Miskatonic Arcihves

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An encyclopedia of strange fiction, its creators, places and mythos. Follow the sources; draw your own conclusions.

Tagged: 1930s

Literature

The Trap

The Trap turns an antique mirror into a prison whose inhabitants retain their bodies and consciousness while ordinary aging is suspended. When fifteen-year-old Robert Grandison disappears from a Connecticut school, his tutor Canevin learns to communicate with him in dreams and attempts a physical intervention from outside. The collaboration with Henry S. Whitehead combines an occult artifact, a carefully elaborated imaginary geometry and a rescue that leaves permanent bodily evidence.

11 min read · 2,242 words

Literature

The Tree on the Hill

The Tree on the Hill concerns a solitary excursion whose photographs reveal a landscape different from the one consciously perceived. In this collaboration with Duane W. Rimel, a scholar uses an ancient crystal to expose the presence disguised as an inviting tree. The story links dreams, optical evidence and deceptive scale without assigning its unnamed antagonist to a familiar Mythos species.

8 min read · 1,479 words

Literature

The Whisperer in Darkness

A folklorist’s correspondence with an isolated Vermont resident becomes an invitation to abandon the human body and travel among the stars. The Whisperer in Darkness builds its mystery through letters, photographs and recorded voices, then makes the apparent reliability of every medium part of the trap.

12 min read · 2,449 words

Literature

Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Through the Gates of the Silver Key continues Carter’s disappearance into a journey beyond ordinary space, time and individual identity. Written by Lovecraft with E. Hoffmann Price, it frames the account as testimony at a meeting about Carter’s estate. The apparent freedom to inhabit other forms becomes a struggle to recover the human body and legal identity the traveler once took for granted.

9 min read · 1,780 words

Games, comics & audio

Trail of Cthulhu

Trail of Cthulhu is Pelgrane Press’s investigative horror roleplaying game, first published in 2008. Kenneth Hite’s treatment of the Mythos uses Robin D. Laws’s GUMSHOE system and a principal 1930s setting. Its central design concern is allowing an investigation to advance through essential evidence while leaving interpretation, danger and consequential decisions to the players.

5 min read · 988 words

Literature

Winged Death

Winged Death follows a physician who uses his professional knowledge to murder a former friend, then finds himself pursued by an insect apparently carrying the victim’s consciousness. A journal records both the crime and the collapse of the killer’s confidence. The framing investigation in a South African hotel supplies evidence outside his own testimony, turning a story of calculated revenge into one of bodily and mental entrapment.

11 min read · 2,124 words