Poll: Do you actually find Lovecraftian horror scary?

[balladbird]

In one of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" books by Douglas Adams, we're introduced to an execution machine. The victim hooked into this machine is able to see the universe- all of it- in its vastness and splendor. He witnesses every galaxy, and the vast emptiness between them. Finally, after the scope of all this is appreciated by him, he notices something in the most insignificant area of the vast splendor before him. In tiny-the most microscopic of microscopic- font, is a little arrow, with the words "you are here" written next to it.

The victim's brain then melts at the realization of how utterly small and insignificant they truly are.

I bring this random point up because I feel this one-off joke from a British comedy writer best exemplifies the source of horror for most Lovecraft stories. Saying it's about evil is selling it short. It's about how human morality is as insignificant as humans themselves.

The destruction of the human race by the forces portrayed in the stories isn't their goal, or even a sacrifice they're willing to make. It's an after-effect so utterly tiny and insignificant to them that they spare it no thought whatsoever. No more than you consider the fate of the microbes you crush when you walk from one room to another in your house.

The sobering realization of how small and unimportant we are was very effective horror for older generations. Part of the reason for this was that past generations were far more religious, on average, than the current one. One of the big tenets of man-made religions is how awesome and special humans are, after all. "God created the entire universe JUST to make us! We're the creator's pet, the most important things in all the cosmos!" is a pretty common sentiment.

Thus, seeing a scenario where, not only are we NOT important, but so far beneath contempt that the instruments of our destruction lack so much as an evil desire to see us destroyed, would be a pretty effective tool of horror.


Naturally, whether that is still horrifying in a modern context depends a lot on the person reading it. Most of the works Lovecraft is most famous for didn't really scare me, personally, but I appreciated their breadth of scope. I'm ashamed to admit that the one Lovecraft story that did scare me did so more with a "wham-line" than any sort of deep philosophy:

"YOU FOOL, WARREN IS DEAD!"

A line about as horrifically 'deep' and 'thoughtful' as "The call was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!"... but alas, I'm easy to fright.

 

[lacktheknack]

I didn't get it either until I actually read some of it.

On the surface, "Pickman's Model" is not a scary story - it's a slightly creepy little retelling of a man painting creepy paintings and the "twist" is that he has something that he shouldn't have as a model for his paintings. Yawn.

But the way he writes it...

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Lovecraftian horror is not about giant monsters with lots of tentacles that make people arbitrarily insane when observed. Lovecraftian horror is about the idea that our fundamental knowledge about the universe is wrong, and that there is something much larger than what could possibly be understood by humans. The characters who become insane are the ones who discover this and try to wrap their heads around it.
The books were written during a time where science was going forward rapidly and people started realizing that the universe is really big and difficult to understand, and that there might just not exist a god.

Pretty much this. Lovecraft's writings were a product of the time where humanity was collectively just starting to realize that we weren't the center of the universe, that all of our great works, the advancement of the juggernaut that was our technology, was essentially meaningless in the grand scope of things. Lovecraft turned that Up To Eleven, and invented a scenario where Earth was beset by things so alien, so beyond what we could understand, that they could drive us mad or even kill us just through the very methods through which they existed, and we- with all our vaunted intelligence and might- stood less of a chance than a sandcastle in a monsoon. There were even cultists who worshipped these creatures and strove to awaken them, to merely get their attention, believing that it was better to make our inevitable annihilation swift and painless rather than drawn-out and agonizing.

That was the crux of Lovecraft's writing- the fear of forces powerful enough to exterminate us without even noticing, enemies not inimical but accidental, a world where we're the earthworm on a city sidewalk where incomprehensible titans tread and only luck and our own insignificance has kept us from being stepped on. Back then, when reality and our own scientific discoveries were just starting to shake us out of the delusion that all of existence revolved around us, it was some really heady stuff.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Nope... But that Lovecraftian anime was fucking amazing!

Other than that, it has made me realize that I rather read about other people's psychological horrors... metaphorically speaking...

What Lovecraftian anime? His fiction is pretty big in Japan; just look at how well Miyazaki captured it in Bloodborne.

OP: I never really considered any of his stories to be all that scary. Literature in general doesn't scare me all to much. The only things that really do are built up suspense and jump scares. There was however one story which remains one of my favorites that I consider singularly unnerving, the end giving me chills every time. It's also one of his shortest stories, so I will provide a link here [http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/tm.aspx].

Dude, I knew exactly which story you were talking about without hitting the link. I read that little blurb of horror a few nights ago, alone, and it almost kept me from sleep. That's Lovecraft at his best, when what would seem shallow or silly from a lesser writer becomes somehow horrible and memorable through his command of atmosphere.

 

[Cowabungaa]

The idea that something can be so vast in scale that no human mind could hope to understand it.

Pretty much. Lovecraft wrote his work in an era in which through a great boost in science we were starting to really realize what the cosmos was really like. It ties in a very specific zeitgeist that we've moved past since then.

