The Beast in the Cave (fiction)
- title: The Beast in the Cave
- author: H.P. Lovecraft
- publication: 1905
- pages: ~3
- setting: Gaslight Kentucky
Summary
"The Beast in the Cave" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. The first draft was written in the Spring of 1904, with the final draft finished in April 1905, when Lovecraft was fourteen. It was first published in the June 1918 issue of the amateur press journal The Vagrant.
Comments / Trivia
- In a letter to Reinhardt Kleiner, HPL described the Beast as a "...Man, long ago lost in the cave, and mentally and physically metamorphosed by perpetual darkness, perpetual silence, and perpetual solitude!"
- Lovecraft had studied Mammoth Cave in Kentucky extensively before writing the story, and had discovered an obscure fact of history which would inspire his story: A physician, upon learning of the cave's apparent ability to preserve and mummify the flesh of animals lost within, had established a colony of tuberculosis patients in the cave to explore its restorative and preservative powers, in the belief it would heal the patients. The experiment was a failure, the cold dampness of the caverns doing more harm than good, and the colony would be disbanded and returned to the surface world, but not before the physician had had a chance to lead tours of the crude stone houses built within the vast caverns, with the pale, lean, ghostly figures of the tuberculosis patients creeping silently through the caverns just beyond torchlight.... Lovecraft had re-imagined a colony of human beings, lost within the caverns, who had begun an evolutionary slide in the darkness, silence, and solitude, away from humanity, into a state of prehumanity....
Spoilers
Synopsis
Spoiler Section (Highlight to Read)
A man touring a Mammoth Cave separates from his guide and becomes lost. His torch expires and he is giving up hope of finding a way out in the pitch dark, when he hears strange non-human footsteps approaching him. Thinking it to be a lost mountain lion or other such beast, he picks up a stone and throws it toward the source of the sound. The beast is hit and crumples to the floor. The guide finds the protagonist, and together they examine the fallen creature with the guide's torchlight. The creature mutters in its last breaths and they see its face, discovering that it is in fact a pale, deformed human, who had also become lost in the cave many years ago.
Associated Mythos Elements
- race: "Beast in the Cave"
Keeper Comments, Heresies and Controversies
See Also
External Links
Link to outside reviews or helpful pages.
