Looking for Lovecraft Audio

[Genus Unknown]

If you need some anti-inspiration or need to waste some time, Derleth wrote a follow up, I think it's called the Shuttered Room or the Attic Window or something like that. Some heir comes back to the house but fails to burn everything immediately as per the will, and a frog creature or two start making trips from Lavinia's room through a broken pane to the old water wheel, and they keep getting bigger. Except they leave tiny human, albeit webbed, footprints. Hmm, I suddenly feel as if I mixed something up terribly. I better stop now.

That rings a bell, but I thought there was an Innsmouth connection. Like the guy who used to live in the house isn't dead, but is in fact an Innsmouth fishfrogman just sort of hanging around the old house or something.

[JulieH]

From what I recall (and I avoid this story - The Shuttered Room - like the plague) - it is a deep one hybrid that GROWS when it eats and SHRINKS when it doesn't - so, when they opened the room up, it had been starving for long enough to be teensy frog-sized, and it gets loose and starts eating cows and getting bigger.

Sigh.

I hate Derleth.  I just do.

[JulieH]

JulieH:--

I believe actuall whippoorwill audio was posted in the Dunwich thread right here on this forum. I would suggest you give the 1945 Suspense! adaptation a listen if you haven't already, it was quite good, although the whippoorwills sound like the mirror-(audio?)-opposite of the bird calls someone found and put in the Dunny thread.

I've got a line on some lovely whippoorwills.  Don't worry about that - it was so integral, it was the first thing I went looking for.

I have listened to the Suspense version, though not recently - have avoided listening to both other versions in the last few months, at least until I finish the script.

that way I'm neither accidentally riffing on what others have done, nor constantly fretting about avoiding them.

[Genus Unknown]

Hm. Okay, that's not the one I'm thinking of. I just looked it up (it's the first story in that Del Rey collection of Derleth's "revisions"), and the one I read was "The Survivor."

I didn't get to "The Shuttered Room." That was story number 8 in the collection, and I threw the book in the garbage after number 5 ("The Ancestor").

[JulieH]

yay!  Another one rescued from the dreaded clutches of Derleth!

[Okay - so I give him some props for keeping HPL's work "alive" - but ouch, what a hack]

[old book]

Maybe I can help, heheh.

The first lines of THE SHUTTERED ROOM:

At dusk, the wild, lonely country guarding the approaches to the village of Dunwich in north central Massachusetts seems more desolate and forbidding than it ever does by day. Twilight lends the barren fields and domed hills a strangeness that sets them apart from the country around that area; it brings to everything a kind of sentient, watchful animosity--to the ancient trees, to the brier-bordered stone walls pressing close upon the dusty road, to the low marshes with their myriads of fireflies and their incessantly calling whippoorwills vying with the muttering of frogs and the shrill songs of toads, to the sinuous windings of the upper reaches of the Miskatonic flowing among the dark hills seaward, all of which seem to close in upon the traveller as if intent upon holding him fast, beyond all escape.

and of THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC:

My great-uncle Uriah Garrison was not a man to cross--a dark-faced, shaggy-browed man with wild black hair and a face that haunted my childhood dreams. I knew him only in those early years. My father crossed him, and he died--strangely, smothered in his bed a hundred miles from Arkham, where my great-uncle lived. My Aunt Sophia condemned him, and she died--tripped on a stair by nothing visible. How many others might there have been? Who knows? Who could do more than whisper fearfully of what dark powers were at Uriah Garrison’s command?

Maybe I did get a little mixed up, the first does seem to be a sequel to Dunwich which combines Innsmouth lore, while the second is set in almost an urban or suburban location with nosy neighbors, a blue streak who lives in the space between the spaces in the attic and comes out to clean and perform other domestic duties after the midnight hour.

[JulieH]

That first one - I swear 90% is just words rearranged from Lovecraft's original opening lines for Dunwich.

Lame.  I could do that.

