ANCIENT ONE

ANCIENT ONE

"When I unfastened the blackened silver clasp and opened the yellowed leaves a coloured drawing fluttered out—the likeness of a monstrous creature resembling nothing so much as a squid, beaked and tentacled, with great yellow eyes, and with certain abominable approximations to the human form in its contours.
I had never before seen so utterly loathsome and nightmarish a form. On the paws, feet, and head-tentacles were curious claws—reminding me of the colossal shadow-shapes which have groped so horribly in my path—while the entity as a whole sat upon a great throne-like pedestal inscribed with unknown hieroglyphs of vaguely Chinese cast. "

"Several times it resisted every effort to open it, and when at last it gave way I had a distinct feeling that some colossal, unseen shape had suddenly released it—a shape that soared away on non-material but audibly beating wings."
H.P. Lovecraft & William Lumley, The Diary Of Alonzo Typer

CAVE BEAST

CAVE BEAST

"Its hair was snow-white, a thing due no doubt to the bleaching action of a long existence within the inky confines of the cave, but it was also surprisingly thin, being indeed largely absent save on the head, where it was of such length and abundance that it fell over the shoulders in considerable profusion."

"From the tips of the fingers or toes long nail-like claws extended. The hands or feet were not prehensile, a fact that I ascribed to that long residence in the cave which, as I before mentioned, seemed evident from the all-pervading and almost unearthly whiteness so characteristic of the whole anatomy. No tail seemed to be present."

"They were black, those eyes, deep, jetty black, in hideous contrast to the snow-white hair and flesh. Like those of other cave denizens, they were deeply sunken in their orbits, and were entirely destitute of iris. As I looked more closely, I saw that they were set in a face less prognathous than that of the average ape, and infinitely more hairy. The nose was quite distinct."

"The creature I had killed, the strange beast of the unfathomed cave was, or had at one time been, a MAN!!!"
H.P. Lovecraft, The Beast In the Cave

DHOLE/DOEL/BHOLE

DHOLE/DOEL/BHOLE

"Below him the ground was festering with gigantic Dholes, and even as he looked, one reared up several hundred feet and leveled a bleached, viscous end at him."

H. P. Lovecraft & E. Hoffmann Price, Through the Gates of the Silver Key

"Now Carter knew from a certain source that he was in the vale of Pnath, where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes; but he did not know what to expect, because no one has ever seen a bhole, or even guessed what such a thing may be like. Bholes are known only by dim rumour from the rustling they make amongst mountains of bones and the slimy touch they have when they wriggle past one. They cannot be seen because they creep only in the dark."
H. P. Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

MARTENSE

MARTENSE
"When they had thinned out enough to be glimpsed as separate organisms, I saw that they were dwarfed, deformed hairy devils or apes-monstrous and diabolic caricatures of the monkey tribe."

"The object was nauseous; a filthy whitish gorilla thing with sharp yellow fangs and matted fur. It was the ultimate product of mammalian degeneration; the frightful outcome of isolated spawning, multiplication, and cannibal nutrition above and below the ground; the embodiment of all the snarling and chaos and grinning fear that lurk behind life. It had looked at me as it died, and its eyes had the same odd quality that marked those other eyes which had stared at me underground and excited cloudy recollections. One eye was blue, the other brown."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Lurking Fear

DEMON-POSSESSED CORPSE

DEMON-POSSESSED CORPSE
"196-Daemons, when desiring an human form for evil purposes, take to themselves the bodies of hanged men."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

THE DRAGGING DEAD

THE DRAGGING DEAD

The dark walls closed me in, and loud I cursed
That ever I had come to such a den,
When suddenly a score of windows burst
Into wild light, and swarmed with dancing men:
Mad, soundless revels of the dragging dead—
And not a corpse had either hands or head!
H.P. Lovecraft, The Fungi From Yuggoth

YAKUBIAN

YAKUBIAN

"It was a gigantic, pale-grey worm or centipede, as large around as a man and twice as long, with a disc-like, apparently eyeless, cilia-fringed head bearing a purple central orifice. It glided on its rear pairs of legs, with its fore part raised vertically—the legs, or at least two pairs of them, serving as arms. Along its spinal ridge was a curious purple comb, and a fan-shaped tail of some grey membrane ended its grotesque bulk. There was a ring of flexible red spikes around its neck, and from the twistings of these came clicking, twanging sounds in measured, deliberate rhythms."
Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merrit, C.L. Moore,
The Challenge From Beyond

THING IN THE MOONLIGHT

THING IN THE MOONLIGHT
"Presently I heard a swishing in the sparse grass toward the left, and saw the dark forms of two men looming up in the moonlight."

"I leaped up at once & raced madly out of that car & away across endless leagues of plateau till exhaustion waked me – doing this not because the conductor had dropped on all fours, but because the face of the motorman was a mere white cone tapering to
one blood-red tentacle. . ."
H.P. Lovecraft & J. Chapman Miske, The Thing In the Moonlight

BRIDGE CREATURE

BRIDGE CREATURE

"217-Ancient (Roman? prehistoric?) stone bridge washed away by a (sudden and curious?) storm. Something liberated which had been sealed up in the masonry of years ago. Things happen."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

The thing had eight major arm-like appendages protruding from an elliptical body, six of which were tipped with flipper-like protrusions, the other two being tentacular. Four of the web-tipped legs were located at the lower end of the body, and used for walking upright. The other two were near the head, and could be used for walking near to the ground. The head joined directly to the body; it was oval and eyeless. In place of eyes, there was an abominable sponge-like circular organ about the centre of the head; over it grew something hideously like a spider’s web. Below this was a mouth-like slit which extended at least halfway round the head, bordered at each side by a tentacle-like appendage with a cupped tip, obviously used for carrying food to the mouth. The whole thing was more than a simply alien and horrific monstrosity; it was surrounded by an aura of incredible, eons-lost evil.

