Loathsome, blasphemous, hellish creatures galore!

Not one short story this week, but an entire collection, stuffed full of HP Lovecraft’s overblown language and trademark use of four adjectives whenever one would do – a truly hideous, bloated, blasphemous, loathsome collection of tales from beyond the tomb – just the thing to resurrect this little horror slot from its summer death…

The Zombie Stories of H.P. Lovecraft

There are five individual stories in the book, plus the Herbert West – Reanimator series, which is made up of six linked episodes. The ‘zombie’ reference in the title is a bit of a cheat – only the Herbert West stories contain what we might think of today as zombies, and I suspect were probably influential on the development of the zombie genre, but Lovecraft himself doesn’t use the word. Most of the rest do have a connection to people returning from the dead…