Favorite non-Lovecraft Mythos story

I have two that stick in my head.

Dagon's Bell, by Brian Lumley, which appears in the anthology Beneath the Moors and Darker Places. A good Deeps Ones story that expands on The Shadow over Innsmouth without stepping on it.

Richard Riddle, Boy Detective in the Case of the French Spy by Kim Newman, which appears in the pulp anthology Adventure published by Monkeybrain books, which I will not spoiler by revealing its humorous Mythos connection.

Dagon's Bell also appears in Lumley's collection Dagon's Bell, And Other Discords.

It is very difficult for me to pick out a favourite (I really like the mythos stuff that Ramsey Campbell did as well).

So I am going to pick something completely a little out of the ordinary and go for Neil Gaiman's Shoggoth's Old Peculiar which has been published as a chapbook and as one of the stories in Smoke And Mirrors. A story that is a combination of a Pete & Dud sketch and Cthulhu Mythos - what more can you want.

There's a hilarious Lovecraft pastiche in Cthulhu 2000 called "Love's Eldritch Ichor", which is, quite honestly, one of my favorites anywhere.
The first story in that collection, about De Vermis Mysteriis, is also a favorite in the more-scary less-funny category. I believe it's just called "The Worm" or something.

I liked Gaiman's story too. And I really loved this one:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/chulthhustory

Neil Gaiman wrote an incredible story called "A Study in Emerald" which appeared in the pastiche Sherlock Holmes meets Cthulhu anthology Shadows Over Baker Street. Really, that whole book is full of Lovecraftian gems.

Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives. Really tickles my high-tech fancy as well as getting into serious horror.

Resume with Monsters by William Browning Spencer is my favorite.

"The Things That Are Not There" by CJ Henderson is a great one at novel length, and the same author's 'Juggernaut' is a great short story about the Hounds of Tindalos and how you kill them (hint: heavy artillery might work on just one of them, but for a bunch you need a somewhat...bigger...weapon).

I thought 'A Study in Emerald' was brilliant as well.

I have several, "A Colder War" and The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross, "Than Curse the Darkness" by David Drake, "Black Man with a Horn" by TED Klien, "The Tugging" by Ramsey Campbell, "The Star Pools" by AA Attanasio, "The Turret" by Richard A Lupoff, "Long Meg and Her Daughters" by Paul Finch, "The Barrens" by F. Paul Wilson, and "Suicide Watch" by Arinn Dembo.

Well, that is a rather long list.
David

I very much enjoyed the stories in Noctuary by Thomas Ligotti

The one I liked best, was "Shoggoth's old Peculiar" by Neil Gaiman, printed as part of Smoke and Mirrors. It's not all that mystic and horrible, but very elegant.

The Delta Green books are also rather good; i especially liked The rules of engagement.

Crouch End, by Stephen King. What could be better than combining Lovecraft and King??

"A Colder War" by Charles Stross is one of my favorites. After all, how many Cthulhu Mythos stories feature Ollie North and Fawn Hall? Plus it's just a darn good story with an interesting take on the mythos.

Strangely, I never seem to pick up the Lovecraft "feel" from the author's own works. I often struggle through them wondering where that unique atmosphere that people rave to me about is hiding (I have quite a few friends who are devotees). Yet, when I read some pastiche of the Cthulhu mythos I think "Aha! This is what they're talking about."

Specifically, a few works come to mind and yet they're not books at all, but text adventure games. I believe that the authors of each freely admit their intention on capturing a Lovecraftian feel: "The Lurking Horror" by Dave Lebling, "Anchorhead" by Michael C. Gentry, "Theatre" by Brendon Wyber and "Slouching Toward Bedlam" by Star C. Foster and Daniel Raupinto. Perhaps the experience of interacting with the story somehow clicked with me- since I myself was experiencing the feelings that Lovecraft described in his ill-fated characters.

@ twacorbies

When you said _The Lurking Horror_, did you mean the Infocom game?

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem was a good one on the GameCube. No explicit Lovecraft references, but they captured the feel nicely.

Karl Edward Wagner's short story "Sticks." Ostensibly a pastiche or tribute, it transcends both adjectives and stands on it's own.

I'm a big fan of the Spencer and the Klein mentioned, but for a personal favorite I'd go with Ligotti's "The Sect of the Idiot".

I quite like In the Light of the Lamp by Steven Paulsen.

Strange Eons by Robert Bloch - definitely a homage to his former master. Three shorter pieces that basically thread together and work under the basic assumption that Lovecraft wrote fiction, masking his warning of the mythos deities as horror stories because no one would believe him if he wrote these truths as non-fiction.

I read anything and everything I can get my hands on that is Cthulhu Mythos related and have many favorites, but if I had to choose, I'd say Autobiography of a Necromancer by Charles Clemons. It was cool, horrorific, true to the Mythos and a slight bit funny in parts. It's a short story from a book named Funky Shrooms and Other Exquisite Delights. I got my copy at www.portalpressbooks.com. Although it is an excellent selection of work, I've still not read anything that surpasses the Cthulhu master H.P. Lovecraft

I'm with >12 Withywindle_Books:: "Crouch End" by Stephen King.

#15- Geez drwho, I guess I should have kept an eye on this thread. If you ever pop back in here, yes I did indeed mean the Infocom games. Better late than never?

Sticks by Karl Edward Wagner. One may find it in The dark descent edited by David G. Hartwell. I also really liked Poppy Z. Brite's Are you loathsome tonight? in Cthulhu 2000.

Hallucigenia by Laird Barron

"The Seven Geases" by Clark Ashton Smith. I love its cynical and sardonic humor take on the mythos, and the completely absurdist (but to me, hilarious) conclusion.

I just read 'A Study in Emerald' from the anthology Shadows over Baker Street, a story by Neil Gaiman. The story won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Novelette.

