Herbert West - Reanimator
()
About this ebook
H.P. Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.
Read more from H.P. Lovecraft
The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Best of H. P. Lovecraft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Terrible Old Man Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu (Serapis Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Temple Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeird Tales: Best of the Early Years 1926-27: Best of the Early Years 1926-27 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Festival Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Shadow of Innsmouth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (The Annotated Books) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5H. P. Lovecraft: The Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Horror Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHellbent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dream Cycle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Herbert West - Reanimator
Related ebooks
The call of cthulhu Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thing on the Doorstep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Colour Out of Space Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pickman's Model Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daughters of Frankenstein: Lesbian Mad Scientists Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grave Expectations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Temple Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMalinae Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Novels - Headlong Hall - Nightmare Abbey - Crotchet Castle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5La Sorcière: The Witch of the Middle Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of Alonzo Typer (Fantasy and Horror Classics): With a Dedication by George Henry Weiss Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53 books to know Lost Worlds Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMusic for Torching Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Greener Than You Think Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doctor Bleed's Misery Pit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThoughts & Preyers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTaurus: The Zodiac Series, #5 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSputnik’s Children: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Watcher in The Woods Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Carmilla: Featuring First Female Vampire - Mysterious and Compelling Tale that Influenced Bram Stoker's Dracula Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRevelations in Black Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou Have Been Murdered and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu and The Music of Erich Zann Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Novel of the Black Seal Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Even Death May Die: The Collected Works of H.P. Lovecraft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cosmovorous Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Whisperer in Darkness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Art For You
Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Designer's Dictionary of Color Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Draw and Paint Anatomy, All New 2nd Edition: Creating Lifelike Humans and Realistic Animals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Draw Like an Artist: 100 Flowers and Plants Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Botanical Drawing: A Step-By-Step Guide to Drawing Flowers, Vegetables, Fruit and Other Plant Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Art 101: From Vincent van Gogh to Andy Warhol, Key People, Ideas, and Moments in the History of Art Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shakespeare: The World as Stage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Make Your Art No Matter What: Moving Beyond Creative Hurdles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Needs Your Art: Casual Magic to Unlock Your Creativity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art of Living: The Classical Mannual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Erotic Photography 120 illustrations Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric State Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Creative, Inc.: The Ultimate Guide to Running a Successful Freelance Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Drawing School: Fundamentals for the Beginner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Herbert West - Reanimator
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Herbert West - Reanimator - H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft
Herbert West - Reanimator
EAN 8596547054245
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
H erbert West: Reanimator
By H. P. LOVECRAFT
Part I: From The Dark
Part II: The Plague-Demon
Part III: Six Shots By Moonlight
Part IV: The Scream of the Dead
Part V: The Horror From the Shadows
Part VI: The Tomb-Legions
Part I: From The Dark
Part II: The Plague-Demon
Part III: Six Shots By Moonlight
Part IV: The Scream of the Dead
Part V: The Horror From the Shadows
Part VI: The Tomb-Legions
Herbert West: Reanimator
Table of Contents
By H. P. LOVECRAFT
Table of Contents
To be dead, to be truly dead, must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death.
—Count Dracula
Part I: From The Dark
Table of Contents
Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror. This terror is not due altogether to the sinister manner of his recent disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work, and first gained its acute form more than seventeen years ago, when we were in the third year of our course at the Miskatonic University Medical School in Arkham. While he was with me, the wonder and diabolism of his experiments fascinated me utterly, and I was his closest companion. Now that he is gone and the spell is broken, the actual fear is greater. Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.
The first horrible incident of our acquaintance was the greatest shock I ever experienced, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in the medical school where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of death and the possibility of overcoming it artificially. His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and by his fellow-students, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind by calculated chemical action after the failure of natural processes. In his experiments with various animating solutions, he had killed and treated immense numbers of rabbits, guinea-pigs, cats, dogs, and monkeys, till he had become the prime nuisance of the college. Several times he had actually obtained signs of life in animals supposedly dead; in many cases violent signs but he soon saw that the perfection of his process, if indeed possible, would necessarily involve a lifetime of research. It likewise became clear that, since the same solution never worked alike on different organic species, he would require human subjects for further and more specialised progress. It was here that he first came into conflict with the college authorities, and was debarred from future experiments by no less a dignitary than the dean of the medical school himself—the learned and benevolent Dr. Allan Halsey, whose work in behalf of the stricken is recalled by every old resident of Arkham.
I had always been exceptionally tolerant of West’s pursuits, and we frequently discussed his theories, whose ramifications and corollaries were almost infinite. Holding with Haeckel that all life is a chemical and physical process, and that the so-called soul
is a myth, my friend believed that artificial reanimation of the dead can depend only on the condition of the tissues; and that unless actual decomposition has set in, a corpse fully equipped with organs may with suitable measures be set going again in the peculiar fashion known as life. That the psychic or intellectual life might be impaired by the slight deterioration of sensitive brain-cells which even a short period of death would be apt to cause, West fully realised. It had at first been his hope to find a reagent which would restore vitality before the actual advent of death, and only repeated failures on animals had shewn him that the natural and artificial life-motions were incompatible. He then sought extreme freshness in his specimens, injecting his solutions into the blood immediately after the extinction of life. It was this circumstance which made the professors so carelessly sceptical, for they felt that true death had not occurred in any case. They did not stop to view the matter closely and reasoningly.
It was not long after the faculty had interdicted his work that West confided to me his resolution to get fresh human bodies in some manner, and continue in secret the experiments he could no longer perform openly. To hear him discussing ways and means was rather ghastly, for at the college we had never procured anatomical specimens ourselves. Whenever the morgue proved inadequate, two local negroes attended to this matter, and they were seldom questioned. West was then a small, slender, spectacled youth with delicate features, yellow hair, pale blue eyes, and a soft voice, and it was uncanny to hear him dwelling on the relative merits of Christchurch Cemetery and the potter’s field. We finally decided on the potter’s field, because practically every body in Christchurch was embalmed; a thing of course ruinous to West’s researches.
I was by this time his active and enthralled assistant, and helped him make all his decisions, not only concerning the source of bodies but concerning a suitable place for our loathsome work. It was I who thought of the deserted Chapman farmhouse beyond Meadow Hill, where we fitted up on the ground floor an operating room and a laboratory, each with dark curtains to conceal our midnight doings. The place was far from any road, and in sight of no other house, yet precautions were none the less necessary; since rumours of strange lights, started by chance nocturnal roamers, would soon bring disaster on our enterprise. It was agreed to call the whole thing a chemical laboratory if discovery should occur. Gradually we equipped our sinister haunt of science with materials either purchased in Boston or quietly borrowed from the college—materials carefully made unrecognisable save to expert eyes—and provided spades and picks for the many burials we should have to make in the cellar. At the college we used an incinerator, but the apparatus was too costly for our unauthorised laboratory. Bodies were always a nuisance—even the small guinea-pig bodies from the slight clandestine experiments in West’s room at the boarding-house.
We followed the local death-notices like ghouls, for our specimens demanded particular qualities. What we wanted were corpses interred soon after death and without artificial preservation; preferably free from malforming disease, and certainly with all organs present. Accident victims were our best hope. Not for many weeks did we hear of anything suitable; though we talked with morgue and hospital authorities, ostensibly in the college’s interest, as often as we could without exciting suspicion. We found that the college had first choice in every case, so that it might be necessary to remain in Arkham during the summer, when only the limited summer-school classes were held. In the end, though, luck favoured us; for one day we heard of