Miskatonic Arcihves

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

Tagged: Antiquarianism

Authors

M. R. James

Montague Rhodes James combined medieval scholarship with ghost stories in which documents, buildings and collected objects become routes to physical danger. Lovecraft treated him as a major modern master, especially for his arrangement of apparently ordinary incidents and his ability to make a small discovery reveal a persistent, malevolent past.

5 min read · 1,012 words

Literature

The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

A young Providence antiquarian reconstructs the history of an ancestor who learned to interrogate the dead. When Charles Dexter Ward succeeds in reviving Joseph Curwen, historical research becomes a struggle over identity, bodily survival and knowledge that its original possessors never agreed to surrender.

13 min read · 2,599 words