Poll: Do you actually find Lovecraftian horror scary?

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Most of his stories I've found to be more intriguing and tense rather than scary, but I'll admit, I did get a bit shudder-y when reading Call of Cthulhu alone at night. Despite some of his stories being downright lame (I never even bothered to finish Shadow out of time because it just seemed to explain everything) and sometimes flamingly racist, he was still very skilled at conveying atmosphere via text. Thing is, I don't think his works were supposed to be so much scary as they were meant to be disturbing: evoking the sense that we are merely observing the tip of the iceberg of the cosmos, and merely a peek under the surface would boil our brains. That trying to comprehend the incomprehensible is a futile effort. Sure his work has been memetized, illustrated and oversaturated to the point of losing all edge, but the original stories still stand true.

 

[GregerFisk]

Lovecraftian horror is not about giant monsters with lots of tentacles that make people arbitrarily insane when observed. Lovecraftian horror is about the idea that our fundamental knowledge about the universe is wrong, and that there is something much larger than what could possibly be understood by humans. The characters who become insane are the ones who discover this and try to wrap their heads around it.
The books were written during a time where science was going forward rapidly and people started realizing that the universe is really big and difficult to understand, and that there might just not exist a god.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I only read one of his novels, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which was excellent; and a few of his stories - some very good, others clearly derivative of Poe.

I don't find them scary so much as disturbing and intimidating.
As others have pointed out, his horror comes from the unknowable, the indescribable. There's a passage from that one novel that I always quote to illustrate the gist of his terror, in which he describes a certain sound:

It was a godless sound, one of those low-keyed, insidious outrages of Nature which are not meant to be. To call it a dull wail, a doom-dragged whine or a hopeless howl of chorused anguish and stricken flesh without mind would be to miss its quintessential loathsomeness and soul-sickening overtones.

People do wrong to equate Lovecraft with the "vaguely swamp-ish tentacle whatever" Bloodborne style of illustration. The whole point in HP's horror is that evil is ultimately indescribable, and to try to understand it is to go mad. Which is why this works so well in a literary medium, where it's all about retelling. In a visual medium you lose the essence as soon as you show something (and attach a name, a lifebar and an item drop to it).

 

[Schadrach]

I've read a few Lovecraft tales, but not his most famous ones. I didn't feel any fear actually reading them, but it's fair to say the ideas and implications are pretty disturbing sometimes, if you dwell on them.

That's largely the point, isn't it?

You say you haven't read the most famous ones, so I have to ask if you've read my personal favorite of his work, The Quest of Iranon ( http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/qi.aspx ). Depressing as fuck, but not until the very end.

Probably one of the better uses of the theme of choosing dreams over reality, even to death that permeates much of the dream cycle (especially explicit in Ex Oblivione and Celephais, written around the same time). You see it also in the poem Nathicana, though that was written several years after the others.

 

[kurokotetsu]

Ok so, I just don't get it. Granted, I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's work, but I've sure as hell become intimately familiar in it by pop culture osmosis. I know who Cthulhu is, and Haster, and Nyarlothotep, though I'm probably spelling that wrong. I know their general concept "Evil personified from beyond reality that is just so terrifyingly alien it drives you made to gaze upon them"....but they just don't. I don't find them at all scary. Maybe it's just over saturation, since everyone that tries to be a legit horror tries to go for something Lovecraftian. But I just find them to be tentacle monsters, and sorry but I've seen plenty of those. They don't trigger anything at all scary, and telling me that they are so scary as to drive me mad, doesn't actually make them scary.

So, do you actually find them freaky? Or the concept of them at least? If so, why?

You don't "have" to be scared of anything. But think this. You are completely unimportant. You are nothing. No matter what you do in life, how great and achivment, it is completely lost in the vastness of space. Whatever you do doens't even register in the Universe. You are nothing and never will be. And it is the same for every single humen ever. We don't even matter as a species. NO matter how great our merits are, artistic, tehcnological, religgious, wahtever, they will fade inot nothingsness and nothing will ever matter. Earth is so small that even the biggest thing you can imagine is not even close to compare to a miniscule portion that is and always will be Earth. Nothing at all matters...

