Horror Stories Archives - Page 23 of 24

How Cthulhu Took Over the World

14 April, 2015

We’re back, and we’re celebrating our fiftieth episode! We’re as surprised as you are that we’ve made it this far; we really should have been eaten by a shoggoth or returned to our essential salts long ago. With this in mind, we decided to commemorate the occasion in the way we know best: by talking too much. This is a long episode — over two hours in length — but it’s also a big subject. You could almost call it Cyclopean.

There’s a reason why Lovecraft is remembered as a writer and not an artist.

Over the years, we’ve met a lot of people who only know of the Cthulhu Mythos through gaming. Given how pervasively Cthulhu’s tentacles have worked their way into the gaming world, and into geek culture in general, almost everyone interested in such things has heard of Lovecraft, or at least his most famous creation. This episode is our attempt to explain where it all came from and how Lovecraft’s influence spread so widely. It is a superficial overview at best, and none of us are Lovecraft scholars. We hope this will at least serve as an introduction, and may illuminate a few dark corners you weren’t previously aware of.

Or you may prefer to flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Our investigations take in books, films, television, comics, music, games and other eldritch topics. All this follows on from the work of Lovecraft himself, however, and happily this is now in the public domain. If you haven’t read any of his stories, you can peruse them free online, or pick up a nicely formatted ebook of his complete works for less than the price of a sandwich.

Especially one with tentacles.

With this being an overview, in many cases we’ve done little more than name-check various works, authors and artists. Our half-formed plan is to return to some of these topics in more depth later. Please let us know whether this sounds interesting or is the worst idea since August Derleth decided the Mythos should centre on a fight between good and evil. Weep.

Instead of finishing on that vexing note, here’s one of the highlights from Shoggoth on the Roof, a work we mention a number of times.

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Robert Aickman’s The Hospice

24 March, 2015

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We’re back, and we’re in sounder health that the title of this episode may suggest! Although after hearing us sing again (yes, we have a new Patreon backer!) you may disagree. This time we’re looking at another short story, again with a view as to what it can add to our gaming. We’re taking a little break from Lovecraft, however. It’s nothing personal, Howie! You’ll always have a special place in our hearts.

Aw, why the long face?

The story we’re discussing is The Hospice, by Robert Aickman. In case you are unfamiliar with him, Aickman was a twentieth-century English writer of what he referred to as “strange stories”. His work is characterised by maddeningly dreamlike events, the meanings of which slip through your brain like greased eels, all communicated through precise prose. It’s debatable whether Aickman’s work should be classified as horror, but it’s generally more unnerving than most stories that are. The Hospice is one of Aickman’s finest tales, and can be found in the recent Faber reissue of his collection, Cold Hand in Mine (also available as an eBook from a variety of sources).

Probably the finest collection of Aickman’s work, and highly recommended.

We make mention of a television adaptation of The Hospice from the 1980s, but sadly none of us have been able to track it down. If you want a taste of Aickman, you can always enjoy this 2002 short film, adapted from his story The Cicerones by Jeremy Dyson, writer of The League of Gentlemen and long-time Aickman fan. As good as the adaptation is, it cannot hope to capture the full strangeness of the original story, but is still well worth watching.

The next episode will be our fiftieth, and we have big things planned! Well, we have a special episode topic at least. And fireworks! OK, maybe not fireworks. Paul’s office has too many flammable things in it, including us.

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The Thing on the Doorstep (part 2)

22 October, 2014

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We’re back and we’re wrapping up our look at H P Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep. This is the episode containing all the bits you wanted to hear last time, but were bumped because we talked too much. Every time we record an episode about a Lovecraft story we promise we’ll keep the synopsis short, yet we never do. Maybe its time we acknowledged our rambling problem and dealt with it like mature adults, through heavy drinking and denial.

Burying your head in the sand always seems like a good idea up to the moment it gets eaten by chthonians.

In particular we mention the few film adaptations to date (although it seems there’s a new one we missed, so I’ve embedded the trailer below by way of recompense) and, more pertinently, ideas about using elements of the story in your games. Definitely just in games. The Good Friends of Jackson Elias recommend against stealing the bodies of family members, as it can make Christmas dinner even more awkward than usual.

Be warned that there are some spoilers for an old Chaosium scenario that uses elements from The Thing on the Doorstep. It’s difficult to warn you which one, as the spoiler is that it uses these elements, so mentioning its name is a spoiler in itself. When we start talking about it, fast forward for a minute or so if you don’t want to know, or if you’re just getting bored of listening to us. I fast forward myself the whole time.

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Fill your ears with Lovecraft

3 September, 2014

Someone threw this link in my direction today. The site looked vaguely familiar to me, it’s not new and I guess I’ve been there before. But I was curious so I scanned down, as you…

The Rats in the Walls

26 November, 2013

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This week we take a look at what was arguably Lovecraft’s first major story, The Rats in the Walls. As we did with our discussion of The Haunter of the Dark, we try to find ways that it can inform your Call of Cthulhu game, but mostly we get embarrassed about the name of that bloody cat. Unlike our previous discussion, we managed to keep this to a single episode, possibly helped by the fact that we don’t go on about two other stories as well.

There aren’t actually any rats in The Rats in the Walls, but this picture was too cute not to use

We also maintain our tradition of complaining about the temperature in the shed. Well, Paul and Matt do. Scott has the same contempt for cold as he does for heat. Paul has resorted to wearing a woolly hat when we record, and here’s a photograph to help you understand and share our mirth.