View source for Commonplace Book (fiction)

<!--
[[Image:name_of_uploaded_image.jpg|thumb|''Name of Page'']]
[[Image:name_of_additional_optional_image.jpg|thumb|''Name of Image'']]
* author(s): '''[[Author 1]], [[Author 2]]'''
* artist(s): '''[[Optional Artist 1]], [[Optional Artist 2]]'''
* appears in: '''[[Book 1]]''', '''[[Magazine 1]]'''
-->
* title:  '''Commonplace Book''' of images, ideas, prompts, and inspirations for stories
* author: '''[[H.P. Lovecraft]]'''
* publication:  '''Unpublished'''  "Presented to R. H. Barlow, Esq., on May 7, 1934 in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand..."a
* pages: '''~20'''


==Contents==
'''Commonplace Book''' of images, ideas, prompts, and inspirations for stories "...presented to R. H. Barlow, Esq., on May 7, 1934 in exchange for an admirably neat typed copy from his skilled hand..."

# Demophon shivered when the sun shone upon him. (Lover of darkness = ignorance.)
# Inhabitants of Zinge, over whom the star Canopus rises every night, are always gay and without sorrow. [x]
# The shores of Attica respond in song to the waves of the Aegean. [x]
# Horror Story:  Man dreams of falling - found on floor mangled as tho' from falling from a vast height. [x]
# Narrator walks along unfamiliar country road, - comes to strange region of the unreal.
# In Ld Dunsany's "[[Idle Days on the Yann (fiction)]]" The inhabitants of the antient [[River_Yann#Astahahn|Astahan, on the Yann]], do all things according to antient ceremony. Nothing new is found. "Here we have fetter'd and manacled Time, who wou'd otherwise slay the Gods." [x]
# Horror Story:  The sculptured hand - or other artificial hand - which strangles its creator. [x]
# Horror story:  Man makes appointment with old enemy. Dies - body keeps appointment.
# Dr. Eben Spencer plot (Lovecraft refers to a dream in which he saw himself as Dr. Spencer, an army doctor who discovered strange organic remains of an unknown race in the home of a local healer.) [x] (Might have been used as part of "[[Herbert West - Reanimator (fiction)]]"?)
# Dream of flying over city. (Used in "[[Celephais (fiction)|Celephaïs (fiction)]]".)
# Odd nocturnal ritual. Beasts dance and march to musick. [x]
# Happenings in interval between preliminary sound and striking of clock - ending -  "it was the tones of the clock striking three". [x]
# House and garden - old - associations. Scene takes on strange aspect.
# Hideous sound in the dark.
# Bridge and slimy black waters. (Used in "[[Fungi From Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Canal]]".)
# The walking dead - seemingly alive, but - . [x]
# Doors found mysteriously open and shut etc. - excite terror.
# Calamander-wood - a very valuable cabinet wood of Ceylon and S. India, resembling rosewood.
# Revise 1907 tale - painting of ultimate horror.  (Lovecraft is referring to a lost tale, "The Picture", which he described to Robert Block in a letter: "An artist drew a picture of a monster that came to life and killed him.")
# Man journeys into the past - or imaginative realm - leaving bodily shell behind.
# A very ancient colossus in a very ancient desert. Face gone - no man hath seen it.  (Might have been used in passing reference in "[[Under the Pyramids (fiction)]]"?)
# Mermaid Legend - Encyc. Britt. XVI - 40.
# The man who would not sleep - dares not sleep - takes drugs to keep himself awake. Finally falls asleep - and something happens. Motto from Baudelaire p. 214. (Used in "[[Hypnos (fiction)]]".)
# Dunsany - "[[A Shop in Go-By Street (fiction)]]":  Man stumbles on dream world - returns to earth - seeks to go back - succeeds, but finds dream world ancient and decayed as though by thousands of years.
# Man visits museum of antiquities - asks that it accept a bas-relief he has just made - old and learned curator laughs and says he cannot accept anything so modern. Man says that 'dreams are older than brooding Egypt or the contemplative Sphinx or garden-girdled Babylonia' and that he had fashioned the sculpture in his dreams. Curator bids him shew his product, and when he does so curator shews horror. Asks who the man may be. He tells modern name. "No - before that" says curator. Man does not remember except in dreams. Then curator offers high price, but man fears he means to destroy sculpture. Asks fabulous price - curator will consult directors.  Add good development and describe nature of bas-relief. (Used in "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]".)
