by Chris Friend
As a follow up to my article on the Cherokee monsters I decided to do one on H.P. Lovecraft which was part of the article on the Native American goblins. My research suggested that many of Lovecraft’s ideas came from local folklore from both native folklore as well as the puritan fears of darker spirits Howard Philip Lovecraft was born on August 20th, 1890, on Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island. He was the only child of Winfield Scott Lovecraft and Sarah Susan Phillips Lovecraft. The Lovecraft’s had a long pedigree that went back generations. Young Howard was a sickly child prone to a variety of sicknesses. When young Howard was only eight years old his father died tragically in a sanatorium of what was paresis. This left young Howard in the care of a high-strung mother and two aunts. It is suggested that Lovecraft’s family was the product of much in-breeding with cousins marrying first cousins. Lovecraft frequently discussed families of degenerate individuals with dark hidden secrets. Sometimes his horror stories were from the viewpoint of a mad narrator or someone with madness in their family.
Such in-breeding might result in the birth of monsters and shapeshifters. As Howard got older his grandmother died and with this the rest of his family began to decline. The family fortune also began to decline with some of the fortune being leeched away in unprofitable business deals. As with many of these story’s money was also stolen by unscrupulous business associates. This led the young Lovecraft to abandon his home of Providence. With so many trials and tribulations the young Lovecraft turned to books mostly about lost and mythical civilizations such as Atlantis and Lemuria. Such stories led to young Howard to begin the creation of his tales of mythical worlds. He soon found distraction in writing his science fiction horror stories. In his loneliness he also began writing long letters to notables as Robert E. Howard the creator of “Conan-the-Barbarian”. With these exchanged he found a venue in such pulp horror magazines such Weird Tales and Amazing Stories. After finding little work in New York, he eventually moved back to Providence, Rhode Island. With his newfound fame he became known as the master of horror, a term that he did not relish. The reclusive Lovecraft still communicated by letter giving him an air of mystery. It should be noted that Lovecraft was an awful bigot often being prejudice against African- Americans and other minorities. Some scholars suggest that his aliens might have been inspired by his prejudice against “foreigners” which was common at this time. So, when reading Lovecraft, one must be prepared for some ugly and inflammatory language. Again, these tales were all written back in the turn of the century and very pre-political correctness. For many people this cause Lovecraft to be hard to read and tolerate in our far more enlightened times. As mentioned above Lovecraft was a sickly man and he fought illness much of his live. On March 10th, 1937, he entered the John Brown Memorial Hospital when his health turned bad. At first it was believed to be his gall bladder. He had resisted going into the hospital due to his mother’s death from gall bladder disease. He entered the hospital too late and died of his sickness. He left a plethora of great horror stories for future generations.