The Thing in the Moonlight

by H.P. Lovecraft, J. Chapman Miske

"The Thing in the Moonlight" is a short story by J. Chapman Miske. The story is based on a letter dated November 24, 1927 from H. P. Lovecraft to Donald Wandrei describing one of Lovecraft's dreams. The story was prepared for publication by Miske, who filled in the story surrounding the description of the dream. In places, the letter and published story are identical to Lovecraft's style.Morgan, the protagonist, is an illiterate man. One evening, Morgan is sitting alone and suddenly feels compelled to start writing. Despite his illiteracy, he records the dream of Howard Phillips, another man. In Morgan's writing, Phillips says that he fell asleep on November 24, 1927 and has never reawakened.The dream's setting takes place in a strange marshland. Phillips explores the marsh's cliff side, noting the eerie and mouth-like caves dotting the plateau. Eventually, Phillips encounters a set of railway tracks. On these tracks he finds "a yellow, vestibuled car numbered 1852—of a plain, double-trucked type common from 1900 to 1910." This car is able to start and he climbs aboard, searching for a light switch so that he can see better. He hears a noise behind him, and, turning to look, sees two men (assumed to be the motorman and conductor) approach him. The first man lifts his head to the sky, sniffs, and howls, while the second drops to all fours and charges toward the Phillips and the car. Phillips immediately flees out of the car until he is too tired to continue.Phillips reveals that the reason for his terror was not "because the conductor had dropped on all fours, but because the face of the motorman was a mere white cone tapering to one blood-red-tentacle..."Phillips is aware that it is a dream, but is unable to wake up. During the day, he travels the strange land, and each night, is brought back to the place with the train car. He always alerts the howling beast to his presence, and always flees from it.The narrator closes the story by saying that he would visit Phillips' house in Providence, but fears what he might find.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Lovecraftian, Fiction, Fantasy, Cthulhu Mythos, Audiobook

5 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1941

About the author

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, of Providence, Rhode Island, was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction.

Lovecraft's major inspiration and invention was cosmic horror: life is incomprehensible to human minds and the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. Lovecraft has developed a cult following for his Cthulhu Mythos, a series of loosely interconnected fictions featuring a pantheon of human-nullifying entities, as well as the Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire of magical rites and forbidden lore. His works were deeply pessimistic and cynical, challenging the values of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Christianity. Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the mirror-opposite of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality.

Although Lovecraft's readership was limited during his life, his reputation has grown over the decades. He is now commonly regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th Century, exerting widespread and indirect influence, and frequently compared to Edgar Allan Poe.
See also Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

— Wikipedia

Reviews

[FameL · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story based on a letter. Lovecraft is always good at the theme of madness, and this one is no exception. I liked the uneasy culmination and the dreadful fate of the main character.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wooooof

[Mika · Rating 1 out of 5]

No way H.P. Lovecraft bothered his friends with his weird dreams. I do that too! Once I woke up, told my whole dream and when I finished I realised no one actually listened to me. Perhaps I should have written a letter to H.P. Lovecraft, he surely would have understood me better and I'm sure he would have read this whole thing no matter how long it would have been. But I wasn't born in the same century as him, which is a bit unfortunate as I never met anyone in my time who is as obsessed over dreams as he was.

(Yes, I'm aware that he was an awful person, you don't have to remind me, but I know he would have been the only one as much obsessed over dreams as me).

It's weird for me to rate an actual dream of somebody, but to be honest all his short stories could have been dreams of him and I rated them too.

The story is such a mess, starting with a man with poor writing skills and ends by fleeing some car. I'm not sure if I understood all of it, but it was quite boring.

[Unboxing Perspectives · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars rounded up to 4 Stars.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovecraft #69: 1927/1941: The Thing in the Moonlight (spurious, with J. Chapman Miske)

“My name is Howard Phillips. I live at 66 College Street, in Providence, Rhode Island. On November 24, 1927—for I know not even what the year may be now—, I fell asleep and dreamed, since when I have been unable to awaken.”



According to the H.P. Lovecraft Archive, monitored by Loucks (2011), “ 'The Thing in the Moonlight’ is based on a letter that Lovecraft wrote to Donald Wandrei on 24 November 1927. The story surrounding Lovecraft’s description of his dream was written by J. Chapman Miske and published in the January 1941 issue of Bizarre” (Loucks, 2010).
The website provides a transcript of HPL’s original letter next to Miske’s 1941 story. Technically speaking, this means that “The Thing in the Moonlight” is not really a Lovecraft story. Instead it is a tale inspired by Lovecraft. Oddly enough, there is no entry about it in Joshi & Schultz’s (2001) An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia.