# Dream of ancient castle stairs - sleeping guards - narrow window - battle on plain between men of England and men of yellow tabards with red dragons. Leader of English challenges leader of foe to single combat. They fight. Foe unhelmeted, but there is no head revealed. Whole army of foe fades into mist, and watcher finds himself to be the English knight on the plain, mounted. Looks at castle, and sees a peculiar concentration of fantastic clouds over the highest battlements.
# Life and Death:  Death - its desolation and horror - bleak spaces - sea-bottom - dead cities. But Life - the greater horror! Vast unheard-of reptiles and leviathans - hideous beasts of prehistoric jungle - rank slimy vegetation - evil instincts of primal man - Life is more horrible than death.
# The cat is the soul of antique Ægyptus and bearer of tales from forgotten cities of Meroë and Ophir. He is the kin of the jungle's lords, and heir to the secrets of hoary and sinister Africa. The Sphinx is his cousin, and he speaks her language; but he is more ancient than the Sphinx, and remembers that which she hath forgotten.  (Used in "[[The Cats of Ulthar (fiction)]]".)
# Dream of Seekonk - ebbing tide - bolt from sky - exodus from Providence - fall of Congregational dome.
# Strange visit to a place at night - moonlight - castle of great magnificence etc. Daylight shews either abandonment or unrecognisable ruins - perhaps of vast antiquity.
# Prehistoric man preserved in Siberian ice. (See Winchell - Walks and Talks in the Geological field - p. 156 et seq.)  (Perhaps reused for the discovery of prehistoric aliens discovered in ''[[At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)]]''?)
# As dinosaurs were once surpassed by mammals, so will man-mammal be surpassed by insect or bird - fall of man before the new race. [x] (Implied in ''[[The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)]]''?)
# Determinism and prophecy. [x]
# Moving away from earth more swiftly than light - past gradually unfolded - horrible revelation.
# Special beings with special senses from remote universes. Advent of an external universe to view.  (Perhaps used in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]"?)
# Disintegration of all matter to electrons and finally empty space assured, just as devolution of energy to radiant heat is known. Case of acceleration - man passes into space.
# Peculiar odour of a book of childhood induces repetition of childhood fancy.
# Drowning sensations - undersea - cities - ships - souls of the dead. Drowning is a horrible death.  (Sounds similar to "[[The Temple (fiction)]]"?)
# Sounds - possibly musical - heard in the night from other worlds or realms of being.  (Sounds similar to "[[The Music of Erich Zann (fiction)]]"?)
# Warning that certain ground is sacred or accursed; that a house or city must not be built upon it - or must be abandoned or destroyed if built, under penalty of catastrophe.
# The Italians call ''Fear La figlia della Morte'' - the daughter of Death. [x]
# Fear of mirrors - memory of dream in which scene is altered and climax is hideous surprise at seeing oneself in the water or a mirror. (Identity?) (probably "[[The Outsider (fiction)]]"?)
# Monsters born living - burrow underground and multiply, forming race of unsuspected daemons.  (Sounds like "[[The Lurking Fear (fiction)]]"?)
# Castle by pool or river - reflection fixed thro' centuries - castle destroyed, reflection lives to avenge destroyers weirdly.
# Race of immortal Pharaohs dwelling beneath pyramids in vast subterranean halls down black staircases.  (Perhaps reused in "[[Under the Pyramids (fiction)]]"?)
# Hawthorne - unwritten plot Visitor from tomb - stranger at some publick concourse followed at midnight to graveyard where he descends into the earth.
# From Arabia Encyclopaedia Britannica II - 255 Prehistoric fabulous tribes of Ad in the south, Thamood in the north, and Tasm and Jadis in the centre of the peninsula. "Very gorgeous are the descriptions given of Irem, the City of Pillars (as the Koran styles it) supposed to have been erected by Shedad, the latest despot of Ad, in the regions of Hadramaut, and which yet, after the annihilation of its tenants, remains entire, so Arabs say, invisible to ordinary eyes, but occasionally and at rare intervals, revealed to some heaven-favoured traveller." Rock excavations in N.W. Hejaz ascribed to Thamood tribe.  (Used in "[[The Nameless City (fiction)]]".)
