BYATIS

BYATIS
"When I press'd him that I must be arm'd against such Daemons by full Knowledge, he said that it had but one Eye like the Cyclops, and had Claws like unto a Crab. He said also that it had a Nose like the Elephants that 'tis said can be seen in Africa, and great Serpent-like Growths which hung from its Face like a Beard, in the Fashion of some Sea Monster."

"A few Minutes after then, they heard a Sound of Wings, like the Flapping of a great Bat, which died away in the Distance."

"The being was supposedly Byatis, a pre-human being which was worshipped as a deity."

"Apparently the terrifying Berkeley Toad was the same being as the deity Byatis; indeed, though the being has only one eye, it does, when its proboscis is retracted occasionally, resemble the general shape of the toad."
Ramsey Campbell, The Room In the Castle

THE SHADOW FROM THE LAND OF THE THREE SUNS

THE SHADOW FROM THE LAND OF THE THREE SUNS

"I went nearer the stone temple, and a huge doorway loomed in front of me. Within that portal were swirling shadows that seemed to dart and leer and try to snatch me inside that awful darkness. I thought I saw three flaming eyes in the shifting void of a doorway, and I screamed with mortal fear. In that noisome depth, I knew, lurked utter destruction—a living hell even worse than death. I screamed again. The vision faded."

 “So in the year of the Black Goat there came unto Nath a shadow that should not be on Earth, and that had no form known to the eyes of Earth. And it fed on the souls of men; they that it gnawed being lured and blinded with dreams till the horror and the endless night lay upon them. Nor did they see that which gnawed them; for the shadow took false shapes that men know or dream of, and only freedom seemed waiting in the Land of the Three Suns. But it was told by priests of the Old Book that he who could see the shadow’s true shape, and live after the seeing, might shun its doom and send it back to the starless gulf of its spawning. This none could do save through the Gem; wherefore did Ka-Nefer the High-Priest keep that gem sacred in the temple. And when it was lost with Phrenes, he who braved the horror and was never seen more, there was weeping in Nath. Yet did the Shadow depart sated at last, nor shall it hunger again till the cycles roll back to the year of the Black Goat.”

 "Where I had, in the landscape itself, seen the twisted, half-sentient tree, there was here visible only a gnarled, terrible hand or talon with fingers or feelers shockingly distended and evidently groping toward something on the ground or in the spectator’s direction."

H.P. Lovecraft & Duane W. Rimel, The Tree On the Hill

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

CREATURE OF THE MONOLITH

"I opened my mouth to scream my horror and loathing, but only a dry  rattle sounded; a huge monstrous toad-like thing squatted on the top of the monolith!"

"I saw its bloated, repulsive and unstable outline against the moonlight, and set in what would have been the face of a natural creature, its huge, blinking eyes which reflected all the lust, abysmal  greed,  obscene  cruelty  and  monstrous  evil  that  has  stalked the sons of men since their ancestors mowed blind and hairless  in  the  tree-tops.  In  those  grisly  eyes  were  mirrored  all   the  unholy  things  and  vile  secrets  that  sleep  in  the  cities under the sea, and that skulk from the light of day in the blackness of primordial caverns. And so that ghastly thing that the unhallowed ritual of cruelty and sadism and blood had evoked from  the  silence  of  the  hills,  leered  and  blinked  down  on  its  bestial  worshippers,  who  groveled  in  abhorrent  abasement  before it."

"Now  the  beast-masked  priest  lifted  the  bound  and  weakly  writhing girl in his brutish hands and held her up toward that horror on the monolith. And as that monstrosity sucked in its breath,  lustfully  and  slobberingly,  something  snapped  in  my  brain and I fell into a merciful faint."

Robert E. Howard, The Black Stone

MASHATAAN

MASHATAAN
"There was nothing remotely human about the Mashataan. Their bodies consisted of writhing swarms of tendrils that pulsed with undiluted mchawi. They possessed no other limbs. From the midst of each clump of tendrils rose a head dissimilar in shape to that of anything ever spawned in Nyumbani. Eyes were the only familiar feature on those nightmarish heads — yes that were multitudinous orbs of bright green light, each on refelecting cold, dispassionate involvement in the struggle against the Erriten...the recalcitrant, pathetic and insignificant Erriten...
Charles R. Saunders, Imaro IV

GIANT WALKER

GIANT WALKER
“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

DISTORTED RABBIT

DISTORTED RABBIT
"Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Ammi listened without interest to this talk until one night when he drove past Nahum’s house in his sleigh on the way back from Clark’s Corners. There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road, and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

GROTESQUE WOODCHUCK

GROTESQUE WOODCHUCK
"In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened, and threw the thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales of it ever reached the people of the countryside."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

DISTORTED SQUIRREL

DISTORTED SQUIRREL

"They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be.

