Oh, definitely! I liked that he ended the story at that point, although the 'titantic crash of thunder' was a bit silly. Was that supposed to so terrify the old cannibal that he forgot to chase the narrator?

No, the old cannibal was killed in the blast.  It's very much a deus ex machina story. 

So someone must have hit his Fido in the face with an axe or something and then buried it under his living room floor! And possibly lived there for who knows how long with that rotting carcass under his feet. For a while I was so keen to find out what the hell had happened there, but all amateurish investigations led to nothing. Only thing I can say is, the unfortunate dog had been lying there for at least three decades. So speculations are still running free...

Yes, by European standards our old homes are not ancient.  But we do Victorian mansions very nicely!

My thoughts on your dog mystery come from growing up on a farm. 

Often when animals died or had to be put down in winter the ground was too hard to bury them and we didn't want to burn a loved pet, so they would get planted in the cellar or under the dirt floor of the barn. 

I definitely think it was more Lovecraftian - that arcane knowledge can drive you to madness; rather than her being born into madness. And that we'll never know if she were born insane, until we study what she studied. But then it, too, will drive us to madness, and everyone else will be left wondering if we were truly mad to begin with. That's what is terrifying and intriguing to me. Is it really another greater power, or is it just us? Do we see the mad men, or do the mad men see us?

To get a little serious, this reminds me of a convo I had with my dad years ago, who was a Viet Nam vet in some of the worst of the fighting.  I asked him how he'd held up so well over there and suffered so little trauma.  His response: "Son, it wasn't what the people over there had done to them that bothers them, it's what they did to others.  I got no regrets." 

Honestly, it's just us.  There's no morals in the jungle and we humans are only a few steps away from slipping back there at any given time.  But then we find that we left a piece of ourselves behind. 

That's why the government spends big bucks to make sure everyone they give high security clearances to are nice and sane.   If you're a little on the edge, cognitive dissonance can melt you down. 

I have a really stupid question to ask.  I haven't visited Marblehead yet, but can you tell me how the locals pronounce it?  This is something I argue about all the time.  Is it something like: "Mahble-head"? 

Hahaha well it's pronounced exactly as it looks--i.e. Marble-Head--whether or not you hear the R is entirely up to the person who's saying it

Clay

Damn it!  I wanted it to be silly and New England-y.  Of course in my Texas it comes out as "Marable Hayd."  So there you go. 

I want it to be scary and weird and open up a bizarre new mythology that no one expected.  I want mind-fuckery and internal torment.  In short, I want a damn HORROR movie!! 

No, you are not alone.  I really heavily dislike the Derleth stories...because he talked too damn much.  August Derleth was a man who just wrote too damn much.  Exposition was his hallmark and, as a result, there's too much literary noise.  He pastiched two great authors - HPL and Arthur Conan Doyle.  Both men were famous for their "poverty of language" styles.  They say a lot with the power of their words rather than with their volume. 

Secondly I have ABSOLUTELY no use for authors who try to meld the mythos realm with the "hard boiled detective story" style.  To me, it not only doesn't work, it's lazy.  I haven't read a single one of these stories that's even remotely "Lovecraftian" and they all play out the same way.  "Two Gun Dick" stumbles across mythos monster/cult/woman/thing/book and has his world rocked while falling back on gumshoe detective tropes to save the day.  One or two of these would be fun, but it seems that everyone who tries their hand at writing mythos stories these days immediately goes to the CSI Arkham model as if they're the first to ever try it.  Boring. 

I'm not big on the role playing/video games based on the mythos.  I can see why people like them, but they don't get my Lovecraftian juices flowing.  Good horror is scary and creepy because, at its root, it's existential.  The games and such just suck all that away, for me.  But then chess is the only game I enjoy playing.   