# Cities wiped out by supernatural wrath.  (Perhaps used as "[[The Doom that Came to Sarnath (fiction)]]"?)
# AZATHOTH - hideous name. [x]  (Used as "[[Azathoth (fiction)]]"?)
# Phlegethon -  a river of liquid fire in Hades. [x]
# Enchanted garden where moon casts shadow of object or ghost invisible to the human eye.
# Calling on the dead - voice or familiar sound in adjacent room.
# Hand of dead man writes.
# Transposition of identity.  (Lovecraft used this theme numerous times:  "[[The Shadow out of Time (fiction)]]", "[[The Thing on the Doorstep (fiction)]]", "[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (fiction)]]", "[[Beyond the Wall of Sleep (fiction)]]".)
# Man followed by invisible thing.  (Perhaps used as "[[The Hound (fiction)]]"?)
# Book or MS. too horrible to read - warned against reading it - someone reads and is found dead. Haverhill incident.
# Sailing or rowing on lake in moonlight - sailing into invisibility.
# A queer village - in a valley, reached by a long road and visible from the crest of the hill from which that road descends - or close to a dense and antique forest.
# Man in strange subterranean chamber - seeks to force door of bronze - overwhelmed by influx of waters.
# Fisherman casts his net into the sea by moonlight - what he finds.  (Derleth made feeble use of this in one of his "[[Posthumous Collaborations]]".)
# A terrible pilgrimage to seek the nighted throne of the far daemon-sultan Azathoth.  (This might have evolved into "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]"?)
# Live man buried in bridge masonry according to superstition - or black cat.  (This makes a brief appearance in "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]".)
# Sinister names - [[Nasht]] - [[Kaman-Thah]]. [x]  (These names appear in "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]".)
# Identity - reconstruction of personality - man makes duplicate of himself. [x]  (Derleth abused this in "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]" "The Dark Brotherhood".)
# Riley's fear of undertakers - door locked on inside after death.  
# Catacombs discovered beneath a city (in America?).  (Perhaps forms the basis of "[[The Statement of Randolph Carter (fiction)]]"?)
# An impression - city in peril - dead city - equestrian statue - men in closed room - clattering of hooves heard from outside - marvel disclosed on looking out - doubtful ending.
# Murder discovered - body located - by psychological detective who pretends he has made walls of room transparent. Works on fear of murderer.
# Man with unnatural face - oddity of speaking - found to be a mask - Revelation.  (Used in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]"; also "[[The Festival (fiction)]]", "[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key (fiction)]]".)
# Tone of extreme phantasy, Man transformed to island or mountain. [x]
# Man has sold his soul to devil - returns to family from trip - life afterward - fear - culminating horror - novel length.
# Hallowe'en incident - mirror in cellar - face seen therein - death (claw-mark?).
# Rats multiply and exterminate first a single city and then all mankind. Increased size and intelligence.
# Italian revenge - killing self in cell with enemy - under castle. [used by FBL, Jr.]
# Black Mass under antique church.  (Perhaps used in "[[The Festival (fiction)]]", "[[The Horror At Red Hook (fiction)]]", or "[[The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)]]"?)
# Ancient cathedral - hideous gargoyle - man seeks to rob - found dead - gargoyle's jaw bloody.  (Maybe "[[The Hound (fiction)]]"?)
# Unspeakable dance of the gargoyles - in morning several gargoyles on old cathedral found transposed.
# Wandering thro' labyrinth of narrow slum streets - come on distant light - unheard-of rites of swarming beggars - like Court of Miracles in Notre Dame de Paris.
# Horrible secret in crypt of ancient castle - discovered by dweller.  (Maybe "[[The Rats in the Walls (fiction)]]"; some similarity to ''[[Castle Freak (1995 film)]]''.)
# Shapeless living thing forming nucleus of ancient building.
# Marblehead - dream - burying hill - evening - unreality. [x] [Festival?]
# Power of wizard to influence dreams of others.
# Quotation  "...a defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might." - Hawthorne
# Hideous cracked discords of bass musick from (ruin'd) organ in (abandon'd) abbey or cathedral. (Apparently used in "[[The Horror at Red Hook (fiction)]]"?)
# "For has not Nature, too, her grotesques - the rent rock, the distorting lights of evening on lonely roads, the unveiled structure of man in the embryo, or the skeleton?" Pater - Renaissance (da Vinci).
