Dreams in the Witch House

By H.P. Lovecraft

Gilman, a scholar who needs a break, decides to move into a boarding house previously owned by a witch. Soon he starts having horrific dreams in which the witch Keziah and her wretched mutilated familiar sacrifice children. Soon he is killed and then, a few years later, the roof is blown off the house, revealing various scrolls on necromancy and forbidden rituals and the knife and bowl used in the rituals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Release date: May 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781304127143

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).

Reviews for Dreams in the Witch House

[xuebi-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the third volume in S. T. Joshi's excellently edited series by Penguin of the collected fictions of the master of weird-fiction, H. P. Lovecraft. As Joshi notes in the introduction, this volume collects much of Lovecraft's "Dunsanian" pieces, ones inspired by Lord Dunsaney's fantasy fictions as opposed to the cosmic horrors of the Arkham Cycle. These stories form the Dream Cycle and in this volume include The Other Gods, Polaris, The Doom that Came to Sarnath, The Cats of Ulthar, The Silver Key, Through The Gate of the Silver Key, Hypnos, The Strange High House in the Mist, and the crowning work in the Cycle, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.

These stories, while a departure from Lovecraft's cosmic horror stories, are still enjoyable though coloured by the influence of Lord Dunsaney. Still there are genuine parts of excellent writing, particularly in The Dream Quest and The Cats of Ulthar is a stand-out piece as well.

Of the other stories, the stand-out pieces include The Horror At Red Hook (a horror-infused detective story) and the masterpiece that is The Shadow Out of Time; rightly considered one of Lovecraft's best. This is a fitting conclusion to this volume and to the series by a writer whose own shadow still falls long over fiction today.

[hellcold · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

H.P. Lovecraft at his best. The story's short, fact-paced, and terrifying to the core. I guess it's that sort of stories that set Lovecraft's name as a trademark of a whole class of horror stories. I won't discuss the story itself, all I'll say is that it's a great success. Try it. You'll thank me.