For me, I adore stories like Smith’s “Return of the Sorcerer,” Bloch’s “Notebook Found in a Deserted House,” King’s “Crouch End,” Wilson’s “The Barrens,” and Jacob’s “The Dream of the Fishermen’s Wife.”  Even something funky like Brite’s “Are You Loathsome Tonight” sets the proper dread for a Lovecraftian tale without getting into the zanier weeds of a pulp story.  I like stories that expand the Mythos without explaining it.  I like stories that come up with something NEW entirely that are in the same vein as Lovecraft.  He took Poe and Machen and Dunsany and became an heir to their works, without being a pastiche or parody.  I don’t like stories that are just an attempt to geek out on Lovecraft by mixing his characters with your favorite genre de jour.  That can be fun and I’ve done it myself, but I’d rather read one of Gaiman’s little two-pagers than all the Derlethian windbaggery in the world! 

Help me. Except for that mercy killing I can `t see any real connection.
Those and the ending line in The Lurking Fear. Still unfamiliar with Lovecraft and his obsessions at that time I just did not see that coming. So all once I had that flash of generations of incest, cannibalism, decline in that small. isolated community. That really got to me. 

An unearthly substance turns an unsuspecting person into a mad, attic dwelling goo blob that's eventually dispatched out of pity?  The plots are indeed very similar as is the atmospher and the building dread. 

I have to admit that Lurking Fear remains one of my favorite stories.  The site of the man-things running like hell out of the ground at night really is nightmare stuff. 

And I suppose an honorable mention has to go out to Brown Jenkin's ripping his way out of Walter Gilman's chest.

This probably speaks to my character - or lack thereof - but every time I read that story I end up rooting for Brown Jenkin.  When he kills Gilman, I'm usually yelling in my head: "Take that you lousy bastard!" 

I don't know why, but I kinda like old Brown.  He seems like he'd be alright to have around. 

Hey everyone, new guy here

I know this isn't exactly what was meant by the topic, but I think it counts:

Living in the Boston area, I recently did a bit of a research trip out to Salem and Marblehead...

I have a really stupid question to ask.  I haven't visited Marblehead yet, but can you tell me how the locals pronounce it?  This is something I argue about all the time.  Is it something like: "Mahble-head"? 

I second and etc. for DC. Though venue would be key. 

I think there's quite a number of us in the area that could scout out a location.  The sad part about DC, of course, is that it's so damn expensive.  Of course, my fantasy would be to do it within the great hall at the Folger Shakespeare Library.  It's just like being inside the Miskatonic University Library.  But that might be a library too far.  I have some friends there...maybe I'll make a call...

I'd love to live in the Strange High House In The Mist.

I think I already do...

That makes me think of Machen's "The White Powder."

Oh, yes Colour was very much HPL's homage to White Powder.  I have to admit that Colour is a far superior story. 

For me, the creepy moment has always been the line in Picture in the House when the old cannibal says: "I had to keep looking at it." 

That's all my fears regarding creepers rolled into one sentence.  And the story isn't even all that fantastical. 

So, apparently Cthulhu was real.  Damn it. Let me be the first to praise him.  I'm going to begin reveling and enjoying myself as soon as possible. 

http://io9.com/5848192/giant-prehistoric-krakens-may-have-sculpted-self%20portraits-using-ichthyosaur-bones

From the story:

"For decades, paleontologists have puzzled over a fossil collection of nine Triassic icthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) discovered in Nevada's Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. Researchers initially thought that this strange grouping of 45-foot-long marine reptiles had either died en masse from a poisonous plankton bloom or had become stranded in shallow water.

But recent geological analysis of the fossil site indicates that the park was deep underwater when these shonisaurs swam the prehistoric seas. So why were their bones laid in such a bizarre pattern? A new theory suggests that a 100-foot-long cephalopod arranged these bones as a self-portrait after drowning the reptiles."

I love Battle.  It really is very funny. Read it if you haven't.  The joke at Derleth's expense is quite appropriate.

There has to be somewhere awesome you can do it in DC.

My suggestion as well, as it splits the coast nicely.  And we have plenty of spots where you could make that happen.  Other than DC I might suggest Philly - it's cheap and has lots of book shops.