# To find something horrible in a (perhaps familiar) book, and not to be able to find it again.
# Borellus says, "that the Essential Salts of animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious man may have the whole ark of Noah in his own Study, and raise the fine shape of an animal out of its ashes at his pleasure; and that by the like method from the Essential Salts of humane dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal necromancy, call up the shape of any dead ancestor from the dust whereinto his body has been incinerated." (Used in "[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (fiction)]]".)
# Lonely philosopher fond of cat. Hypnotises it - as it were - by repeatedly talking to it and looking at it. After his death the cat evinces signs of possessing his personality. N.B. He has trained cat, and leaves it to a friend, with instructions as to fitting a pen to its right fore paw by means of a harness. Later writes with deceased's own handwriting.
# Lone lagoons and swamps of Louisiana - death daemon - ancient house and gardens - moss-grown trees - festoons of Spanish moss.
# Anencephalous or brainless monster who survives and attains prodigious size.
# Lost winter day - slept over - 20 yrs. later. Sleep in chair on summer night - false dawn - old scenery and sensations - cold - old persons now dead - horror - frozen?
# Man's body dies - but corpse retains life. Stalks about - tries to conceal odour of decay - detained somewhere - hideous climax. (Used in "[[Cool Air (fiction)]]".)
# A place one has been - a beautiful view of a village or farm-dotted valley in the sunset - which one cannot find again or locate in memory.  (Sounds like "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]"?)
# Change comes over the sun - shews objects in strange form, perhaps restoring landscape of the past.
# Horrible Colonial farmhouse and overgrown garden on city hillside - overtaken by growth. Verse "The House" as basis of story. (Appears to have become "[[Shunned House (fiction)]]"?)
# Unknown fires seen across the hills at night.  (May have been used in "[[The Dunwich Horror (fiction)]]"?)
# Blind fear of a certain woodland hollow where streams writhe among crooked roots, and where on a buried altar terrible sacrifices have occur'd - Phosphorescence of dead trees. Ground bubbles.
# Hideous old house on steep city hillside - Bowen St. - beckons in the night - black windows - horror unnam'd - cold touch and voice - the welcome of the dead.  (Maybe "[[The Shunned House (fiction)]]"?)
# Salem story - the cottage of an aged witch - wherein after her death are found sundry terrible things.  (Perhaps used in "[[The Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)]]"?)
# Subterranean region beneath placid New England village, inhabited by (living or extinct) creatures of prehistoric antiquity and strangeness.  (Might have appeared in "[[The Lurking Fear (fiction)]]", "[[The Festival (fiction)]]", and/or "[[The Mound (fiction)]]"?)
# Hideous secret society - widespread - horrible rites in caverns under familiar scenes - one's own neighbour may belong. [x]  (Sounds like "[[The Festival (fiction)]]", and possibly "[[The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (fiction)]]"?)
# Corpse in room performs some act - prompted by discussion in its presence. Tears up or hides will, etc.
# Sealed room - or at least no lamp allowed there. Shadow on wall. [x]
# Old sea tavern now far inland from made land. Strange occurrences - sound of lapping of waves - 
# Vampire visits man in ancestral abode - is his own father.
# A thing that sat on a sleeper's chest. Gone in morning, but something left behind.
# Wall paper cracks off in sinister shape - man dies of fright. [x] (Lovecraft says this was used in or inspired "[[Rats in Walls (fiction)]]".)
# Educated mulatto seeks to displace personality of white man and occupy his body.  (Has some similarities to the backstory from "[[The Thing on the Doorstep (fiction)]]".)
# Ancient negro voodoo wizard in cabin in swamp - possesses white man.
# Antediluvian - Cyclopean ruins on lonely Pacific island. Centre of earthwide subterranean witch cult.  (Used in "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]".)
# Ancient ruin in Alabama swamp - voodoo.  (Used in "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]".)
# Man lives near graveyard - how does he live? Eats no food. [x]
# Biological-hereditary memories of other worlds and universes. Butler - God Known and Unk. p. 59. 
# Death lights dancing over a salt marsh.
# Ancient castle within sound of weird waterfall - sound ceases for a time under strange conditions.
# Prowling at night around an unlighted castle amidst strange scenery.
# A secret living thing kept and fed in an old house.  (Used in "[[The Dunwich Horror (fiction)]]".)
# Something seen at oriel window of forbidden room in ancient manor house.  (Used by Derleth in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Art note - fantastick daemons of Salvator Rosa or Fuseli (trunk-proboscis).