Ancient, wild, brier-bordered trees, north central stone wells - the upper reaches incessantly sets them apart, at dusk, from the country around Dunwich.  Sentient, watchful fireflies seem to close in upon the traveller from Massachusetts, guarding the approaches to the lonely Miskatonic marshes with their myriads of dark hills and sinuous twilight windings of frogs and toads.  Animosity lends the dusty road a low, seaward muttering, forbidding all escape beyond the domed country village.  Strangeness calling, holding fast, the whippoorwills pressing close upon the barren fields, flowing among the desolate hills.  All of which brings, by day, a kind of intent - more than shrill - ever vying, it seems, with everything  upon the songs of the area.

I have these words left:

"of  in  and does that that it to a to the , to , to the and their the of of , to the of the the as if "

You know, this might make a fun game.

[Bob Lovecraft]

You know, this might make a fun game.

Oh no, JulieH. I think you just dropped the gauntlet. Now we are all in for some long, LONG posts by OldBook. Thanks a lot.

Bob

[JulieH]

IN THE SHADOW ATTIC

My childhood dreams knew only fearfully smothered Arkham.   Great Aunt Garrison tripped on strangely, haunted in a bed by a visible shaggy black hair.  Uriah, my Great-uncle, was cross - How many others might there have been?  A hundred crossed miles to whisper, faced with nothing; condemned by that man who knows his early powers face years of dark and command.  My Sophia browed at him in his garrison, where not a man died.  My wild father could do more than she - what were a stair to him and his?  Those from Garrison's dark died.  And he who lived?   Uriah, my uncle.

[I ]

[old book]

OK Bob, trying to deliver. Tryiiiing.

"At dawn, the cold and lonely country leading unto the village of Montesano in southwest Washington appears more bleak and inaccessible than it ever does by night. Dawn lends the barren fields and mothballed Satsop nuclear plant a strangeness that sets them apart from the country around that area; it brings to everything a kind of sentient, watchful animosity--to the ancient trees, to the brier-bordered stone walls pressing close upon the dusty road, to the low marshes with their myriads of mosquitoes and their incessantly plaititvely calling sandpipers vying with the muttering of frogs and the shrill songs of toads, Poles and Finns, to the sinuous windings of the upper reaches of the Chehalis flowing among the dark Black Hills seaward, to the garden gnomes, plaster seagulls and chainsaw burl folkart nestled between trailer parks, all of which seem to close in upon the traveller as if intent upon detaining him overnight, administering a breathalyzer test, prodding for further incriminating information and resquesting consent for a polygraph test."

[JulieH]

I'll continue - but I will start a new thread.

[MediaGhost]

I just couldn't give that one up - The freakout was sooooo.... juicy.

I particularly enjoyed your reading of The Outsider.  Imagining the main character as a woman made an eerie story even eerier (if that is indeed a word).   Come-to-think-of-it, many of Lovecraft's stories would benefit from a gender change.  For example, listen to Morgan Scoripion's rendition of From Beyond - the story takes on a whole different tone.

[JulieH]

Thanx! Glad you enjoyed it!
 
Funny, I actually never thought of "the Outsider" as being much of a gendered character at all. 

[Bob Lovecraft]

Thanx! Glad you enjoyed it!
 
Funny, I actually never thought of "the Outsider" as being much of a gendered character at all. 

Good point. I always assumed the ghost/zombie/horror was a man, but in all honesty, there was no reason for that other than knowing the author was a man. It does make it a bit creepier to have the main character be a woman, especially from a male point of view. After all, you can chop the head off of a male monster with no real qualms, but chopping off a woman's head, well that is a different thing, even if they are undead.

Bob

[TheMediocreYoungishOne -Tom-]

After all, you can chop the head off of a male monster with no real qualms, but chopping off a woman's head, well that is a different thing, even if they are undead.

Bob

Oh, I don't know. When something is trying to eat one's brains one soon finds that gender plays little role anymore. That said, I don't think "The Outsider" seemed to be a bad person (male or female) or a monster in the evil sense of the word.  He/She was just undead.