Episode 278 – The Shadow from the Steeple
Blochtober concludes with The Shadow from the Steeple, which can be found online here.
Special thanks to our reader, Andrew Staton! Check out his upcoming feature Clowntown!
We’ll be back next month with another REH CONAN TALE! It’s The Slithering Shadow!
Great episode! On the topic of the story’s version of Lovecraft putting real world horrors into his fiction : it’s not as crazy as it seems! Let’s say Zombies are real, George Romero somehow knew about it and decided to put out a film since he knew no one would believe him if he came forward with the information as fact. Fast forward to today where if a Zombie outbreak ever did occur, we all pretty much know how to handle it (go up a flight of stairs for God’s sake), since they’re such an ingrained part of pop culture.
In the same way, readers of weird fiction would know the signs of the elder god’s return and would know how to deal with it – namely, kill themselves… so… I guess it’s not that helpful actually at all.
Also it’s super chilling that Bloch suggests they’ve already come and no one noticed, and our current habit of developing exponentially more horrifying weapons of mass destruction is a result.