Horror Stories

[sumire]

I'm not a big horror reader, but I read House of Leaves the other week. It was kinda neat, but not as scary an experience as I was expecting. From what I had heard, I knew it had weird footnotes, was structured as a story-in-a-story, and... somehow I got it confused with some other story, and thought there were supposed to be depraved, insane siamese twins in the book. So as I was reading, skimming the Johnny whatsisname bits and the literary citations, I kept anticipating the flashback to the crazy twins, whose lingering malignant spirits I assumed were making the house evil. And then the book ended. Whoops.

I was disappointed by the part where the house gets all black-holey and consumes Tom--it felt like such a horror-movie cliche, but I loved the expeditions. Many years ago, I had a memorable and exciting dream that I was rushing down through a maze of "caves" that were decorated like rooms, traveling to the center of the earth, and it's only after I woke up that the dream began to seem sinister--maybe my destination had really been Hell, and maybe I should have shown more concern for how long it was going to take me to get back up again. And that's how House of Leaves scared me--because my reaction to the shifting corridors was "How cool! I want to live there!" and because I know I'd go rushing in to explore right away. And die.

[Deleted]

[url=http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/index.html
]Any fans of H. P. Lovecraft?[/url]

I think I started a topic on Lovecraft, but didn't get any takers. I only started recently with the Mythos, but I'm hooked.

[caycepollard]

Any fans of H. P. Lovecraft?

::waves hand, Monica Gellar-style:: I am, I am, I am!!!

I'm not surprised you didn't get that many takers, Lovecraft can be kind of esoteric, erudite and inaccessible. Probably why I personally love him. I adore the creep atmosphere of the Cthulu stuff, as well as its themes regarding ever-present evil. One of my most daunting fears.

[Deleted]

I'm a big Lovecraft fan, though I know a lot of people have never heard of him. I love his stuff, although I find that I have to make sure I have a lot of time on my hands when I sit down to read his stories. It takes me forever to read one of his stories, because they are so involved and the writing is so...ornate. I remember being terrified by "The Thing on the Doorstep" when I first read it (I was young...maybe 13?). His stories are way scarier than anything modern horror authors could come up with.

[Deleted]

I love the Innsmouth stories, myself. I could really see a cheesy summer popcorn flick based on them. Scientists trying to figure out what the fuck is going on there, one of the characters has the Innsmouth gene and is doomed, etc.

[underjoyed]

For me, the first Lovecraft story I read - and which gave me many a nightmare - was "The Shunned House". From thence, the addiction began. IMO, far too many horror stories/novels start off promisingly and then let you down with some cliche or overblown ending (Mr. King, I'm looking at you. You and that giant, inter-galactic death spider from "IT".) which makes it seem as if the author got a hundred or so pages into the book, and then just ran out of gas, but had already spent the advance. Lovecraft never lets you down in that sense.

He will, however, weird you right the hell out.TEXT

[caycepollard]

Has anyone ever read any of the books I think of as "Lovecraft knock-offs"? Bascially, all the fiction written in homage to the Cthulhu stuff. There's this one that's supposedly really popular, Disciples of Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by someone named Edward P. Bergman. Yeah, I don't know. One of my roommates read them and said they were kind of creepy, though. There's even a second volume out now, published in 2003.

Edited because I can spell, I swear!

[Smilla]

Okay, everyone, against the advice of others at the old FT boards and in my real life, I purchased House of Leaves. I shall be attending to the reading of it later. I only dimly remember a couple of spoilers and have gone out of my way not to read whatever was written on the other page about it, so the suspense should be decently maintained. So, we'll see what happens. I will report back tommorow with my impressions.

[Deleted]

Brew yourself a pot of coffee, Smilla. You're in for a long, bumpy, 25 MPH road trip. IMHO, of course.

I started Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. It's pretty good so far. Mostly funny, but I can see the horror potential (esp since it's initially billed as horror). The end of the world is coming, and the Antichrist is an 11 year old kid. There are two angels trying to stop Armeggedon - one risen and one fallen. Should be interesting.

[Deleted]

There are a great deal of stories based on Lovecraft's tales-in fact, most of the Mythos are comprised of other authors, such as Robert Bloch or August Derleth. Lovecraft encouraged others to write tales using his settings, and it's become quite a tradition. In fact, one of Stephen King's short stories is considered part of the Mythos-"Jerusalem's Lot."