# Talking bird of great longevity - tells secret long afterward.
# Photius tells of a (lost) writer named Damascius, who wrote "Incredible Fictions" "Tales of Daemons" "Marvellous Stories of Appearances from the Dead".
# Horrible things whispered in the lines of Gauthier de Metz (13th cen.) "''Image du Monde''".  ([[Used in "[[The Nameless City (fiction)]]"?)
# Dried-up man living for centuries in cataleptic state in ancient tomb.
# Hideous secret assemblage at night in antique alley - disperse furtively one by one - one seen to drop something - a human hand - 
# Man abandon'd by ship - swimming in sea - pickt up hours later with strange story of undersea region he has visited - mad??  (Sounds a bit like "[[The Temple (fiction)]]", "[[Dagon (fiction)]]", and "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]"?)
# Castaways on island eat unknown vegetation and become strangely transformed.  ([[William Hope Hodgson's "[[The Voice in the Night (fiction)]]" perhaps inspired this?]]
# Ancient and unknown ruins - strange and immortal bird who speaks in a language horrifying and revelatory to the explorers.  (This might have appeared in "[[At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)]]"?)
# Individual, by some strange process, retraces the path of evolution and becomes amphibious. Dr. insists that the particular amphibian from which man descends is not like any known to palaeontology. To prove it, indulges in (or relates) strange experiment.
# Marble Faun p. 346 - strange and prehistorick Italian city of stone.  (Derleth may have abused this in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# New England region call'd "[[Witches' Hollow]]" - along course of a river. Rumours of witches' sabbaths and Indian powwows on a broad mound rising out of the level where some old hemlocks and beeches formed a dark grove or daemon-temple. Legends hard to account for. Holmes - Guardian Angel.  (Might have appeared in "[[The Dunwich Horror (fiction)]]"?  Derleth may have abused this in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Phosphorescence of decaying wood - called in New England "fox-fire".
# Mad artist in ancient sinister house draws things. What were his models? Glimpse. (Used in "[[Pickman's Model (fiction)]]".)
# Man has miniature shapeless Siamese twin - exhib. in circus - twin surgically detached - disappears - does hideous things with malign life of his own. ([[Henry S. Whitehead]] used this in "[[Cassius (fiction)]]"?)
# [[Witches' Hollow]] novel? Man hired as teacher in private school misses road on first trip - encounters dark hollow with unnaturally swollen trees and small cottage (light in window?). Reaches school and hears that boys are forbidden to visit hollow. One boy is strange - teacher sees him visit hollow - odd doings - mysterious disappearance or hideous fate.  (Derleth may have abused this in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Hideous world superimposed on visible world - gate through - power guides narrator to ancient and forbidden book with directions for access.
# A secret language spoken by a very few old men in a wild country leads to hidden marvels and terrors still surviving.
# Strange man seen in lonely mountain place talking with great winged thing which flies away as others approach.  (Used in "[[Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Familiars]]".)
# Someone or something cries in fright at sight of the rising moon, as if it were something strange. [x]
# DELRIO asks "An sint unquam daemones incubi et succubae, et an ex tali congressu proles nasci queat?" (Used in "[[The Horror at Red Hook (fiction)]]".)
# Explorer enters strange land where some atmospheric quality darkens the sky to virtual blackness - marvels therein.
# Footnote by Haggard or Lang in "The World's Desire":  "Probably the mysterious and indecipherable ancient books, which were occasionally excavated in old Egypt, were written in this dead language of a more ancient and now forgotten people. Such was the book discovered at Coptos, in the ancient sanctuary there, by a priest of the Goddess. 'The whole earth was dark, but the moon shone all about the Book.' A scribe of the period of the Ramessids mentions another in indecipherable ancient writing. 'Thou tellest me thou understandest no word of it, good or bad. There is, as it were, a wall about it that none may climb. Thou art instructed, yet thou knowest it not; this makes me afraid.'  "Birch Zeitschrift 1871 pp. 61–64 Papyrus Anastasi I pl. X, l.8, pl. X l.4. Maspero, