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Hypnos
interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect. I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded. Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent.
Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments- inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told- for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space- things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aerially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses,
Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments- inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told- for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space- things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aerially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses,
19 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 1923
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430 people want to read
About the author
H.P. Lovecraft
6,110 books19.2k 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 118 reviews
October 2, 2019
In this short tale first published in The National Amateur (May, 1923), Lovecraft experimented with an unreliable, nearly hysterical narrator (similar to Poe's homicidal tenant in the "Tell Tale Heart") who tells us a suspiciously fragmentary tale in rhet0ric that (even for H.P.) is extravagant and emotionally charged. The ending, when it comes, is unexpected, yet not really surprising, considering the voice of the man who embodies the story.
The narrator is a English sculptor who tells us how he meets a bearded man destined to be "his only friend" when the bewhiskered fellow collapses in a London train station and our sculptor takes him home to his flat. There the two men, their consciousness illuminated by unspecified drugs, explore sensations found only in obscure pockets of the universe. The bearded man, however, travels further inward (or farther outward) than our sculptor can manage, leading to an odd transformation and the story's unusual conclusion.
The plot itself is not remarkable, and the conclusion is almost O. Henry in its cuteness, but the mention of vast cosmic spaces (a prefiguring of H.P.'s later efforts), the use of mind-altering drugs, the heavy dose of narcissism, the little pinch of homoeroticisim, together with an allusions to relativity and Albert Einstein ("the man with Oriental eyes") together make for interesting reading.
It is the voice of the narrator, however--lunatic, fantastic, isolated--that make this a story to remember. H.P. would write better things later, but this looks forward to the classics to come.
June 21, 2019
The first person narrator and a friend indulge in drugs and dreams. But at some point the friend is looking much older, his beard is getting white and more wrinkles are to be seen upon his face. What is going on? Why do they flee sleep and are afraid of Hypnos? Fantastic Lovecraft full of dreams, decadence and death. Recommended!
February 26, 2016
What better time to read a short story about the undefined horrors discovered in the realms of drug-induced dreaming, then after waking in the middle of the night from an unfocused, mildly distressing dream of my own. Lovecraft captures the amorphous qualities of nightmares, without rendering them utterly drab and boring like most people do when describing their own dreams. How many times have you heard something like "I dreamed I was in my kitchen, and... it was really weird", followed by a string of additional bland mundanities each called equally weird. While Lovecraft continuously chews around the edges of the actual terrors seen by the protagonist, he never describes it or them directly, and yet, he manages to imply just enough to allow the better imaginations to run wild.
September 14, 2025
This short story was so surreal! It blurred the lines between reality and dream (or should I say nightmare). It feels like I read a story of somebody who experiences somniphobia 'cause of a recurring nightmare. That nightmare is so big that the protagonist starts to and like I wrote so many times already:
May the merciful gods, if indeed there be such, guard those hours when no power of the will, or drug that the cunning of man devises, can keep me from the chasm of sleep. Death is merciful, for there is no return therefrom, but with him who has come back out of the nethermost chambers of night, haggard and knowing, peace rests nevermore. Fool that I was to plunge with such unsanctioned phrensy into mysteries no man was meant to penetrate[...]
February 7, 2015
3.5
As in most Lovecraft's dream stories, you are introduced to an (usually) unknown character, a sculptor, who suspects there is something more beyond dreams. Only few dare to try to find out more about that world.
Then he meets a beautiful stranger and recognizes his own wishes in the man. They start living together, travelling through dreams until one day his friend manages to go further than the narrator. Hypnos gets pretty close to a romantic story.
That brings the fear of dreaming, fear of sky and these two realize they mustn't be caught sleeping.
(Found at sffaudio.com)
The heartbreaking and unexplained, open ending is what makes this story extraordinary.
As in most Lovecraft's dream stories, you are introduced to an (usually) unknown character, a sculptor, who suspects there is something more beyond dreams. Only few dare to try to find out more about that world.
Then he meets a beautiful stranger and recognizes his own wishes in the man. They start living together, travelling through dreams until one day his friend manages to go further than the narrator. Hypnos gets pretty close to a romantic story.
That brings the fear of dreaming, fear of sky and these two realize they mustn't be caught sleeping.
(Found at sffaudio.com)
The heartbreaking and unexplained, open ending is what makes this story extraordinary.
September 14, 2017
The knowing dreamer theme meets the terrible beings of space/beyond theme with a splash of the perceptive artist theme and the forbidden knowledge theme. One thing I appreciate about Lovecraft: his yearning for the extraordinary comes through clearly, but he consistently portrays his narrators as corrupted either by power or madness due to their dabbling in the forbidden realms. He has a clear grasp of the ease with which the human heart is twisted. (I would say this is another unknowable terror story, but the themes are clearer as the total body of his work shapes up.)
(Moved 2015 review to the individual work Sept. 2017 to make room to review the collection under its own entry.)
(Moved 2015 review to the individual work Sept. 2017 to make room to review the collection under its own entry.)
January 30, 2019
Another drug-addled dream tale, that is oddly (and probably unintentionally) homo-erotic in places. Utilizes "hiding from scary stars" and "afraid to sleep lest we dream" and "was this person ever real or only a hallucination?" and "indescribable horrors". Mildly interesting, but Lovecraft's visited similar themes, and done them better, in other stories.
August 17, 2015
High art. Great pacing and subject matter.
June 7, 2023
Imaginary Friends
6 June 2023 – Hastings
Well, since I was in Battle I thought that it might be an idea to come down to Hastings and have a beer at a few pubs. Well, the first pub was one of those scary old man pubs. In fact, all of the tables were set up so that you could sit with your back to the wall, which says a lot about the people who frequent it. Fortunately, just down the road was one of those awesome trendy pubs with grungy music posters and craft beer, so this is where I am now sitting writing this review.
All I can say is that Lovecraft doesn’t seem to like dreams. Yet the funny thing is that the dream world, and the real world can be really difficult to distinguish at times. In fact, there seems to be a number of layers to the story to the point that you wonder what is the dream and what is reality. I would say that I can say that I am generally able to tell the difference between dreams and reality, but the truth is, at least where I’m concerned, sometimes dreams can be quite real, and you only realise that you are in a dream when you wake up. On the other hand, I might be sitting in a beer garden in a pub in England, but once I return to Australia it will end up becoming a dream (especially with a 20 hour flight, excluding the layovers).
So, the narrator meets some dude at a railway station (in England of all places) and suddenly realises that this dude will be his BFF. They end up taking drugs and going into dreams to the point that they believe that they are able to conquer the dream world and become emperors. However, his BFF encounters something that decides that they can never go back into that world, so they start taking drugs to prevent them from going to sleep. Unfortunately, nobody can stay awake forever, so his BFF falls asleep and never wakes up.
This whole drug thing is interesting because that is what the nature of some drugs are. Like, it creates this dream world which you end up inhabiting, and when you come out of it you want to go back. In fact, drugs can create this reality where you are unbeatable. Of course, the problem arises when the drug induced person is suddenly confronted with reality, and as such becomes incredibly violent when reality is no longer compatible with the drug induced dream world. There are two reasons why Nancy Reagan was right when she said that drugs were bad – the violence that comes about when reality and the dream world are not compatible, and the violence that comes about when the drug induced person is ripped out of the dream world, and will do anything to return to it.
This is an interesting idea that comes from a guy that never actually did drugs. Lovecraft’s perceptiveness of how destructive the dream world that drugs creates was remarkably insightful. Mind you, it is one of the main reasons why I feel that drug addiction should be treated as a health issue as opposed to a criminal issue.
6 June 2023 – Hastings
Well, since I was in Battle I thought that it might be an idea to come down to Hastings and have a beer at a few pubs. Well, the first pub was one of those scary old man pubs. In fact, all of the tables were set up so that you could sit with your back to the wall, which says a lot about the people who frequent it. Fortunately, just down the road was one of those awesome trendy pubs with grungy music posters and craft beer, so this is where I am now sitting writing this review.
All I can say is that Lovecraft doesn’t seem to like dreams. Yet the funny thing is that the dream world, and the real world can be really difficult to distinguish at times. In fact, there seems to be a number of layers to the story to the point that you wonder what is the dream and what is reality. I would say that I can say that I am generally able to tell the difference between dreams and reality, but the truth is, at least where I’m concerned, sometimes dreams can be quite real, and you only realise that you are in a dream when you wake up. On the other hand, I might be sitting in a beer garden in a pub in England, but once I return to Australia it will end up becoming a dream (especially with a 20 hour flight, excluding the layovers).
So, the narrator meets some dude at a railway station (in England of all places) and suddenly realises that this dude will be his BFF. They end up taking drugs and going into dreams to the point that they believe that they are able to conquer the dream world and become emperors. However, his BFF encounters something that decides that they can never go back into that world, so they start taking drugs to prevent them from going to sleep. Unfortunately, nobody can stay awake forever, so his BFF falls asleep and never wakes up.
This whole drug thing is interesting because that is what the nature of some drugs are. Like, it creates this dream world which you end up inhabiting, and when you come out of it you want to go back. In fact, drugs can create this reality where you are unbeatable. Of course, the problem arises when the drug induced person is suddenly confronted with reality, and as such becomes incredibly violent when reality is no longer compatible with the drug induced dream world. There are two reasons why Nancy Reagan was right when she said that drugs were bad – the violence that comes about when reality and the dream world are not compatible, and the violence that comes about when the drug induced person is ripped out of the dream world, and will do anything to return to it.
This is an interesting idea that comes from a guy that never actually did drugs. Lovecraft’s perceptiveness of how destructive the dream world that drugs creates was remarkably insightful. Mind you, it is one of the main reasons why I feel that drug addiction should be treated as a health issue as opposed to a criminal issue.
May 22, 2022
A relatable story for me as I also (occasionally) avoid sleeping to flee from the things I would see in my dreams.
January 16, 2021
A very freaky tale- Lovecraft has an amazing talent for scaring the crap out of me in like, 5 pages. His character work and descriptions are unmatched.