Hell, since the 70's and on, thanks to people like Carl Sagan, we've actually started to find that vastness beautiful.

 

[Mister K]

Well, even with your edit, OP, I still have to say that you saying that you know about Lovecraft thanks to everything but his actual books is like calling yourself an expert on physics because you've watched Big Bang Theory and Mythbusters.

As for your question. No, I don't find his works or works of any other author actually scary, because I see and hear scarier things from people and in news daily. What they are, however, is usettling.

 

[Silverbeard]

I'm a clinical microbiologist and I primarily deal in bacteria. Microscopic, nigh-invincible and capable of making billions of themselves in a matter of hours. This gives me a different take on Lovecraftian mythos and the fear such things induce: I don't really fear tentacle monsters from space because those things might not even exist. What I do fear, however, are multi drug resistant tuberculosis strains, bacillus anthracis (causes anthrax) and yersina pestis (causes bubonic plague). Those things exist. I've seen them. They've been on my gloved hands and on my face mask. They could be inside me and I wouldn't know it until it was too late. I could walk out of my lab and inadvertently kill dozens before anyone found out I was carrying something pathogenic. I certainly wouldn't know until I start coughing up blood or something equally grisly.

So... yes, I think I do find Lovecraftian horror scary. Not because of how small we are in the cosmos but because of how many things are much, much smaller than we are and at the same time far more destructive than tentacle monsters could ever be.

 

[springheeljack]

Maybe you should have actually bothered to read some of his stories before making this thread. I find a lot of Lovecraft's work to be very creepy and scary especially The Rats in the Walls and Dreams in the Witches house. It is his writing that makes him unique the way he paces it and the way he describes things in the story. As for the mythos I have only ever read Lovecraft's works I have never really bothered to read what other people have added to it.

 

[Pyrian]

I feel like Lovecraft's effect was, in part, a product of its time. Things that we take for more-or-less granted now were just being discovered. Physics went from the intuitive Newtonian mechanics to General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics - things that had little to do with every day experience and could not even be readily understood. And, worse, contradict each other in fundamental but untestable ways.

In Lovecraft's lifetime, educated men went from thinking that the fundamentals of the universe were basically understood, to grappling with the notion that we might never be capable of resolving them. At the time, that was a pretty big shock. Horrifying, even.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Ok so, I just don't get it. Granted, I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's work, but I've sure as hell become intimately familiar in it by pop culture osmosis.

Well here's your problem. Lovecraft is all about the atmosphere and the descriptions and the sense of strange unknowingness. He never scares you in the sense that you're afraid for your life but rather in a gnawing sense of doubt. They don't make you jump, they unsettle you.

 

[lordmardok]

Ok so, I just don't get it. Granted, I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's work, but I've sure as hell become intimately familiar in it by pop culture osmosis. I know who Cthulhu is, and Haster, and Nyarlothotep, though I'm probably spelling that wrong. I know their general concept "Evil personified from beyond reality that is just so terrifyingly alien it drives you made to gaze upon them"....but they just don't. I don't find them at all scary.
So, do you actually find them freaky? Or the concept of them at least? If so, why?

The first issue here is you don't really define 'scary'. You do realise that for every person there is a different interpretation of what's scary or not right? What kind of scary do you mean? Are you asking if it's something that makes us jump out of seats ala Five Nights at Freddies? Are you talking gross out scary like the Hostel movies or Human Centipede? Is it the fear of the dark scary that gets you looking over your shoulder every minute or so after watching a Found Footage film like V/H/S?

I don't know that I find Lovecraft's work 'scary' per se, and you'd be hardpressed to find a bigger fan of him than me. That being said, his stories aren't just about 'humanity small, universe big'. I mean, that's a theme but it does a great disservice to the racist old windbag to describe his stories like that. I do think trying to judge if something is scary when not having ever actually encountered it is a little... poorly thought out, but that aside I'm not here to judge.

Let me put it this way: 'The better your imagination, the more powerful Lovecraft's effect on you will be.' I'm not saying that to disparage, that is my true and honest belief.

Can you really tell me that the idea of a old immortal wizard's inbred daughter willingly copulating with a beast made of squirming ropes of flesh to give birth to a goat-legged devil boy doesn't unsettle you at least a little? If you don't find lovecraft 'scary' or whatever word you want to use, that's fine. Everyone has a type of horror that tickles their fancy. Personally I don't find games like Five Nights, or movies like Friday the 13th, particularly scary. Jump scares aren't what gets to me.

Anyway, I can't really answer your post because asking if you find something scary is sort of like asking if you like books. I could say yes, but it wouldn't really answer anything meaningful.

 

[FPLOON]

Nope... But that Lovecraftian anime was fucking amazing!

Other than that, it has made me realize that I rather read about other people's psychological horrors... metaphorically speaking...

What Lovecraftian anime? His fiction is pretty big in Japan; just look at how well Miyazaki captured it in Bloodborne.

I was referring to Nyaruko: Crawling with Love... I mean, who knew one of Lovecraft's most terrifying creatures could be SO CUTE~?