So: you wish to explore the squamous and eldritch pleasures of the real best stories of H. P. Lovecraft? Fear not. For in reading that most terrible and forbidden volume Necronomicon, I have discovered and unearthed the ten of his greatest. Lovecraft is, in many ways, the father of American horror as we know it. He’s also hella wordy and deliberately archaic in style. His work can be sublime (see this list) or utter dreck (The Dream Quest of Uknown Kadath – there’s five hours I’m never getting back).
Well. The moon is gibbous. The dark is stygian. Let’s explore the antediluvian libraries of Lovecraft’s cyclopean works.
Honourable Mention: The Whisperer in Darkness
A cautionary tale about the dangers of long-distance friendships. Also why you should never trust people who insist on writing letters instead of just talking to you. Our protagonist gets roped into a conspiracy about alien fungi from Yuggoth and doesn’t realize he’s in trouble until the reader is practically screaming it at him. It’s a bit of a slow-burn and hasn’t made my top ten. But something really stuck with me about The Whisper in Darkness. Think brains. Think space. Think no bodies.
10: The Colour Out of Space
A meteor crashes into a farm and everything goes downhill from there. There’s something elegant and distilled-Lovecraft about this concept: a colour not of this world that begins to erode the mind and body like acid. The gradual decay of the land and its inhabitants is hauntingly well done, and the lack of a clear antagonist makes it all the more terrifying. And fittingly Lovecraft. No fish monsters, no cults, just pure, uncaring cosmic horror.
9: The Call of Cthulhu
Fish monsters? Cults? Everyone knows Cthulhu, if only for the cute plushies that would have HPL spinning in his tenebrous grave. Here’s the eponymous tale – a trio of accounts surrounding the Old One’s discovery. Tension mounts as we cleave closer to the monster and its awakening. Only a slightly underwhelming climax prevents this from sliming its way down the list, but the atmosphere and steady-paced storytelling make this a classic.
8: At the Mountains of Madness
A team of Antarctic explorers stumbles across the ruins of an ancient civilization and Lovecraft writes a borderline academic paper on Elder Things and Shoggoths. I’m not selling it I know. But I really bought into the discovery of colossal mountains and caves at the unexplored South Pole and the payoff is worth it when the horror starts.
7: Under the Pyramids
Lovecraft ghostwrote this horror story for Harry Houdini, and it somehow ends up as one of his most effective tales. Houdini (yes, that Houdini) gets kidnapped and thrown into an underground tomb, where he encounters something ancient… and hungry. The vividly-drawn Egyptian setting is a rare break from Lovecraft’s usual New England gloom and the story’s relentless momentum makes it stand out. Too bad I get the feeling that it’s often overlooked.
6: The Nameless City
One of the first Lovecraft tales I read and the first to really stick with me. An explorer finds an ancient ruin in the desert, ignores every possible red flag, and keeps going deeper until (surprise!) he finds something horrible. The ending is one of Lovecraft’s best—sudden, terrifying, and entirely deserved. A perfect example of why the phrase “I wonder what’s down there” should never be followed up on.
5: The Dunwich Horror
If Lovecraft had a “greatest hits” collection, this would surely be on it. A remote New England town, an inbred family with a dark secret and an invisible, eldritch horror rampaging through the countryside. We also cover the Lovecraft staples of the Necronomicon and the Miskatonic University. It has all the ingredients of classic Lovecraft, but unlike many of his stories, the good guys actually fight back. Not the usual bleak, inevitable doom we expect, but somehow still terrifying.
4: The Rats in the Walls
A man restores his old family estate and slowly uncovers a grotesque secret in its underground tunnels. This one is full of the creeping, claustrophobic horror that Lovecraft does best. A masterclass in atmosphere, and an example of Lovecraft proving his nastiness as a horror author. If you want a pure descent-into-madness story, this is Lovecraft firing on all cylinders.
3: The Outsider
One of Lovecraft’s most concise and gothic tales and also one of his best. A nameless protagonist escapes his dark, lonely home and stumbles into a world that reacts to him with terror. Why? Cue one of the most elegant twists in Lovecraft’s work. Short, effective, and one of the few times his writing carries an emotional punch instead of just existential horror.
2: Herbert West—Reanimator
When Lovecraft does pulpy, over-the-top horror, it’s a lot of fun. Herbert West is a mad scientist whose obsession with cheating death leads to a long series of increasingly grotesque mistakes. It’s not the cosmic existentialism of many of his stories, but it is a proto-Salem’s Lot-meets-Pet-Sematary grotesque-fest. A satisfying ending crowns this early zombie yarn—one of Lovecraft’s best. Did you know he wrote it as a parody of Frankenstein?
1: The Shadow Over Innsmouth
A textbook Lovecraft novella and, for my money, the GOAT. A man visits a remote coastal town where the locals are a little too into their fish god, and it turns out he has a family connection to the nightmare. The slow buildup is phenomenal, the characters creepy but believable. The siege at the hotel is gripping and action-packed and the denouement is inevitable yet twisty and unexpected. It links to Lovecraft’s infamous Cthulhu Mythos and typifies all the fuss made about the writer himself. If you read only one Lovecraft story, this should probably be it.
