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

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

As a young kid reading lovecraft, I found the atmosphere of his stories pleasantly creepy without being directly scary at all, and I was fascinated by his sense of history and learning -- his fascinating (to me) discussions of the textual history of the necronomicon, for example, probably have something to do with why I eventually went into academia.

And now I find lovecraft comforting -- even his most intentionally horrific stories read more like fantasy for me, like tolkein or something. Innsmouth and Arkham are as romantic and strange for me as Lothlorien.