The Lovecraft Necronomicon Primer

Lovecraft’s tales revolve around the horror of a narrator seeing what was unknown or hidden for good reason. The Dreamlands are an example of this. If many people started to see werewolves or vampires every day, panic and outright pandemonium would ensue, as those beasts of mythology can only be the products of imagination, right? They couldn’t possibly be real, right?

Right?

Such is the case with the Dreamlands. If people knew that when they dreamed, it was in a real place and that what happened there affected “real life,” the waking world, do you think they would ever sleep again? Do you think the fear of that place would drive people to insanity in their desire to avoid it at all costs, even at the expense of their own mental health?

“Maybe,” you might say.

But what happens when you read a good horror tale about, say, a vampire? Do you not get frightened by the antics of that “monster,” physically so frightened that you dread the night and all its shadows, thinking that a vampire waits in them to drink your blood? Silly to think about, but that is what a good story can do: take you into another realm of reality, where you react and act in. Who among you, my dear