You may not be scared of this nihilistic realization. It might not even faze you. But that is one of the lectures of the Lovecraftian mythos. Not that your death was an accident. Is that is doesn't matter in the slightest. Nobody, the whole humanity is nothing. THe AStronomical dread, could be called. And form our so anthropocentric world view, confronted to that reality lies madness and dispair (according to Lovecraft, other peopl such as Carl Sagan look at it with hope), and fear for many a man. That is one of the elements of real fear Lovecraft can inspire.

Aside form a tense reading, good way to create atmospehre and otehr literay talents, that worldview can be very frightening. If it isn't your cup of tea, or you simply don't care about absolute hopelesness, then it isn't scary at all. FOr many it might be the most teifying thing ever.

 

[Fox12]

Ok so, I just don't get it. Granted, I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's work, but I've sure as hell become intimately familiar in it by pop culture osmosis. I know who Cthulhu is, and Haster, and Nyarlothotep, though I'm probably spelling that wrong. I know their general concept "Evil personified from beyond reality that is just so terrifyingly alien it drives you made to gaze upon them"....but they just don't. I don't find them at all scary. Maybe it's just over saturation, since everyone that tries to be a legit horror tries to go for something Lovecraftian. But I just find them to be tentacle monsters, and sorry but I've seen plenty of those. They don't trigger anything at all scary, and telling me that they are so scary as to drive me mad, doesn't actually make them scary.

So, do you actually find them freaky? Or the concept of them at least? If so, why?

The monsters aren't scary. They're just a symbol of a nihilistic universe. The elder gods aren't really scary. Most of them don't even know we're here, and if they do, they don't care. The big ones could destroy the earth without ever knowing it was there. What's scary is the idea that humanity doesn't matter. Life is the rarest thing in the universe, and it could be wiped out by random chance. That's terrifying.

Lovecraft wasn't a very good writer, and his stories aren't that frightening on their own. What you have to realize is that his ideas were terrifying. Before he came around, horror was all about the gothic. It was typically about the devil, or demons, or selling your soul, or about monsters that represented our repressed instincts. Werewolves, vampires, ect. In other words, horror was still connected to religion, even if it was only loosely. And, in that context, you always knew there was a god that was stronger then whatever you faced. Lovecraft was one of the first writers to unshackle horror from its religious connotations, and bring horror away from the gothic tradition. In most horror, even if you lost, you still understood that there was a greater good that would ultimately win. In Cosmic Horror, you understand that even if you win, you're ultimately going to lose. There are cosmic powers that could destroy you completely by accident. It's scary in the way Silent Hill is scary. Many of the evils forces at work aren't actively vindictive against you. They're something much worse. Indifferent.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Maybe it's just over saturation

That's EXACTLY why they've lost a lot of their terror factor.

Cosmic horror is all about realizing that you're completely and utterly insignificant, and that the only reason you're not dead yet is because the actual powers that be haven't actually noticed you or stepped on your puny little reality yet.

Which, to me, is about the same level of scared I am of the Yellowstone super-volcano. It's this slow, creeping horror that you don't know if it's going to kill you or not. It's fear of the unknown coupled with the fact you can't do SHIT about stopping what's to come, because for all your individual willpower, you are truly powerless.

Having cthulu and friends show up consistently, and the protagonists get away scott free with minimal mental trauma, or the heroes WIN...It takes a lot of the terror out of it, since "they can now be FOUGHT".

Cosmic horror is only scary when you're screwed with your only chance (if it exists) being to dive into the fountains of madness to buy humanity a tiny little reprieve, that no one will know you've bought them, as humanity spirals into inevitable doom.

On a related note, I'm going to be part of a Modern Lovecraftian LARP pretty soon. And I know how devious and creative the DM is. She's going to make us freak the hell out. XD

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

I don't find them scary, more unsettling. Like the feeling you get when you walk into an empty dark room and you just know you're being watched.

 

[happyninja42]

The monsters aren't scary. They're just a symbol of a nihilistic universe. The elder gods aren't really scary. Most of them don't even know we're here, and if they do, they don't care. The big ones could destroy the earth without ever knowing it was there. What's scary is the idea that humanity doesn't matter. Life is the rarest thing in the universe, and it could be wiped out by random chance. That's terrifying.

