******Beginning of Part Six******

March Madness with HP Lovecraft continues and this coming entry is one of my personal favorites. It was a strong contender for the number 2 spot but the one that took number two was too good. This one stands out though because of the implications of the horror itself.

So, what is my number 3 in my list of recommended stories by HP Lovecraft? Well, open your mind and transport it across the cosmos, across time, across infinity . . .

3# The Shadow Out of Time

The mind has been a symbol of philosophical analysis for as long as humankind can think. “I think therefore I am” is a quote that sums up the very foundation of existence. However! What if it was possible to trade the essence of one’s mind with another. And what if the limits of time and space were no obstacle between the transfer?

This story is both horrific and fascinating in the implications that an alien race exists that can trade their thoughts, personalities, knowledge, their very culture and society with other beings across time and space. Mind swapping stories have been often treated as parody for many modern day movies and sometimes for comedy horror. But there comes a story that takes the subject matter seriously and lies bare the hideous implications of “someone else was in your body and your mind was in someone else.”

This story features one narrator who experiences a mind-swap with an alien. A pretty out there idea that I think HPL excuses real well. This also was a story inspired, by all things, from a movie he saw in 1933 called “Berkeley Square” multiple times. I have always pictured HPL as solely a literature buff but the fact he went to a theater multiple times to see the same movie is just so relatable and charming to me.

I remember the heyday of the MCU and I saw the first “The Avengers” movie so many times when it was in theaters.

Anyway, let’s trade minds with a narrator and learn more about what watches us across time and space!

I — This sounds like one of my sleep paralysis episodes. We have another tale from a professor of Miskatonic University. With all the supernatural shenanigans happening at this school, you would think there would be a separate department just researching and combating strange activity. Maybe there is and we’re not meant to know about it.

Anyway, the intrigue is high with this intro. What was the good Professor Peaslee possessed by? There are any number of supernatural forces that could inhabit and control the human mind. And what of this strange Arkham patient in 1908 that spoke in similar tongues to that of Possessed Peaslee?

See, revisiting this story and I know the Arkham patient is referencing something from another HPL story or its foreshadowing something else. Let’s continue and find out more . . .

II — “Chimerical” is another new word that I learned from HPL. There should be an HPL dictionary, I keep seeing new old-school works we don’t use anymore in modern speech and writing. Seems a shame to have all these tasty words go to waste.

Anyway, so that Arkham patient was simply just another case of a scholarly mind being possessed by an outside force. And with Peaslee’s research, we learn that others have been possessed for centuries. It’s almost as if an invasion is happening or something to that effect.

Also, the detail in Peaslee’s dreams is astounding. Seriously, I would love to detail what the scenery and architecture in my dreams are like. Lots of Non-euclidian structions and weird stuff happening all around. That’s my dream. Peaslee basically described a whole other culture through his dreams. A culture that seems quite . . . aliens! Dun-dun-duuuuuh!

III — So, I paused the audiobook early on to get this thought out. The Possessed Peaslee just . . . wrote in the copies of books owned by the school’s library? Isn’t it a crime, especially back in the 1910s, to write in the copies owned by schools or libraries? And Possessed Peaslee got away with this?!

I’m just flabbergasted by how casual this is brought up. I know HPL probably just focused on the story itself and left the technical details for the sci-fi and horror elements, but an alien force just wrote some stuff in books owned by a university and no one batted an eye at this? Was it because they were too fascinated by what Possessed Peaslee was writing? Or was it because he was too scary to deal with? Or did no one even take notice that some rando is writing in the freaking copy of the freaking Necronomicon? W—T—F?!

I know this is a silly and super minor point, but it's really taken me out of the story. This is just so casual, an academic copy of a book is being written in by a guy possessed by some weird force and it's just treated like: “Huh, all these fun hieroglyphs are super funny and weird, I wonder what they mean?” And the librarian doesn’t just come out and say “Bro, that’s like a dollar fine per page marked on . . . you going to own up to it? It was your hand that wrote that strange stuff.”

Sorry, sorry, I’m only 4 minutes into this chapter’s audiobook and I've already written more than I’d expect for a chapter. It’s just that this reminds me back to high school when people used to draw dicks in textbooks. And they were not even decently drawn dicks either, they were pretty lame. If you're going to draw something obscene in a textbook, make it look interesting.

I guess Possessed Peaslee wrote down some interesting stuff so Person Peaslee doesn’t get punished for freaking textbook copies of rare and ancient books being vandalized. Geez, I ranted here but text to me, especially physically printed text, is kind of precious and should be treated with care. I don’t care what day, age, or technological era we are in, physical print will always be important to me. Digital on the other hand is a dime a dozen, if a dime is even worth anything anymore . . .