"H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

DISTORTED FOX

DISTORTED FOX
"They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be."
H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

"'It must be somethin’ from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it’s made an’ the way it works ain’t like no way o’ God’s world. It’s some’at from beyond.'"

"It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognisable chromaticism."

H.P. Lovecraft, The Colour Out Of Space

HAIRLESS PIG-THING

HAIRLESS PIG-THING

“The thing had to be at least a yard high, no ‘coon or ‘possum, too big even for a feral dog. And all weird white hairless. Was it a hog maybe?”

“Still others crouched on all fours like hairless dogs…or pigs.”

Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

FLOPPER

FLOPPER
“Some were little more than humping globs.”

“Not Storch or his mother, but things that crept and crawled and could not speak. Floppers. Some came and went and passed him by but others hung and hugged him like lonely lost children, what arms they bore wrapped round his legs or waist. They were clammy and soft and stunk of trash fires and mold…and when they touched him they shared their thoughts, or at least their sight.”

“They bobbed and quivered as if pumped with anticipation. Some lacked a limb or two while others bore more than could be normal or good.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

FLAPPER

FLAPPER

“Two herons. Three. What the….? When he saw the third he saw the truth. Not herons. Not birds at all. Bigger, bigger than herons even, with lacy rippling wings like a bats, cheese hued membranes with Swiss cheese holes, lumpy bodies and twisting stalks stuck out for necks to end in equine heads with goggle eyes. How could he ever have thought they were birds? And that was all he had time to register before the first was almost on him.”

 “Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“The flapper next began to wind its snaky neck round Donny’s own neck and head, each twist bringing that ugly horse head closer.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

SPIDER-LEGGED FLOPPER

SPIDER-LEGGED FLOPPER

“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others.”

“Others were whole clumps of heads and limbs a few resembled huge stumpy spiders.”

Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

WALKER

WALKER
“Storch stared out over the army of creatures that fluttered, staggered, stumbled, stood and slowly shook his head, still smiling. —Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch. Not so many anymore though. Mostly they come up from the Bottom—floppers, flappers, haystacks, all the others. Ones from Mother Storch used to last longer. Her best could even talk. They got more real blood n’em, like you and me.”

“He saw several one armed things that met the description, but was Cousin Whatever still here, the one from the Parkway?”

“—Well, some the walkers and floppers come from Old Mother Storch.”
Scott Nicolay, Tuckahoe

ROLANG

ROLANG
"192-Thibetan ROLANG—Sorcerer (or NGAGSPA) reanimates a corpse by holding it in a dark room—lying on it mouth to mouth and repeating a magic formula with all else banished from his mind. Corpse slowly comes to life and stands up. Tries to escape—leaps, bounds, and struggles—but sorcerer holds it. Continues with magic formula. Corpse sticks out tongue and sorcerer bites it off. Corpse then collapses. Tongue become a valuable magic talisman. If corpse escapes—hideous results and death to sorcerer."
H.P. Lovecraft, Commonplace Book

"Another mysterious rite is called rolang (the corpse who stands up)."

"The celebrant is shut up alone with a corpse in a dark room. To animate the body, he lies on it, mouth to mouth and while holding it in his arms, he must continually repeat mentally the same magic formula excluding all other thoughts. After a certain time the corpse begins to move. It stands up and tries to escape; the sorcerer firmly clinging to it, prevents it from freeing itself. Now the body struggles more fiercely.It leaps and bounds to more extraordinary heights, dragging with it the man who must hold on, keeping his lips upon the mouth of the monster, and continue mentally repeating the magic words. At last the tongue of the corpse protrudes from its mouth. The critical moment has arrived. The sorcerer seizes the tongue with his teeth and bites it off. The corpse at once collapses. Failure in controlling the body after having awaked it, means certain death for the sorcerer."
Alexandra David Neel, Magic and Mystery In Tibet