A bolt of lightning seemed to crash directly on the bridge, and the shattered stonework of a support momentarily revealed a circular seal, carven with an immense star, before the waters rushed to conceal it.

An’ then somethin’ went past the winder — big an’ black an’ shiny, like a fish.

The sketch and the Necronomicon illustration had not reproduced everything; they had not shown the transparency of the half-gelatinous flesh, revealing the mobile organs beneath the skin. Nor had they shown the globular organ above the brain, at whose use Chesterton could only guess shudderingly. And as the mouth fell open when they stirred the body, he saw that the being possessed no teeth, but six rows of powerful tentacles interlaced across the
opening of the throat.
Ramsey Campbell, The Horror From the Bridge

SIX EYED VEGETABLE BEING

SIX EYED VEGETABLE BEING
"Dam Bor glued each of his six eyes to the lenses of the cosmoscope. His nasal tentacles were orange with fear, and his antennae buzzed hoarsely as he dictated his report to the operator behind him."

"[The handsome young vegetable, with whom I shared my bowl of caterpillar custard since earliest infancy, and with whom I had been thrown out of every joint in the intra-dimensional city of Kastor-Ya,] had really a worried look upon his lavender face."
H.P. Lovecraft & R.H. Barlow, Collapsing Cosmoses

SPAWN OF YOG-SOTHOTH

SPAWN OF YOG-SOTHOTH
"He was, however, exceedingly ugly despite his appearance of brilliancy; there being something almost goatish or animalistic about his thick lips, large-pored, yellowish skin, coarse crinkly hair, and oddly elongated ears."

"Above the waist it was semi-anthropomorphic; though its chest, where the dog’s rending paws still rested watchfully, had the leathery, reticulated hide of a crocodile or alligator. The back was piebald with yellow and black, and dimly suggested the squamous covering of certain snakes. Below the waist, though, it was the worst; for here all human resemblance left off and sheer phantasy began. The skin was thickly covered with coarse black fur, and from the abdomen a score of long greenish-grey tentacles with red sucking mouths protruded limply. Their arrangement was odd, and seemed to follow the symmetries of some cosmic geometry unknown to earth or the solar system. On each of the hips, deep set in a kind of pinkish, ciliated orbit, was what seemed to be a rudimentary eye; whilst in lieu of a tail there depended a kind of trunk or feeler with purple annular markings, and with many evidences of being an undeveloped mouth or throat. The limbs, save for their black fur, roughly resembled the hind legs of prehistoric earth’s giant saurians; and terminated in ridgy-veined pads that were
neither hooves nor claws."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror

DAEMON SWINEHERD

DAEMON SWINEHERD

"I seemed to be looking down from an immense height upon a twilit grotto, knee-deep with filth, where a white-bearded daemon swineherd drove about with his staff a flock of fungous, flabby beasts whose appearance filled me with unutterable loathing."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Rats In the Walls

BLACK WINGED THING

BLACK WINGED THING
"199-Black winged thing flies into one’s house at night. Cannot be found or identified—but subtle developments ensue."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

SERVITOR OF THE OUTER GODS

SERVITOR OF THE OUTER GODS
"He thought of the ancient legends of Ultimate Chaos, at whose centre sprawls the blind idiot god Azathoth, Lord of All Things, encircled by his flopping horde of mindless and amorphous dancers, and lulled by the thin monotonous piping of a daemoniac flute held in nameless paws."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Haunter Of the Dark

"Beside it had been carved two squat squid-like figure from a part of which-presumably the heads, though no outline was definitive-projected what must certainly have been instruments of some kind, for the strange, repugnant attendants appeared to be playing them."

"And flanking it on either side were two lesser beings, equally amorphous, holding pipes or flutes in appendages and making that demoniac music which echoed and reechoed
in the enclosing forest."
August Derleth, The Dweller In Darkness

COLOURED GAS BEING

COLOURED GAS BEING
"He had learned much of the Other Gods in distant parts of space, especially in that region where form does not exist, and coloured gases study the innermost secrets. The violet gas S’ngac had told him terrible things of the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, and had warned him never to approach the central void where the daemon-sultan Azathoth
gnaws hungrily in the dark."
H.P. Lovecraft, Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath

CHIMAERA

CHIMAERA
"You recall that Pickman’s forte was faces. I don’t believe anybody since Goya could put so much of sheer hell into a set of features or a twist of expression. And before Goya you have to go back to the mediaeval chaps who did the gargoyles and chimaeras on Notre Dame and Mont Saint-Michel."
H.P. Lovecraft, Pickman's Model

“Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras—dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies—may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition—but they were there before. They are transcripts, types—the archetypes are in us, and eternal."
Charles Lamb, Witches and Other Night-Fears
(H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror)

"First he sent him away with orders to kill the Khimaira none might approach; a thing of immortal make, not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle, and snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire."
Homer, The Iliad

Her heads were three: one was that of a glare-eyed lion, one of a goat, and the third of a snake, a powerful drakon."
Hesiod, Theogony

FOG CREATURE

FOG CREATURE

219 Fog or smoke—assumes shaped under incantations.
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

BLACK-SNOUTED WINGED CREATURE

BLACK-SNOUTED WINGED CREATURE
"Beyond the wide, warm ocean were other cities of the Great Race, and on one far continent I saw the crude villages of the black-snouted, winged creatures who would evolve as a dominant stock after the Great Race had sent its foremost minds into the future to escape
the creeping horror."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Shadow Out Of Time