I’ve gone off on a huge tangent here, let’s keep going with this chapter . . .

So, rant aside, this chapter is the introduction of one of my favorite HPL alien races, the Great Race. These guys are the coolest and most dickish of any alien race that HPL introduced to the world. They can exchange minds with other living creatures through time and space. Now, I won’t spoil anything but really think about how awesome and horrifying an ability like that is. Yeah, Great Race indeed.

So far, Peaslee believes his visions of the Great Race are only because his “Second Personality” read and studied myths regarding the existence of the alien force. Tee-Hee.

IV — So, I’m not sure if Peaslee has a dream journal and is writing all this stuff down after he wakes up but DAMN! That is a lot of detail and information from “pseudo-memories” brought on by visions of the Great Race. And Peaslee even remembers other displaced humans and hungs out with them. Those names, I honestly wonder how long it took HPL to come up with that long, semicolon list of names from people during human history, both past and present.

It’s a chapter like this that makes HPL stand out from other authors. He really is painting a picture of an intelligent and cultured race that can exchange minds with other sapient life. And we get hints of another weird race that even the Great Race finds horrifying.

V — Professor William Dyer is a familiar name, for some reason. [Google Search] . . . oh! Yeah! We’ll get to him later.

Anyway, I like that Peaslee starts to share his visions with the world through magazines and randomly, an explorer in Australia is all like “Bro, I’ve seen what you’re talking about . . . in these stony ruins!”

And this is before the internet, so this explorer’s find is real and it's going to lead Peaslee down an interesting path . . .

Also, I have to mention this, “Blackfellows” and “Blacks” are brought up through the explorer’s letter to Peaslee and there are no signs of slurs, which is a sigh of relief. HPL did write this story in the mid-1930s and hopefully by then, this was a sign that his slightly growing maturity towards other races had lessened.

Maybe I’m just being a foolhardy fan hoping the author was seeing the error in his past mistakes. We may never know, since HPL did pass on in 1937. Maybe the many, many letters he wrote would give insight to his growth as an author? Maybe I shall read those, one day . . .

VI — Don’t you hate it when you have constant fever dreams for years, then you find yourself in the very place you had a nightmare about? It’s so familiar that you can’t help but keep exploring, studying, and discovering more awesome horrors and unwanted knowledge. Peaslee is diving into the abyss, free falling into the dank dark depths to confirm what he does not want to know.

Buckle up, reader, it’s going to be a bumpy ride . . .

VII — It’s okay, Peaslee, just keep going down into that YAWNING chasm. It’s all good, it’s all good. I’ll say this now, sometimes an author is guilty of finding a word they like and using it repeatedly in one chapter. Yawning or yawn was HPL’s hyperfocus word in this chapter.

I’m guilty of this as well, hee-hee.

VIII — “Would it prove the awesome, brain-shattering truth of something past normal conception, or shew only that I was dreaming?”

I like that quote, brain-shattering should be used more often in casual conversation.

So, I will not spoil this but this is another story that ends with a chase and a horrible realization. You might be able to guess what Peaslee discovers and runs from.

Still, I enjoy the concept of this story and HPL did a wondrous job executing it. Still hard for me to believe that he watched some random movie about four or more times and found inspiration from that flick to write this story. The movie, Berkeley Square, does not even involve aliens or learning about the secrets of the universe. From what I have read about it, its more of a romance drama, which feels odd for HPL to be fixated on.

Then again, sometimes people find things that are outside their wheelhouse and come to enjoy the new and different things they have discovered. Then again, HPL was super into colonial New England and the film has scenes set in the 1780s, early on in America's independence.

I honestly wonder how HPL ended up in the theater? Did he go to the movie on a dare, thinking it was some Hollywood tripe? Did he read about the plot in a magazine and was compelled to see it? Did he go on a date that went sour and entered a dark theater to clear his mind?

Honestly, I’m more curious about HPL’s notes on “The Shadow Out of Time” and how “Berkeley Square” influenced the story’s conception. Maybe I’ll give the movie a watch sometime. Apparently, it was considered lost until it was rediscovered and first shown, of all places, at the 2011 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival.

Anyway, that’s enough madness for this blog. Next time, we face a mountain of a tale that is my 2#. Some of you HPL fans may guess to my not so subtle hints what this next story is. But I will give a hint to anyone not familiar with this tale.

A very famous director of horror and fantasy cinema has been trying for years to make a movie of this novella. And it almost got off the ground but alas, it was not to be . . .

Check out the HP Lovecraft Historical Society site for the audiobooks I listen to when making this article:

https://www.hplhs.org/

******End of Part Six******