“The Thing in the Moonlight” is a pretty good mood piece. There is no plot per say, fitting for the recounting of a dream. I would argue that at its short length, it achieves what Lovecraft in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature identified as Edgar Allan Poe’s biggest influence on the short story medium: “the maintenance of a single mood and achievement of a single impression in a tale.” The framing device that Miske adds to Lovecraft’s 1927, clearly a reference to the late author, is effective too. The idea of being unable to wake from a nightmare, perpetually reliving it, is quite disturbing.

Title: “The Thing in the Moonlight”
Author: H.P. Lovecraft
Dates: November 25, 1927 (Lovecraft’s original letter), January 1941 (publication of Miske’s story based on Lovecraft’s dream)
Genre: Fiction - Short story, horror, fantasy
Word count: 1,212 words
Date(s) read: 4/6/22
Reading journal entry #117 in 2022

Sources:
Link to the story: https://hplovecraft.com/writings/fict...

First publication citation: Bizarre vol. 4, no. 1 (January 1941): 5, 20.

The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature: Revised and Enlarged, by H.P. Lovecraft, Edited, with Introduction and Commentary, by S.T. Joshi. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; first edition (2000, ISBN 0-9673215-0-6, 172 pages), second edition (2012, ISBN 978-1-61498-028-5, 228 pages); Kindle ebook.
https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/...

Joshi, S. T., & Schultz, D. E. (2001). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Greenwood Press.

The image: A still from a short film based on “The Thing in the Moonlight” created by The Lone Animator: http://loneanimator.blogspot.com/2016...

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short (just two text pages) story with its own Wikipedia page. I would be comfortable giving Lovecraft sole credit for the story, as the GoodReads entry of it so far does. Lovecraft's correspondent, Jack Chapman Miske, is often given co-writing credit, but he only wrote the first paragraph, three lines, and the last one, two lines. Miske's contribution simply frames the story needlessly and against internal logic through a character named Morgan, who purportedly wrote the story.

Lovecraft's story, the remainder then, is nothing special. It was never published by Lovecraft. It's excised from a letter Lovecraft wrote to Donald Wandrei, an author of considerable, if under-valued, talent in his own right. The story itself concerns a dream the protagonist began having in 1927 from which he never woke. Yet he writes the manuscript we readers peruse, thus my earlier remark regarding Miske's plot hole.

The dream is a third frame, another story within a story, about the discovery of a trolley car in which a conductor and a motor man attack a protagonist who then attempts to flee. This entire two-page piece is a confusing mish-mash. I only give it as high a rating as I do because the words telling it are, as always, well-selected. The scene of the chase is also well-conveyed and certainly is weird and eerie. For a two-page investment of reading time, the story is not a complete waste. I'd rather it existed than not.

[Neha · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my third story by Lovecraft and by then I had started to grow accustomed to his writing style. The overall plot was really interesting and the idea of waking up in the same spot with the same terror really intrigued me.

I liked how the author took his time to describe the landscape, which helped me as a reader to envision the same. Towards the end, I was left with great curiosity about the 'thing in the moonlight' and wished we could find more about it.

[Kow · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I was aware that I only dreamed, but the very awareness was not pleasant."

"Night takes me always to that place of horror. (...) I have tried not moving, with the coming of nightfall, but I must walk in my slumber, for always I awaken with the thing of dread howling before me in the pale moonlight, and I turn and flee madly."

[May_njah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breve but good.

[Fabio Zacà · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short and scary story - Lovecraft's short tales are compelling and intriguing!

[Liz · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is another fragment of Lovecraft's work that was in a letter. Parts have been filled in by another writer. What if one could not awaken from a nightmare. Mainly for diehard fans.

[nooker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This explains some Lovecraftian art I've seen over the years.

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprising for a letter describing a nightmare, turned into a short story by another author: I loved this. The atmosphere and description of the setting was wonderful.

[David Sastre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creepy!

[حسام · Rating 3 out of 5]

هناك احلام وهناك احلام لافكرافت

[Kevan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun creepy short text that gave me "Silent Hill" vibes.

[André Sousa · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10 - Short Story

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

nicely written short piece

[Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

4/10