See, I already understand that, and it doesn't terrify me. So if that's the crux of Lovecraftian horror, then I really just don't see the appeal of it. I'm not a nihilist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do understand the cosmic insignificance of our existence, which only makes it all the more precious to us living in it. I mean, I get what you are saying, I just don't find that as the baseline reason for something to be terrifying to be that effective.

Lovecraft wasn't a very good writer, and his stories aren't that frightening on their own. What you have to realize is that his ideas were terrifying. Before he came around, horror was all about the gothic. It was typically about the devil, or demons, or selling your soul, or about monsters that represented our repressed instincts. Werewolves, vampires, ect. In other words, horror was still connected to religion, even if it was only loosely. And, in that context, you always knew there was a god that was stronger then whatever you faced. Lovecraft was one of the first writers to unshackle horror from its religious connotations, and bring horror away from the gothic tradition. In most horror, even if you lost, you still understood that there was a greater good that would ultimately win. In Cosmic Horror, you understand that even if you win, you're ultimately going to lose. There are cosmic powers that could destroy you completely by accident. It's scary in the way Silent Hill is scary. Many of the evils forces at work aren't actively vindictive against you. They're something much worse. Indifferent.

I just don't find an indifferent apocalypser (I'm coining that word, deal with it xD) to be more scary. I mean, that's the same description of an asteroid. And I don't find asteroid's terrifying. Why? They're indifferent. It's just a thing.

*shrugs*

 

[Mangod]

Ok so, I just don't get it. Granted, I've never actually read any of Lovecraft's work, but I've sure as hell become intimately familiar in it by pop culture osmosis. I know who Cthulhu is, and Haster, and Nyarlothotep, though I'm probably spelling that wrong. I know their general concept "Evil personified from beyond reality that is just so terrifyingly alien it drives you made to gaze upon them"....but they just don't. I don't find them at all scary. Maybe it's just over saturation, since everyone that tries to be a legit horror tries to go for something Lovecraftian. But I just find them to be tentacle monsters, and sorry but I've seen plenty of those. They don't trigger anything at all scary, and telling me that they are so scary as to drive me mad, doesn't actually make them scary.

So, do you actually find them freaky? Or the concept of them at least? If so, why?

I think SuperBunnyHop put it best in his Bloodborne review: Lovecraftian horror is about how utterly insignificant both you, and the rest of humanity really are. Try and think about how big the universe is; that sickening feeling of vertigo you get from that? That's Lovecraft.

Cthulhu and the other Old Ones are likewise a horror trope based around "What if God was utterly indifferent to humanity?" Might sound silly to you and me, but when Lovecraft was writing, the idea that humanity wasn't the special snowflake of Gods creation was genuinely terrifying.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

People do wrong to equate Lovecraft with the "vaguely swamp-ish tentacle whatever" Bloodborne style of illustration. The whole point in HP's horror is that evil the unknown is ultimately indescribable, and to try to understand it is to go mad. Which is why this works so well in a literary medium, where it's all about retelling. In a visual medium you lose the essence as soon as you show something (and attach a name, a lifebar and an item drop to it).

Fixed that for you. To use moral labels like "good" or "evil" when discussing Lovecraft's work is to miss the point entirely. Basically his entire works were about going beyond the limits and comprehension of humanity, and therefore abandoning concepts like morality, death, time and physical reality. That is what's indescribable, since it is beyond human understanding.

I think SuperBunnyHop put it best in his Bloodborne review: Lovecraftian horror is about how utterly insignificant both you, and the rest of humanity really are. Try and think about how big the universe is; that sickening feeling of vertigo you get from that? That's Lovecraft.

Cthulhu and the other Old Ones are likewise a horror trope based around "What if God was utterly indifferent to humanity?" Might sound silly to you and me, but when Lovecraft was writing, the idea that humanity wasn't the special snowflake of Gods creation was genuinely terrifying.