GOLEM

GOLEM
"This is the name of a gigantic artificial humanoid being in the Jewish legends of Europe, of which a number were said to have existed. The most famous was created in Prague in the Czech state. In the tale, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezabel, who was well versed in the use of holy letters for magical purposes, created from clay an image of a human form that was activated by placing the formulaic 'Ameth' or 'Emet' or or 'AMTh' (meaning 'truth,' 'reality') on a Shem tablet under the being's tongue. Then the Golem, which means 'a clod of earth,' would, on command, do menial tasks such as ringing bells for the synagogue. However, it was essential to remove the tablet from its tongue for the Golem, being inhuman, never slept and would carry on. One night this was forgotten, and the Golem rampaged through the streets, creating mayhem, knocking down both people and things in the way. At last the rabbi caught it and removed the tablet. the Golem shrank back to its little clay image, which then had the words 'Meth' or 'Met,' or 'MTh,' meaning 'Death,' inscribed on its forehead to prevent a recurrence."
Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters and Dragons

“It was huge, bigger than the box it came out of, which was impossible, she knew. But it was. There was light from the door, and some from the window⁠—moonlight or streetlights⁠—and in it, she saw a smooth, featureless, empty face; an oval of scraped clay. The arms and legs were tree trunks, rough and jointless, and the hands were lumps without fingers. It took a step, the walls shook, and Garfield moaned.”

“Then raise your hand to the monster’s forehead. On it will be this word Emet, the seal of the Holy One.”
Bari Wood, The Tribe

MESSENGER FROM THE DEVIL

MESSENGER FROM THE DEVIL 
"Another man, Jonathan Lowder, said Bishop tried to choke him, and she took on the forms of a black pig and a monster with the body of a monkey, the feet of a rooster, and the face of a wizened old man. The creature told him it was a messenger from the Devil, and promised him riches in exchange for allegiance."

 Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Haunted Salem

THING LIKE A BLACK DOG

THING LIKE A BLACK DOG 

"Such creatures appeared almost monstrous, a physical manifestation of the moral distortion of the witch. Agnes Francis kept as a familiar a toad, or ‘a thynge lyke a blacke dogge with a face like an ape, a short tail, and a peyre of hornes.’ During her trial, Agnes’ daughter described how she had seen her mother carrying ‘the thing’ in her hands."

Helen Parish, “Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils”: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials

TUPILAQ

TUPILAQ
AKA
ᑐᐱᓚᒃ
"Originally the tupilak was a creature composed of different materials from the natural world – animal, bird and human remains – even parts taken from a child’s corpse. Those who knew about witchcraft gathered these bits and pieces together in a secret, isolated place, tied them together, chanted magic spells over them and allowed them to suck the energy from their own sexual organs. The tupilak was then ready to be put into the sea and sent off to kill an enemy. This way of getting rid of your enemies was, however, not entirely without risk because if the would-be victim had greater powers of wizardry than the initiator, his power could reverse the tupilaks strength and potency like a boomerang. In other words, it was a dangerous game."
Eastgreenland.com

"The tupilaq was a magic animal, created through witchcraft, which everyone could use if you followed the correct instructions and learnt to master magic, says Lange. It was witchcraft, but it was not restricted to people with shamanic powers.To make a tupilaq, you had to collect parts from different animals, bones from both animals and people—preferably from a child. It was also a good idea to add something that had a connection to the person who you wanted to inflict disaster on. Lastly, you would place the tupilaq in the sea to allow it to swim away and find its own way to the victim.But it was a risky business. If the tupilaq were to fail its mission, then it would head straight back to its creator and kill him instead."
Charlotte Price Persson, ScienceNordic

"If magic words had power, nothing in Inuit society was as potent as a tupilait. Some thought them to be living creatures though they were human-made and used to do harm or bring misfortune. They were tiny sculptures made of various substances—a combination of animal parts—seal and dog bones, pieces of skin from seals, bears, and dogs, bits of moss and long pieces of sinew. The shamen or an apprentice would gather the materials, stash them in some secret place
—a cave, or up along a stream, or on the beach at night
—then go to that place before dawn and prepare to create something evil."
Gretel Ehrlich, This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons In Greenland