Miskatonic Arcihves

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

Tagged: Music

Entities & creatures

Azathoth

Azathoth is the mindless central power associated with ultimate Chaos, strange music and the Other Gods. Lovecraft uses the figure in dream narrative, poetry, witchcraft lore and the final fears of Robert Blake, while leaving much of its nature deliberately unresolved.

6 min read · 1,233 words

Literature

In the Court of the Dragon

In the Court of the Dragon follows an exhausted reader of The King in Yellow who seeks peace in a Parisian church. A hostile organist appears to pursue him across the city and into his own courtyard. When the apparent pursuit ends, the narrator discovers that the distinction between physical safety and spiritual peril offers no dependable refuge.

6 min read · 1,136 words

Places

Rue d’Auseil

The Rue d’Auseil is the steep, untraceable street where the narrator of The Music of Erich Zann once rented a room. Its crowded architecture culminates in a high wall and a single attic window that appears to open beyond ordinary urban space.

4 min read · 654 words

Literature

The Ballad of Black Tom

The Ballad of Black Tom revisits The Horror at Red Hook through Charles Thomas Tester, a Black New Yorker whose encounter with occult power follows more familiar experiences of exclusion, exploitation and violence. Victor LaValle retains a supernatural catastrophe while changing whose life gives that catastrophe meaning.

4 min read · 747 words

Literature

The Music of Erich Zann

The Music of Erich Zann concerns an impoverished student who hears extraordinary playing from an old musician’s attic and discovers that the room’s window opens onto something beyond the expected city. Written in December 1921 and first published in March 1922, the tale makes music an apparent act of resistance while withholding the explanation its frightened performer tries to write.

6 min read · 1,249 words