January 17, 2022
3.75 Stars
rounded up to 4 Stars.
December 18, 2017
You're walking in the rail station one day and encounter a man, unconscious on the ground, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. He opens his luminous black eyes and stares at you. You feel an instant kindred, an understanding that this man has seen unspeakable things which you have sought but never attained.
What do you do?
Well, if you're H.P.'s nameless narrator, you take your new best friend home and begin a two-year-long frenzy of drug and sleep experiments, ever searching for that pinnacle that you can never quite seem to reach. Your bestie, however, is almost always just there.
This is a nice piece in Lovecraft's dream sequence, but it's one of his themes that is not necessarily one of my favorites.
What do you do?
Well, if you're H.P.'s nameless narrator, you take your new best friend home and begin a two-year-long frenzy of drug and sleep experiments, ever searching for that pinnacle that you can never quite seem to reach. Your bestie, however, is almost always just there.
This is a nice piece in Lovecraft's dream sequence, but it's one of his themes that is not necessarily one of my favorites.
April 16, 2012
Lovecraft takes an everyday activity and injects it with a huge dose of fear and terror.
The characters and story are wonderfully painted and drawn. The tension builds slowly and inexorably.
The story is cleverly woven around the basic premise, and the source of madness is never clearly defined, leaving the reader with genuine tension and unease.
A nice twist at the end leaves you even more unsettled.
The characters and story are wonderfully painted and drawn. The tension builds slowly and inexorably.
The story is cleverly woven around the basic premise, and the source of madness is never clearly defined, leaving the reader with genuine tension and unease.
A nice twist at the end leaves you even more unsettled.
December 17, 2016
Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and fantasy oriented stuff has never been my favorite. That being said, the concept of taking drugs or practicing certain techniques to pierce through your dreams and access unknown states of consciousness is cool. Who knows what you'll find, and as these dudes discover, it ain't pretty. It's like Carlos Castaneda on a bad trip. Wasn't as keen on the sort of ambiguous ending though, but it worked.
June 7, 2016
This book is a great example of how Lovecraft was the master of horror from the far realms. He gets us so close yet safely away from the evil we know is there but we can not find. He reveals the tapestry that our paranoid minds explain is there, and our sain neighbor says, "No it is not there."
Lovecraft, with Hitchcock were masters in great use of tension and conflict that scares one silly.
Lovecraft, with Hitchcock were masters in great use of tension and conflict that scares one silly.
May 10, 2019
This is a typical H.P. Lovecraft tale which contains an insider knowledge which the narrator and therefore the reader have, but not the other characters, which is what leads to the drama of the story.
June 9, 2015
This story evokes a sensation of melancholy, rather than of horror.
July 9, 2017
Well.
That was pretty gay.
That was pretty gay.
August 25, 2024
man has really bad trip and proceed to yap about the horrors what’s new
October 5, 2020
breathtaking story!
April 6, 2016
The narrator, a sculptor, meets a mysterious man in a railway station. The moment the man opens his "immense, sunken and widely luminous eyes", the narrator knows that the stranger would become his friend, "the only friend of one who had never possessed a friend before". In the eyes of the stranger he sees the knowledge of the mysteries he always sought to learn. He will soon learn that those secrets are better to be left unknown.
This early story is quite dull, and the only interesting element is the strong chemistry between the narrator and his mysterious friend. It makes me wonder if there is more than just friendship at play here. Lovecraft was married (and his wife remarked in her diary that he was a good lover). While he did had gay friends, he was unaware of their sexual orientation, and he is infamous for his xenophobia and homophobia. Still, reading this story, I wonder if he was also attracted to men, and was unable to come to terms with the fact.
This early story is quite dull, and the only interesting element is the strong chemistry between the narrator and his mysterious friend. It makes me wonder if there is more than just friendship at play here. Lovecraft was married (and his wife remarked in her diary that he was a good lover). While he did had gay friends, he was unaware of their sexual orientation, and he is infamous for his xenophobia and homophobia. Still, reading this story, I wonder if he was also attracted to men, and was unable to come to terms with the fact.
December 10, 2017
За вже звичним для Лавкрафта сюжетом, двоє друзів шукають плрятунку від реального світу у снах. Для ширших відчуттів вони експериментують з наркотиками. Словами неможливо передати те, що вони переживають у своїх снах, тому що сни вимагають вже наступного рівня сприйняття. В одній зі своїх подорожей одного з друзів зупиняє перешкода, в той час як другий продовжує свій політ фантазій. Прокинувшись, він перестає бути на себе схожим: щось химерне він побачив там, куди перший не зміг потрапити. І відтоді вони змушені будь-яким чином уникати сну і того, що він ховає.
December 11, 2014
Short story hearkening back to a few other earlier stories by Lovecraft, with an interesting twist ending.
May 24, 2013
My favorite of his dream cycle. I can close my eyes and almost see it.
July 10, 2013
intricate but elegant descriptive story. compelling.
February 12, 2015
very interesting but leaved some questions o.o enjoyable
July 16, 2015
Viajes oníricos mediante drogas, y un horror te invita a enloquecer... Qué gran relato. <3
Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews