“Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories” by H. P. Lovecraft – Your Horror Essentials

The influence H. P. Lovecraft had on the world of literature, art, music and other kinds of media is rather hard to overstate; countless have inspired themselves from his timeless and horrifying works generally centered around unstoppable and indescribable terrors lurking beneath this world, generally leading his characters into madness, leaving them to a fate worse than death.

It is rather hard to choose one single work as being the quintessential one which should be read by all, which is why Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft was put together.

To explain it as basically as possible, the book is an anthology of numerous short stories by Lovecraft, including the titular classic “Call of Cthulhu”, as well as “Dagon”, “Celephais”, “Nyarlathotep”, “The Outsider”, “Herbert West - Reanimator”, “The Rats in the Walls”, “The Colour Out of Space”, “The Whisperer in Darkness”, and others.

In other words, it is an attempt to extensively cover all the different kinds of horror stories Lovecraft has brought to us over the years, and they range from a three-page exploration of a man whose mind is escaping from reality to a sixty-paged, morbid and terrifying encounter with a hidden alien species.

I firmly believe that even if you are not a great fan of horror, you are still going to find something to your liking here for many of these stories don't simply aim to scare you, but to unsettle you, make you uncomfortable at the ideas they bring forth.

If you haven't yet had the opportunity to read something by Lovecraft, then I believe the first thing you are going to notice is his writing style. He truly had a one-of-a-kind knack for manipulating the English language, seldom repeating himself and yet still managing to make one sentence flow into the next one seamlessly.

His talent for delving into madness and describing unsettling events and landscapes certainly comes to the fore, often leaving you feeling like you are actually there, but wishing you weren't.

His characters are all mostly rather singular and interesting, especially the protagonists with the minds of which we more often than not get rather well-acquainted with, following them in a sense of their journey through insanity, fearing for them and hoping to God they make it out of there alive.

I will admit that consider the age of these stories, some of them may feel a touch tame by today's standards, and even the more gruesome and naturalistic bits of it won't have you reeling in shock and disgust; Lovecraft aims for psychological horror above all else anyhow.

Even the more predictable and less reputable stories are still worth reading in my opinion, if only for Lovecraft's writing prowess and the atmosphere persisting throughout his works.

All in all, if you are a horror fan and are looking to explore one of the greatest pioneers and masters of the genre, to immerse yourself into a world where unspeakable doom lurks at every turn, then you definitely cannot pass up on The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories; it will most certainly satisfy your cravings for a while.

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Howard Phillips "H. P." Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937) Personal site Howard Philips “H. P.” Lovecraft was an American author who, sadly, only truly achieved fame posthumously, becoming recognized as one of the greatest pioneers of the horror genre. He is mostly known for writing the fabled Necronomicon as well as numerous short stories such as the timeless Call of Cthulhu.