Bhole
Bholes are creatures described in the Cthulhu Mythos of H.P. Lovecraft, primarily The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. They may be the same as the Dholes.
Description
Now Carter knew from a certain source that he was in the Vale of Pnath, where crawl and burrow the enormous bholes; but he did not know what to expect, because no one has ever seen a bhole, or even guessed what such a thing may be like. Bholes are known only by dim rumour from the rustling they make amongst mountains of bones and the slimy touch they have when they wriggle past one. They cannot be seen because they creep only in the dark.
- H.P. Lovecraft, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction).
Bholes are vast, slimy, worm-like creatures, at least several hundred feet long. Because they avoid daylight and are covered in viscous goo, their features are nearly impossible to discern. Bholes can be found in the Vale of Pnath in the Dreamlands, where they seem to fatten and grow large on thousands of years of the discarded debris of feasting Ghouls and hapless travelers taken by the Nightgaunts.
Heresies and Controversies
- Lovecraft seems to have sometimes spelt the name of this creature "bhole", and sometimes "dhole", another vast, worm-like creature, but found on the alien world of Yaddith. It is possible these are the same creature, and that indeed at the heart of many worlds throughout the universe gnaw gigantic bholes, biding their time until their ravening hunger drives them out of the inner core of every world they infest to lay waste to the world's surface.
Related Mythos Elements
- location: Dreamlands, Vale of Pnath
- races: Ghouls, Nightgaunts
- race: compare/contrast with Dholes
References
- fiction: H. P. Lovecraft - The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction).
- fiction: H. P. Lovecraft and E. Hoffmann Price - "Through the Gates of the Silver Key (fiction)".
- sourcebook: Malleus Monstrorum
