Miskatonic Arcihves

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

Tagged: Dimensions

Literature

From Beyond

From Beyond follows a visit to Crawford Tillinghast’s attic laboratory, where an electrical apparatus reveals forms of life normally excluded from human perception. Written on 16 November 1920 and first published in June 1934, the story makes expanded awareness dangerous because the newly visible world can also become aware of the observer.

6 min read · 1,137 words

Books & artifacts

The Silver Key

The silver key is Carter’s inherited means of passing beyond the limits of his present life. The Silver Key introduces it as an object associated with ancestry and the recovery of childhood dream. Through the Gates of the Silver Key gives its operation and limitations a more elaborate account, in which the accompanying parchment proves as important as the key itself.

6 min read · 1,054 words

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

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