The Ghostwritings, Vol. 1 by H.P. Lovecraft

Book Details

H.P. Lovecraft was a “revisionist” i.e. editor and ghostwriter for several other writers during his lifetime. This volume of his ghostwriting centers on his work done for Hazel Heald.

Hazel Heald (1896–1961) first engaged Lovecraft as a “revisionist” i.e. editor and ghostwriter, in 1932 when she was in her late 30s. She was a recent divorcée who had an interest in Lovecraft. S. T. Joshi, noted biographer of Lovecraft, has written, “there is abundant evidence that Lovecraft wrote nearly the entirety of all five stories revised for Hazel Heald.”

The Man of Stone (1932)
Petrified they lay — man and wife — and behind this grim tragedy was the diary of the madman—
A two chapter novelette.

The Horror in the Museum (1933)
A shuddery tale of the elder gods, and the blasphemous monstrosity that slithered through the corridors of the waxworks museum.
A two chapter novelette.

Winged Death (1934)
An eery story of the frightful doom that pursued a scientist who bred poisonous African insects to kill his friend.
A two chapter novelette.

Out of the Eons (1935)
A tale of Elder Magic and a monstrous idol—a shuddery tale of primordial evil
A five chapter novelette.

The Horror in the Burying-Ground (1937)
A bizarre and outré story of a gruesome happening in the old town of Stillwater—a blood-chilling tale of a double burial

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) is probably the most influential horror writer of all time. A large number of horror writers, both his contemporaries and modern writers acknowledge his fundamental influence.

The Ghostwritings, Vol. 1 – Hazel Heald contains 5 illustrations.

Files:

1. Lovecraft-GhostwritingsVol1.epub

Excerpt: Out of the Eons

A tale of Elder Magic and a monstrous idol—a shuddery tale of primordial evil

(Mss. found among the effects of the late Richard H. Johnson, Ph. D., curator of the Cabot Museum of Archeology, Boston, Mass.)

IT IS not likely that any one in Boston —or any alert reader elsewhere— will ever forget the strange affair of the Cabot Museum. The newspaper publicity given to that hellish mummy, the antique and terrible rumors vaguely linked with it, the morbid wave of interest and cult activities during 1932, and the frightful fate of the two intruders on December first of that year, all combined to form one of those classic mysteries which go down for generations as folklore and become the nuclei of whole cycles of horrific speculation.

Every one seems to realize, too, that something very vital and unutterably hideous was suppressed in the public accounts of the culminant horrors. Those first disquieting hints as to the condition of one of the two bodies were dismissed and ignored too abruptly — nor were the singular modifications in the mummy given the following-up which their news value would normally prompt. It also struck people as queer that the mummy was never restored to its case. In these days of expert taxidermy the excuse that its disintegrating condition made exhibition impracticable seemed a peculiarly lame one.

As curator of the museum I am in a position to reveal all the suppressed facts, but this I shall not do during my lifetime. There are things about the world and universe which it is better for the majority not to know, and I have not departed from the opinion in which all of us—museum staff, physicians, reporters, and police—concurred at the period of the horror itself. At the same time it seems proper that a matter of such overwhelming scientific and historic importance should not remain wholly unrecorded—hence this account which I have prepared for the benefit of serious students. I shall place it among various papers to be examined after my death, leaving its fate to the discretion of my executors. Certain threats and unusual events during the past weeks have led me to believe that my life—as well as that of other museum officials—is in some peril through the enmity of several widespread secret cults of Asiatics, Polynesians, and heterogeneous mystical devotees; hence it is possible that the work of the executors may not be long postponed.

[Executors’ note: Doctor Johnson died suddenly and rather mysteriously of heart failure on April 22, 1933. Wentworth Moore, taxidermist of the museum, disappeared around the middle of the preceding month. On February 18 of the same year Doctor William Minot, who superintended a dissection connected with the case, was stabbed in the back, dying the following day.]

The real beginning of the horror, I suppose, was in 1879—long before my term as curator—when the museum acquired that ghastly, inexplicable mummy from the Orient Shipping Company. Its very discovery was monstrous and menacing, for it came from a crypt of unknown origin and fabulous antiquity on a bit of land suddenly upheaved from the Pacific’s floor.

Excerpt From: H.P. Lovecraft. “The Ghostwritings, Vol. 1 – Hazel Heald.”