I don't know how to put this into words very well, but emphasizing the "God doesn't care about you" angle on Lovecraft kinda sells it short IMO. Makes it sound like something a 14-year old edgelord might have written. I know that's basically its essence, but I think it can also be flipped around: the horror doesn't come from the smallness of man, but the bigness of the rest of the universe. Going into really metaphysical thoughts here, but IMO when you emphasize man's smallness, it can still somewhat be comprehended: you can just go "Eh, nothing matters. What's for lunch?" But to think that we're sitting on the peak of an iceberg that goes on for unknowable distances beneath the surface, that's what I find intriguing. The idea that something can be so vast in scale that no human mind could hope to understand it. Doesn't sound very scary, but IMO that's what Lovecraft's (most known) works were about: the incomprehensible. Here's a very good video to illustrate the kind of scale I'm talking about:

 

[FPLOON]

Nope... But that Lovecraftian anime was fucking amazing!

Other than that, it has made me realize that I rather read about other people's psychological horrors... metaphorically speaking...

 

[Albino Boo]

When Lovecraft became popular in the 60s it was considered to be shocking are daring by the baby boomers to be atheist and signal your virtue by reading Lovecraft. In today's world Cthulhu doesn't quite have that impact and what impact it does have is somewhat lessened by Lovecraft's bloody awful writing.

 

[Fox12]

The monsters aren't scary. They're just a symbol of a nihilistic universe. The elder gods aren't really scary. Most of them don't even know we're here, and if they do, they don't care. The big ones could destroy the earth without ever knowing it was there. What's scary is the idea that humanity doesn't matter. Life is the rarest thing in the universe, and it could be wiped out by random chance. That's terrifying.

See, I already understand that, and it doesn't terrify me. So if that's the crux of Lovecraftian horror, then I really just don't see the appeal of it. I'm not a nihilist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do understand the cosmic insignificance of our existence, which only makes it all the more precious to us living in it. I mean, I get what you are saying, I just don't find that as the baseline reason for something to be terrifying to be that effective.

Lovecraft wasn't a very good writer, and his stories aren't that frightening on their own. What you have to realize is that his ideas were terrifying. Before he came around, horror was all about the gothic. It was typically about the devil, or demons, or selling your soul, or about monsters that represented our repressed instincts. Werewolves, vampires, ect. In other words, horror was still connected to religion, even if it was only loosely. And, in that context, you always knew there was a god that was stronger then whatever you faced. Lovecraft was one of the first writers to unshackle horror from its religious connotations, and bring horror away from the gothic tradition. In most horror, even if you lost, you still understood that there was a greater good that would ultimately win. In Cosmic Horror, you understand that even if you win, you're ultimately going to lose. There are cosmic powers that could destroy you completely by accident. It's scary in the way Silent Hill is scary. Many of the evils forces at work aren't actively vindictive against you. They're something much worse. Indifferent.

I just don't find an indifferent apocalypser (I'm coining that word, deal with it xD) to be more scary. I mean, that's the same description of an asteroid. And I don't find asteroid's terrifying. Why? They're indifferent. It's just a thing.

*shrugs*

Which is a very modern way of looking at it.

Lovecraft could look at an indifferent universe and see the horror of human insignificance. Neil Degrasse Tyson and Carl Sagan could look at that same universe with childlike wonder, and imagine what wonderful things are awaiting human discovery. One person can look at the universe with terror, and another can look at it with optimism. It's all about perspective. In many ways Lovecraft was a perfect picture of middle class white male insecurity. He was terrified of advancing scientific knowledge. He was terrified of colored people. He was terrified of insanity, since his own parents went insane. He witnessed mental degradation first hand. He was deeply insecure about himself as an artist, and a lover, and a husband. All of that comes through in his writing. In that sense, even if you don't care for his writing (which I largely don't) he's still quite interesting in terms of capturing the time period he lived in.

Whether or not you personally find his work frightening will probably depend on your own outlook. In your case, it probably says that you're somewhat of an optimist : )

Edit: for me, the scariest thing about Lovecraft is how awful his prose are. Still, I think he made some interesting observations, and he's worth reading and understanding.

 

[the December King]

Lovecraft simply isn't effective in my mind, he never really was, mostly because his horror relied on fearing other people just because they look different, or fearing the unknown without reason, or fearing the inevitable. So no I don't find Lovecraftian horror scary, nor do I find it horrifying. I find it close minded, short sighted, and disgusting in it's prejudices.