I just read 'A Study in Emerald' from the anthology Shadows over Baker Street, a story by Neil Gaiman. The story won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and the 2005 Locus Award for Best Novelette.

One of my favorites is a good one for Holy Week: "Acute Spiritual Fear" by Robert M. Price. It's in The Disciples of Cthulhu II.

David Conway's "Black Static" is another that really stayed with me. The collection that I read it in, The Starry Wisdom, is really outstanding all the way through.

#25 - It is one of my favorite games of all time - the first Infocom game I ever beat, in fact.

Hi All, I've just joined your site - cooooooooool!

#27. I agree. A brilliant story from a highly unusual collection!
#2. Shoggoth's Old Peculiar - one of my favourites. Still can't seem to find the beer, though!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jihad Over Innsmouth, by Edward Morris

Online here :-

http://www.owlsoup.com/3LBE/issue16/3lbe16_story3.html

Note also the Innsmouth Free Press at http://www.innsmouthfreepress.com/

My favorite is easily "Nethescurial" from Thomas Ligotti's Grimscribe. I like how subtle and yet powerfully Ligotti works in the Lovecraft elements. I also like how it deconstructs a horror story, only to have the horror story then rebuild itself Cthulhu-like by the end.

There's a short story called Shattered Like a Glass Goblin by Harlan Ellison. It was written in the late 1960's. It's not exactly Cthulhu Mythos but it has that feel to it that you get with a Ramsey Campbell story.
I think it would be an interesting scenario seed for a Call of Cthulhu game, set in the 1960's onwards.

I think that W.H. Pugmire writes some superb and unique Mythos fiction.

I concur gryeates; W.H. Pugmire is wonderful, if a bit of an acquired taste. I recommend The fungal Stain as a good starting place.

"The White People" by Arthur Machen, if that counts. Otherwise, I'll second the vote for Thomas Ligotti's "Nethescurial".

Thank you for the mention of my book, THE FUNGAL STAIN. That is an excellent starting point for my own Mythos fiction cos it ain't too bleedin' weird. Personally, I prefer the kind of Lovecraftian delirium that I try'd to conjure in SOME UNKNOWN GULF OF NIGHT. For me, the greatest anthology of Mythos fiction remains Derleth's original edition of TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, a classic book. Jim Turner re-edited it, taking out some stories and putting in others, the best of which is Karl Wagner's masterpiece, "Sticks." Among my top ten faves are Robert Bloch's "The Shadow from the Steeple," Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stone," and T. E. D. Klein's "Black Man with a Horn."

Thanks for the thread resurrection, W.H.!

The stories you list at the end have all be treated in our Deep Ones discussions here, and I'd rate most of them better than my earlier picks in #29. I'll also join with the common admiration for Thomas Ligotti, now that I've read some of his stories.

Perhaps the first Mythos tale not by Lovecraft, and also ye first to "feature" HPL as a character, in Frank Long's "The Space-Eaters." *spoilers alert* My buddy Joshi hates this story, primarily, I think, because of the use of the Christian cross as protection from an Elder Horror; which one thinks is totally non-Lovecraftian until one remembers that LOVECRAFT HIMSELF used this in "The Dreams in the Witch House." Long began his story with this quotation from the John Dee version of the Necronomicon: "The cross is not a passive agent. It protects the pure of heart, and it has often appeared in the air above our sabbats, confusing and dispersing the powers of Darkness." Amusingly, when August Derleth reprinted "The Space-Eaters" in TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, he left out this introductory quote from Dee; it was added by Jim Turner in the re-edited 1990 edition of the book. The two main characters in the story are named Frank (the narrator) and Howard (the elder writer of weird fiction). For me, one of the really charming and fascinating aspects of the tale is the conversation between these two characters; for the story was written at the height of Long's friendship with HPL, and they had indeed spent much time together, so that one feels that Long has captured, intimately, what it was like to hang with Grandpa and listen to his talk about writing.

However, the story also has one of my favorite scenes of horror in any Mythos tales: for the two writers are discussing how difficult it is to create an atmosphere of authentic horror that will chill ye reader's blood; & then a simple farmer relates the thing that happened to him, and describes a scene of MAGNIFICENT and keenly effective horror:

"I was driving between the trees, keeping a sharp lookout for cars with their lights on too bright, coming right at me out of the murk, and listening to the foghorns in the bay wheezing and moaning, when something wet landed on my head."

He describes how the thing felt, and then tells of the sponge-like think that hurls itself to his face. The world takes on a strange aspect. ""Funny how you can see in fogs--they seem to make night lighter. There was a sort of brightness in the air. . . . I looked at the thing, and what do you think it looked like? Like a piece of raw liver. Or a calf's brain. . . . There were grooves in it . . ."

Long stirs up a sense of queer unease, of an encounter with the uncanny, simply yet superbly. Everything adds to the effect: the dismal moaning of ye foghorns, the weird mist and its brightness, the utter oddness of this wet spongy thing that fell from above, onto his head. The description gets weirder and weirder, and then this simple farmer shews the gents the wound on his head.

"It's like a bullet-wound," he elaborated, "but there was no blood and you can see pretty far. It seems to go right in the center of my head. I shouldn't be alive."

The story grows more and more outre. Yet it is all told is such a simple, straightforward manner. Part of the story's effect for me is personal; because from reading Lovecraft's letters I came to feel like he was someone I myself had met and liked enormously; his humor, his love of Literature, his determination to write good horror fiction--I found it all so admirable; and he lives in Long's portrayal of him in this story; so that when this good fellow expires at the story's end, it really hit me emotionally. And yet that death is told in one simply phrase:

"But my friend was dead."

Entirely effective, authentically Lovecraftian, a splendid tale all told.