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The Transition of Juan Romero
The story involves a mine that uncovers a very deep chasm, too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom. The night after the discovery of the abyss the narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside the mine, drawn against their will by a mysterious rhythmical throbbing in the ground.
24 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 1919
9 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,203 books19.3k followersHoward 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
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
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
June 7, 2019
This is quite an eerie story about two miners (first person narrator and a charismatic Mexican named Juan Romero) who encounter a strange noise in the earth. Will they both survive the story unharmed? What about the mysterious Hindoo ring the narrator wears. Great uncanny atmosphere and very unsettling tale that evolves like a movie. Really recommended!
November 2, 2022
The Transition of Juan Romero is an atmospheric story told retrospectively by a miner who experienced something inexplicable and dreadful in a mine years ago.
The story takes place in 1894. They have just discovered a vast new chamber in the mine. During the night the narrator and Juan Romero, a miner he works with, are awoken and compelled to investigate a terrible sound coming from the ground. At one point Romero runs faster and disappears. His disappearance is followed by sounds of terror and pain. It is too much for the narrator and he faints. He wakes up to find out that Romero is dead and the strange new chamber gone. So is the weird narrator's ring.
The story has an undefined ending. It is never explained what exactly happened to Romero. Even the hints are vague. So much is left unsaid. It is not Lovecraft's best story, but it is not the worst either. You can read it here.
The story takes place in 1894. They have just discovered a vast new chamber in the mine. During the night the narrator and Juan Romero, a miner he works with, are awoken and compelled to investigate a terrible sound coming from the ground. At one point Romero runs faster and disappears. His disappearance is followed by sounds of terror and pain. It is too much for the narrator and he faints. He wakes up to find out that Romero is dead and the strange new chamber gone. So is the weird narrator's ring.
The story has an undefined ending. It is never explained what exactly happened to Romero. Even the hints are vague. So much is left unsaid. It is not Lovecraft's best story, but it is not the worst either. You can read it here.
April 11, 2017
This story has so much potential but feels a little rushed. I would have loved if Lovecraft had expanded upon the idea and fleshed it out more, because instead what were left with is just an amuse-bouche.
October 14, 2014
Si bien la historia está bien, y me gustó que quedara en duda de lo que si le pasó a Juan Romero –de lo cual fue testigo el narrador de la historia- fue real o obra de un sueño; me generó mucho rechazo que Lovecraft escribiera con tanto racismo el origen mexicano de Romero. Hoy quizás este escritor tendría montones de quejas por xenofobia y seguramente se tomarían acciones legales sobre su persona.
July 23, 2016
My first disappointment in Lovecraft's early works.
Some early tension built up well, but the story seemed to peter out.
At the end I was left wondering what I had actually digested and taken from it.
There was a good story in here, it just feels poorly executed.
Onwards to the next tale...
Some early tension built up well, but the story seemed to peter out.
At the end I was left wondering what I had actually digested and taken from it.
There was a good story in here, it just feels poorly executed.
Onwards to the next tale...
September 14, 2025
Juan Romero, heard a sound of a coyote and a dog and wanted to follow where it came from. While exploring the Norton Mine, he and transitioned in the most surreal way. There was also a Hindoo ring and an abyss and the whole mine exploring made me think of a mix of Made in Abyss, Lord of the Rings and The Descent. Since I liked them all, I also liked this short story.
September 14, 2025
not a lovecraft story without two paragraphs being grotesquely racist
November 9, 2025
2.75 - Not my favorite but was still decent enough
April 17, 2018
A pretty weak offering, that relies on a whole lot of implication of portentous dream shit happening, but nothing really does. But the ring is missing, so it must be real. The worst part of the story is this:
Holy fucking shit. I keep reading Lovecraft because I do like the mythology he created, and I genuinely like some of the stories, plus I've set myself a task to read this entire collected works, and I tend to keep at something like that, but fuck, this kind of blatantly nasty racism makes it hard to go on.
One of a large herd of unkempt Mexicans attracted thither from the neighboring country, he at first commanded attention only because of his features; which though plainly of the Red Indian type, were yet remarkable for their light colour and refined conformation, being vastly unlike those of the average "Greaser" of Piute of the locality.
Holy fucking shit. I keep reading Lovecraft because I do like the mythology he created, and I genuinely like some of the stories, plus I've set myself a task to read this entire collected works, and I tend to keep at something like that, but fuck, this kind of blatantly nasty racism makes it hard to go on.
January 8, 2013
A way-too-strange Lovecraft tale. Some of his stories just can't be accurately described, I think its better when you read it yourself...
September 12, 2017
The story set in an 1894 mining camp in the American west. Lovecraft has here succinctly captured everything I hate about his work. We have a long exposition of not really creepy details leading up to a climax in which the horror is, well, not actually revealed, because it would be too horrible. And then it could have been a dream, but of course we know it wasn't, because the malfunctioning jewelry is missing. People, serial killers are scary. This is not.
(Moved 2015 review to the individual work Sept. 2017 to make room to review the collection under its own entry. Bonus points because I do actually remember this story rather well, but as you can see the bonus points aren't good for much when the story is already starting at the bottom.)
(Moved 2015 review to the individual work Sept. 2017 to make room to review the collection under its own entry. Bonus points because I do actually remember this story rather well, but as you can see the bonus points aren't good for much when the story is already starting at the bottom.)
October 11, 2019
H.P. Lovecraft writes a short story from the perspective of a miner whose colleague has died at night under traumatizing, unexplainable circumstances which the miner is reluctant to retell. A surprise ending complicates the plot's conclusion, and its usage invites multiple readings to understand the story. While some readers might be overwhelmed by the story's century-old vocabulary, other readers seeking a horror story about Aztec mythology set in an 1890s mine along the U.S. and Mexico border should be entertained.
November 26, 2023
« In that moment it seemed as if all the hidden terrors and monstrosities of earth had become articulate in an effort to overwhelm the human race. »
So the main thing about this short story is that we never really see any monster, we can only imagine and that’s where the horror resides, I guess.
So the main thing about this short story is that we never really see any monster, we can only imagine and that’s where the horror resides, I guess.
January 18, 2022
4.25 Stars
rounded down to 4 Stars.
August 23, 2019
Creepy, but lacking in the eerie atmosphere that makes Lovecraft so beloved.
March 29, 2022
Nada que decir, más que fantástico.
June 15, 2024
Gutes Buch, üstere Atmosphäre, kurz aber interessant
October 11, 2024
Sad and infuriating how Lovecraft’s blatant racism ruins most of his work.
August 9, 2016
Lovecraft did not appear to really like this story. The story is vague; the location is just someplace in the American Southwest, and referenced supernatural forces are mostly just weird feelings. Lovecraft biographers also note that he does not appear to have in any way prepared it for publication. Original manuscripts have few notes or editing work. Frankly, it feels as though he simply lost interest in the story. There is potential here, certainly, but it feels a bit like a New Englander was momentarily fascinated with the American Southwest and lost interest before he could properly finish the story.
June 21, 2022
Lovecraft manages to build up great suspense throughout this story, but doesn't really make much of an impact with its ending; while it is a conclusion typical to Lovecraft's writings (with all things left unexplainable), it doesn't provide a satisfying or fulfilling enough ending to make all parts equally as good in my eyes. Ignoring the hints of racism in the exposition which just make you stop and sigh before returning to read, it's a good story that falls a little short.
November 16, 2018
I'm not going to comment on every time Lovecraft looks down upon a race for its inferior breeding, because then I'd be here forever. Regardless, I did enjoy what is becoming a recurrence of events happening in a dream world will very real effects. Pretty neat idea, not that it's exclusive to Lovecraft.
September 21, 2014
I sometimes wish that Lovecraft would go into a bit more detail, but otherwise this story is excellently creepy.
May 8, 2018
My Rating System:
* couldn't finish, ** wouldn't recommend, *** would recommend, **** would read again, ***** have read again.
* couldn't finish, ** wouldn't recommend, *** would recommend, **** would read again, ***** have read again.
May 26, 2019
Pretty good. Different setting than usual for Lovecraft, but he still finds a way to fit in his usual dreamscapes, creepy unseen gods, and bizarrely specific racism.
June 5, 2019
It is a fairly scary tale about miners who breach a shaft which they shouldn't, and the consequences which follow.
December 23, 2020
This is a dull story and the racism is untenable. Audible edition.
October 20, 2022
An engaging story where what really happened remains a mystery.
4 'Eerie,' stars.
4 'Eerie,' stars.
January 18, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them
H.P. Lovecraft’s 'The Transition of Juan Romero' feels like a fragment torn from a much larger nightmare, and on rereading, its very incompleteness became its most unsettling feature. The story is skeletal, almost brutally so, offering just enough context to establish place, proximity, and dread before plunging into erasure.
What struck me most was how little Lovecraft seems interested in character psychology here. Juan Romero is not explored as a person but as a threshold, a site where something ancient and inhuman breaches the present. The mine, with its suffocating darkness and oppressive depth, functions less as a setting than as an invitation to annihilation.
Lovecraft’s horror in this story is not about fear felt in advance but about the shock of sudden unmaking. There is no gradual revelation, no investigative curiosity rewarded with partial understanding. Instead, the narrative lurches from mundane labour into cosmic violation with terrifying abruptness. The violence is not described so much as registered, like a seismic event whose consequences are visible even if its cause remains unseen. Reading it now, I was also aware of the troubling racial framing that underlies the story.
Romero’s otherness is bound up with his vulnerability, and that association complicates the horror, embedding it within Lovecraft’s broader anxieties about difference and intrusion. This discomfort does not negate the story’s power, but it demands acknowledgement. What lingers is not the monster, which remains nameless and unseen, but the sense that the world contains fissures where human categories fail entirely.
'The Transition of Juan Romero' does not offer a mystery to be solved, only a boundary to be crossed once, with irreversible consequences. It is a harsh, compressed vision of cosmic horror, one that suggests some encounters do not leave survivors wiser, only absent, and that the universe does not pause to explain what it has taken.
Very enjoyable and recommended.
H.P. Lovecraft’s 'The Transition of Juan Romero' feels like a fragment torn from a much larger nightmare, and on rereading, its very incompleteness became its most unsettling feature. The story is skeletal, almost brutally so, offering just enough context to establish place, proximity, and dread before plunging into erasure.
What struck me most was how little Lovecraft seems interested in character psychology here. Juan Romero is not explored as a person but as a threshold, a site where something ancient and inhuman breaches the present. The mine, with its suffocating darkness and oppressive depth, functions less as a setting than as an invitation to annihilation.
Lovecraft’s horror in this story is not about fear felt in advance but about the shock of sudden unmaking. There is no gradual revelation, no investigative curiosity rewarded with partial understanding. Instead, the narrative lurches from mundane labour into cosmic violation with terrifying abruptness. The violence is not described so much as registered, like a seismic event whose consequences are visible even if its cause remains unseen. Reading it now, I was also aware of the troubling racial framing that underlies the story.
Romero’s otherness is bound up with his vulnerability, and that association complicates the horror, embedding it within Lovecraft’s broader anxieties about difference and intrusion. This discomfort does not negate the story’s power, but it demands acknowledgement. What lingers is not the monster, which remains nameless and unseen, but the sense that the world contains fissures where human categories fail entirely.
'The Transition of Juan Romero' does not offer a mystery to be solved, only a boundary to be crossed once, with irreversible consequences. It is a harsh, compressed vision of cosmic horror, one that suggests some encounters do not leave survivors wiser, only absent, and that the universe does not pause to explain what it has taken.
Very enjoyable and recommended.
August 16, 2022
Amidst the frenzied Gold Rush of the American West, an unusually successful prospecting operation unearths a subterranean chasm too deep for any line to fathom, arousing superstition in a pair of expat miners.
This is a weird one. Not only is the story set in the mountainous deserts of the West (a setting Lovecraft very scarcely ever even acknowledges), but as far as the existing literature is concerned, it was never even intended for publication. Rather, the tale was meant as an illustrative example of effective horror in a desert setting for Lovecraft's colleagues, with the ultimate purpose of one-upping another unspecified writer whose writing style H.P. (as he so often did) completely lambasted and scoffed at.
In the sense of its original intent, I would say The Transition succeeds. While the desert itself is less a concrete part of the story and more a somewhat-detailed backdrop, the cosmic horror in this story really does chill. The concept of the chasm only freaked me out more the further in I read; that was some brilliant stuff on Lovecraft's part.
As a full story, I think it's pretty okay. I was thoroughly invested and intrigued throughout, but its short length keeps it from being anything insanely special.
Again, though: way too many pejorative and insulting remarks towards an entire group of people at large. This time, instead of the Inuit or mountain-dwelling New Yorkers, Mexican people are up to the chopping block! The eponymous miner, while a secondary main character of sorts, has a bevy of (in Lovecraft's eyes) detestable characterizations that, though not a crime in the auspices of a single character, represent a larger problem once Lovecraft then applies them to every Mexican alive.
I rate this story 4 bottomless, demon-infested hell-pits out of 5 raised eyebrows at Lovecraft's actually making the effort to write Juan Romero's dialogue in Spanish.
This is a weird one. Not only is the story set in the mountainous deserts of the West (a setting Lovecraft very scarcely ever even acknowledges), but as far as the existing literature is concerned, it was never even intended for publication. Rather, the tale was meant as an illustrative example of effective horror in a desert setting for Lovecraft's colleagues, with the ultimate purpose of one-upping another unspecified writer whose writing style H.P. (as he so often did) completely lambasted and scoffed at.
In the sense of its original intent, I would say The Transition succeeds. While the desert itself is less a concrete part of the story and more a somewhat-detailed backdrop, the cosmic horror in this story really does chill. The concept of the chasm only freaked me out more the further in I read; that was some brilliant stuff on Lovecraft's part.
As a full story, I think it's pretty okay. I was thoroughly invested and intrigued throughout, but its short length keeps it from being anything insanely special.
Again, though: way too many pejorative and insulting remarks towards an entire group of people at large. This time, instead of the Inuit or mountain-dwelling New Yorkers, Mexican people are up to the chopping block! The eponymous miner, while a secondary main character of sorts, has a bevy of (in Lovecraft's eyes) detestable characterizations that, though not a crime in the auspices of a single character, represent a larger problem once Lovecraft then applies them to every Mexican alive.
I rate this story 4 bottomless, demon-infested hell-pits out of 5 raised eyebrows at Lovecraft's actually making the effort to write Juan Romero's dialogue in Spanish.
July 13, 2024
A Mine Disaster
10 July 2024
One of the things that I like about these Lovecraft stories is that they remind me of the text adventure games that I played as a kid (and still play occasionally when I get time). It’s like how a lot of his stories involve people exploring mysterious caves, and in the case of this story, a mine.
The story involves a guy who came to New England from India, though he is originally from Britain. He has with him a ring that was given to him while he was in India. Also, a Mexican has arrived with a group of Mexicans who came across the border to look for work.
Anyway, a lightning bolt hits the mine, and he has to go in there to rescue the Mexican, but when he descends into the mine he discovers that parts of it have opened up into another world through deep chasms. Anyway, he ends up fainting and wakes up and discovers that the Mexican has died.
Sure, this is a rather short story, and it also seems to be one of those stories that are one of his earlier works. Though it is interesting that his earlier works aren’t actually all that bad. It does seem that he did have a pretty good imagination. Mind you, some of his works actually come from dreams, so you sort of have to wonder the type of dreams that he used to have because I certainly don’t have dreams like that.
Yeah, it wasn’t all that bad. Not outstanding, but still readable.
10 July 2024
One of the things that I like about these Lovecraft stories is that they remind me of the text adventure games that I played as a kid (and still play occasionally when I get time). It’s like how a lot of his stories involve people exploring mysterious caves, and in the case of this story, a mine.
The story involves a guy who came to New England from India, though he is originally from Britain. He has with him a ring that was given to him while he was in India. Also, a Mexican has arrived with a group of Mexicans who came across the border to look for work.
Anyway, a lightning bolt hits the mine, and he has to go in there to rescue the Mexican, but when he descends into the mine he discovers that parts of it have opened up into another world through deep chasms. Anyway, he ends up fainting and wakes up and discovers that the Mexican has died.
Sure, this is a rather short story, and it also seems to be one of those stories that are one of his earlier works. Though it is interesting that his earlier works aren’t actually all that bad. It does seem that he did have a pretty good imagination. Mind you, some of his works actually come from dreams, so you sort of have to wonder the type of dreams that he used to have because I certainly don’t have dreams like that.
Yeah, it wasn’t all that bad. Not outstanding, but still readable.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews