Imprisoned with the Pharaohs

By H. P. Lovecraft

Harry Houdini is kidnapped in Egypt, tied up, taken to an unknown location, and dropped down a deep pit, where he witnesses an army of half-man, half-animal mummies leaving offerings to a five-headed, tentacled beast.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781627558990

H. P. Lovecraft

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

Book preview

IMPRISONED WITH THE PHARAOHS

By H. P. Lovecraft

Wilder Publications

Copyright © 2014 Wilder Publications

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-1-62755-899-0

Mystery attracts mystery. Ever since the wide appearance of my name as a performer of unexplained feats, I have encountered strange narratives and events which my calling has led people to link with my interests and activities. Some of these have been trivial and irrelevant, some deeply dramatic and absorbing, some productive of weird and perilous experiences and some involving me in extensive scientific and historical research. Many of these matters I have told and shall continue to tell very freely; but there is one of which I speak with great reluctance, and which I am now relating only after a session of grilling persuasion from the publishers of this magazine, who had heard vague rumors of it from other members of my family.

The hitherto guarded subject pertains to my non-professional visit to Egypt fourteen years ago, and has been avoided by me for several reasons. For one thing, I am averse to exploiting certain unmistakably actual facts and conditions obviously unknown to the myriad tourists who throng about the pyramids and apparently secreted with much diligence by the authorities at Cairo, who cannot be wholly ignorant of them. For another thing, I dislike to recount an incident in which my own fantastic imagination must have played so great a part. What I saw—or thought I saw—certainly did not take place; but is rather to be viewed as a result of my then recent readings in Egyptology, and of the speculations anent this theme which my environment naturally prompted. These imaginative stimuli, magnified by the excitement of an actual event terrible enough in itself, undoubtedly gave rise to the culminating horror of that grotesque night so long past.

In January, 1910, I had finished a professional engagement in England and signed a contract for a tour of Australian theatres. A liberal time being allowed for the trip, I determined to make the most of it in the sort of travel which chiefly interests me; so accompanied by my wife I drifted pleasantly down the Continent and embarked at Marseilles on the P & O Steamer Malwa, bound for Port Said. From that point I proposed to visit the principal historical localities of lower Egypt before leaving finally for Australia.

The voyage was an agreeable one, and enlivened by many of the amusing incidents which befall a magical performer apart from his work. I had intended, for the sake of quiet travel, to keep my name a secret; but was goaded into betraying myself by a fellow-magician whose anxiety to astound the passengers with ordinary tricks tempted me to duplicate and exceed his feats in a manner quite destructive of my incognito. I mention this because of its ultimate effect—an effect I should have foreseen before unmasking to a shipload of tourists about to

Reviews for Imprisoned with the Pharaohs

[shimmin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very pleasing adaptation of one of my favourite Lovecraft tales. The actors do very well, though a couple of times I found Ward and Houdini hard to distinguish due to similar voices. The production is excellent and everything can be clearly heard, while sound effects add a lot of depth and action to the story.The adaption is on the whole excellent. That being said, I think it shares a drawback with the Mountains of Madness adaption in being sometimes a little too true-to-life. The opening segment featuring the variety show is surely realistic, but I found it overlong, and though convincing it isn't particularly interesting in itself. I felt like this could have been far shorter; this section alone lasts a full five minutes and is entirely irrelevant to the rest of the story. In general I felt like things took a while to get going.The first fifteen minutes or so of the story is new material made up for the audio adaptation, which I'm basically neutral about. It adds on a sort of prequel, which offers an explanation for some of the story's events which were originally pretty inscrutable. It adds a different twist, which I wouldn't call either an improvement or a detriment, it's just different. Very well done, though. Similarly, the adaptation gives Houdini a companion in his misadventure, which has the great advantage of allowing dialogue, but does remove some of the ambiguity from events. As a dramatised version with little narration we lose a lot of the descriptive passages, which is a bit of a shame as they're rather good and eerie; in particular, the lengthy descriptions of Houdini's descent into the underworld are heavily cut. However, they would be hard to do without resorting to just large blocks of narration. On the whole I felt they did a very good job of translating first-person inner monologue and musing into a third-person radio play without losing either the plot or the flavour of the original. The whole family enjoyed the atmosphere and tension of the story, and were thrilled with the excellent props that come with it. We listened to this in three blocks on three successive evenings, and I heartily recommend this strategy. A very worthwhile purchase indeed (though mine was a present).