Although some of his stories are about otherness and the fear therein, and do seem to stem from racism, that is not a good summation of all of his work. Many of his stories deal with horrifying unknowns, but also terrors less cosmic. In fact, some of the scenarios you described as scary to you are skeletons of great Lovecraftian stories.

I mean, hate Lovecraft's work for his prejudices, sure. But his work did have a huge impact on modern horror.

 

[The Madman]

You're kinda missing the point about Lovecraft if you think it's all tentacle monsters and death cults. Lovecraftian horror is by definition a branch of the 'existential horror' genre, it's not about jump scares or spooky monsters or evil villains, it's about humanities place in the vast seemingly infinite cosmos and our complete and utter insignificance in the face of that. Add in a slap dash of racism, isolation, poverty, and Lovecrafts own particular brand of horrific dreamscapes and writing which were pretty obviously the results of a somewhat disturbed mind, and you've got Lovecraftian horror.

In any case Lovecraft is pretty unique in the writing landscape which is what makes him stand out. He wasn't a very skilled author, his writing style was strange to say the least and he had a habit of using a lot of ye-olden style terms and words which were outdated even during his time. He also lived and died largely an obscure figure and in poverty with his fame only arising much later after he'd already died (Painfully and slowly, sadly.) by the small subset of fans he'd fostered during his relatively brief life.

His life is nearly as fascinating as the stories he wrote and the ideas he popularized.

And finally do I find his short stories and books particularly frightening in any immediate sense? No. But they do have a peculiar 'festering' quality to them where the ideas they've got tend to stick in your head, and if you let them tend to spawn more horrific thoughts and concepts. There's also genuinely nothing else quite like his work which is part of what drives his posthumous fame, with authors like Stephen King and Neil Gaiman openly admitting his works had a big influence on them.

John Carpenter. H.R. Giger. Guillermo Del Toro. Even if you aren't frightened by his work in particular it's also almost inevitable that someone who was inspired by Lovecraft and who used some of his ideas and concepts in their work has.

So yeah, I'd say his work was pretty scary, just in a strange sort of way you don't usually get in horror.

 

[JimB]

I don't find them at all scary.

Nah. I'm too distracted screaming at my book, "No human being at any point in history ever fucking talked like that! God!"

I think you have to be of a certain mindset to find his work scary. The idea that the universe does not love me and that there is no justice, nor a final resting place for my soul, is one so old I can't make myself feel horrified by it. It rates a "Yep, sounds 'bout right to me" on the fucksgivenometer.

 

[IOwnTheSpire]

You don't "have" to be scared of anything. But think this. You are completely unimportant. You are nothing. No matter what you do in life, how great and achivment, it is completely lost in the vastness of space. Whatever you do doens't even register in the Universe. You are nothing and never will be. And it is the same for every single humen ever. We don't even matter as a species. NO matter how great our merits are, artistic, tehcnological, religgious, wahtever, they will fade inot nothingsness and nothing will ever matter. Earth is so small that even the biggest thing you can imagine is not even close to compare to a miniscule portion that is and always will be Earth. Nothing at all matters...

You may not be scared of this nihilistic realization. It might not even faze you. But that is one of the lectures of the Lovecraftian mythos. Not that your death was an accident. Is that is doesn't matter in the slightest. Nobody, the whole humanity is nothing. THe AStronomical dread, could be called. And form our so anthropocentric world view, confronted to that reality lies madness and dispair (according to Lovecraft, other peopl such as Carl Sagan look at it with hope), and fear for many a man. That is one of the elements of real fear Lovecraft can inspire.

Aside form a tense reading, good way to create atmospehre and otehr literay talents, that worldview can be very frightening. If it isn't your cup of tea, or you simply don't care about absolute hopelesness, then it isn't scary at all. FOr many it might be the most teifying thing ever.

Very good summation of what Lovecraft's works are about, and I don't think it's the kind of literature anyone can just pick up and get into; after all, not everyone shares the same worldview/philosophy as Lovecraft (such as myself) and it's a worthy topic for discussion.