Miskatonic Arcihves

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

Tagged: Transformation

Themes & context

Ancestry and transformation

Ancestry and transformation repeatedly turn Lovecraftian investigation back upon the investigator. A family record, portrait, inherited object or bodily change can reveal that the apparent outsider belongs to the history being uncovered. The stories use this reversal in different ways: as horror of descent, recognition of another identity, repetition of violence or a problem of distinguishing inheritance from possession.

6 min read · 1,064 words

Entities & creatures

Deep Ones

The Deep Ones are the sea-dwelling people whose bargains, descendants and underwater civilization lie behind the history of Innsmouth. Their first sustained narrative combines a threatened traveler’s escape with the discovery that the supposedly alien population belongs to his own ancestry.

10 min read · 1,931 words

Entities & creatures

Ghouls

Lovecraft’s ghouls are corpse-eating, dog-featured beings associated with graveyards, tunnels and the boundary between human and nonhuman life. Pickman’s Model presents them as a terrifying reality behind an artist’s work, while The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath develops their language, friendships, political cooperation and capacity to assist a human traveler.

7 min read · 1,413 words

Characters

Richard Upton Pickman

Richard Upton Pickman is a Boston painter whose portraits of ghouls prove to have living models. Pickman’s Model recounts his disappearance through the testimony of an admirer; The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath finds him in ghoul form, still able to remember a human friendship and organize assistance for Randolph Carter.

6 min read · 1,077 words

Literature

The Evil Clergyman

The Evil Clergyman follows a visitor whose experiment with a small object in an attic makes a disturbing clerical episode visible and leaves him with another man’s appearance. The narrator’s mind survives the encounter, making the conclusion a transformation of outward identity rather than a demonstrated replacement of consciousness.

4 min read · 787 words

Characters

The Innsmouth narrator

The unnamed narrator of The Shadow over Innsmouth begins as a student touring New England for architecture, history and family research. After escaping the town and prompting federal action, he discovers that the ancestry and transformation he feared belong to his own future.

5 min read · 1,034 words

Literature

The Moon-Bog

The Moon-Bog concerns Denys Barry’s plan to drain a marsh beside his restored ancestral castle at Kilderry, Ireland. Local people leave rather than assist, while replacement workers begin experiencing unexplained exhaustion and dreams. An American visitor witnesses nocturnal processions and an apparent revival of the bog’s older sacred history before Barry and his household disappear.

5 min read · 979 words

Literature

The Shadow over Innsmouth

A young traveler enters a decaying Massachusetts port to study its buildings and local history, escapes a nocturnal pursuit, and then discovers that the town’s hidden ancestry is also his own. The Shadow over Innsmouth combines a detailed urban adventure with an ending that transforms the meaning of escape, family and belonging.

14 min read · 2,774 words

Places

Y’ha-nthlei

Y’ha-nthlei is the Deep Ones’ city beneath the sea near Devil Reef in The Shadow over Innsmouth. It becomes the intended destination of the narrator and his cousin after the narrator’s dreams and bodily transformation change his understanding of the marine world.

3 min read · 610 words

Entities & creatures

Yig

Yig is the serpent deity whose feared vengeance shapes The Curse of Yig, a story developed by H. P. Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop. Described in the fictional tradition as a partly human father of snakes, he protects his children and punishes those who injure them. The story makes his apparent intervention inseparable from human fear, misinterpretation and a final discovery that unsettles the physician’s attempted natural explanation.

6 min read · 1,260 words