Lovecraft And Priestcraft

[poliphilo]

A friend of a friend is frightened of demons. He puts it down to being a fan of Lovecraft's. And he puts the Lovecraft thing down to his good, old-fashioned Catholic education.

I can't be doing with Lovecraft. I find him completely over the top. He doesn't frighten me because I  don't believe in his mythos.

Maybe you need to have been brought up as a certain kind of Christian- traditional Catholic or hell-fire Protestant- to find Lovecraft frightening.

I was brought up as an Anglican with an elusive God who "moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform" and so the spook stuff that ruffles my feathers is the hinty, blink-and-you'll-miss-it English ghost story, as purveyed by the likes of M.R. James and Robert Aickman.

Comments

[forestdweller.livejournal.com]

I didn't grow up christian, but oddly enough I have a serious fear of demonic possesion. I can't even watch movies concerning the subject.

Ancestral memory perhaps? Haven't the Irish/Scots been Catholic for many many generations now?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ireland is a catholic nation with a protestant minority and Scotland is a protestant country with a catholic minority. Religion matters in Ireland and Scotland much more than it does in England.