the telepathic machine that he had made in his yesteryear, the intern delves deep into Joe Slater - who is receiving telepathic messages from a being of light.

Cat haters beware. This piece by H.P. Lovecraft is largely memoirish, whereby the narrator is compelled to tell the listener about Ulthar after petting his own cat. When a travelling caravan passes through, a young orphan named Menes finds his beloved black kitten has gone missing and fears the worst - that his kitten had suffered a torturous end at the hands of the town cat killers. Annoyed by the lack of action on the part of the townspeople, Menes invokes a prayer that results in the cats of the town rising and slaying the cat-killing couple.

Nyarlathotep: descendent of ancient Egyptian pharaohs and bringer of bad dreams. When the story’s namesake begins his travels to showcase his once dormant supernatural powers, he runs into a particularly tough crowd. When Nyarlathotep becomes angry, he sends the crowd in different directions - which brings a seeming horror about the city. By the end of it, the maddened crowd is the least of the world’s worries. Doom, it would seem, was here to stay with Nyarlathotep.

The tomb is the story of Jervas, a little boy whose whole life begins to revolve around the tomb of the Hyde family. A childhood spent sneaking out to sleep beside the tomb eventually turns into a young adulthood of sleeping in a tomb with his name on it. After a stormy night and after heading for the tomb, he turns back and sees the Hyde mansion, which had been burnt down in previous years, aglow with splendor. Once Jervas went inside, the spectral mansion sets ablaze, and his vision is broken by his father. Jervas comes to find out he had never been inside the tomb at all.

When the narrator accompanies a withered old Yankee back to his house, he is intrigued by the many old curiosities he finds around it - including precolonial furniture. One of these curiosities, an engraving, brings the old man on a terrifying reminisce about eating things that he was not allowed to have, and the narrator realizes that he could next on the plate. As blood drips from the ceiling onto the book, the narrator narrowly escapes when a bolt of lightning strikes the house, finally ending his streak of immortality.

The narrator introduces himself as being 228 years old and goes on to document his interactions with Dr. Samuel Johnson. Being older and in a time when respect for elders was everything, the narrator expects Dr. Johnson to appreciate his writing, which the man does not. While the tale goes on to document other awkward meetings with Dr. Johnson, he ultimately dies younger than the narrator - who goes on to continue writing and living an unfulfilled life.

Randolph Carter begins the story telling the harrowing tale to those who found him stumbling through the swamp. Carter and his friend, the occultist Harley Warren, went to investigate the location of a supposed portal to the underworld - near Big Cypress Swamp in Florida. Upon discovery of a tomb with stairs going deep into the earth, Warren decides to descend them. Only after waiting for what seems an eternity does Carter call down into the tomb, only to be returned with a voice that does not belong to Warren telling him that his friend was dead.

In this sermon, English preacher Charles Spurgeon uses candles to illustrate spiritual concepts. He delves into the history and use of lanterns to draw memorable parallels between candles and the Christian life. “Many people use their Bibles as lights to be hung up at a Chinese feast of lanterns,” he says, “for amusement, or for show.” The word of God should not be a prop, however, but rather the light that guides us through life.

In this speech, a young Theodore Roosevelt describes what he believes are the key principles to good citizenship. In addition to emphasizing ethical behavior, Roosevelt takes a firm stance on the necessity of engaging in politics and voting. He states unflinchingly, “The people who say that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit to live in a free community.” To be “a good American citizen”, Roosevelt says one must boldly engage with the issues our nation faces today, and in doing so, shape its future.

President Andrew Jackson bid farewell to the nation at the inauguration of Martin Van Buren, his friend and former vice president. Jackson talked of the nation’s successes in the past several years and warned against sectionalism that threatened the nation’s unity.

Thomas Jefferson beat out Aaron Burr in the 1800 presidential election after Alexander Hamilton cast the tie-breaking vote. Jefferson gave this address to a packed Senate chamber on March 4, 1801. He emphasized the US as a single nation working together and avoided mentioning party politics. In this way, he departed from the speeches of his two predecessors and established a new formula for inaugural addresses that was used by many presidents who came after him.

With this address, US President James Monroe set a precedent for the nation’s foreign policy. In it, he stated that “The American continents...are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” Monroe established this doctrine in a time where most of Spain and Portugal’s colonies in Latin America had gained independence. From then on, the Old World and the New World would operate in separate political spheres, and any European interference in North or South America would be considered a threat against the US.

Unlike many of Lovecraft’s stories, this story takes place in Greece, and more importantly, on a mountain that was supposedly watched over by Pan. Kalos and Musides, two friends, live here, and when Kalos falls ill and dies, Musides decides to use his sculpting powers to use. He erects a great monument to Kalos over his tomb, but an oak tree decides to overtake it, shaping into what looks like a deformed and monstrous human figure. Musides’ fears about the tree sapping the vital force from his friend’s grave are finally struck down by lightning - and with it the whole monument.

Do you know anyone who has died of puerperal fever? Probably not, thanks to this groundbreaking essay published by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1843. With great passion and intelligence, Holmes sets forth his revolutionary argument on the prevention of an illness which had claimed the lives of new mothers in epidemic proportions. Though his findings were not accepted until years later, Holmes’ seminal work can serve as a model for the presentation of life-changing medical research.

A lot happens in this very short story by H.P. Lovecraft, but it begins as the title might lend itself to imagine - with a terrible old man. As three thieves find out about this old man’s treasures, they decide to visit with the man with the intent to steal his riches. Their plan goes horribly wrong when one of the three hears screaming from the getaway car. When he enters the house, he finds the hideous, yellow-eyed man staring evilly at him, waiting to usher in his doom.

Though The Street tries to remain in the realm of horror and the supernatural, what it really amounts to is one of the earliest written documents of Lovecraft’s political stance and stance on other races. In this story, the street is the protagonist. Lovecraft documents its growth from quaint and colonial New England town to downtrodden and dirty as immigrants move in after the first world war. When a “vast group of terrorists” living in the neighborhood plot to overthrow the federal government on July 4th, the street decides to take matters into its own (metaphorical) hands.

The Nameless City, now defunct in part of the Arabian Peninsula, tells the tale of a civilization run by reptilian creatures long before the dawn of humanity. It describes how they lived, worked, and ran until the ocean receded. Desertlike conditions bring about the downfall of the civilization, and this is documented by the author of the Necronomicon. Despite this downfall, their hieroglyphs remain, and it is rumored that deep beneath the surface, some reptilian creatures remain, too.

Much like Celephaïs, the unnamed narrator recalls his dreams of drifting on a dreamy ship toward the west and exploring the mystical and ethereal land of the west. The narrator recalls that he always ended at an ivy wall with a gate in it. After years of unrelenting depression in the real world, the narrator decides that he will try and go through the gate of his dreams, wherein he swallows “the drug”. After opening the door, he realizes quickly (and to his delight) that his expectations of what lay beyond were completely wrong.

In this story by H.P. Lovecraft, the line between man and beast is blurred. The Beast in the Cave follows the story of a man who gets separated from his group of tourists. They’ve all come to see the mammoth cave, but the man fears that it might be the last wonder he sees as he continues to wander further from his group. Eventually, his torch runs out of fuel and he is left with no other choice but to fend off approaching inhuman footsteps with the toss of a rock.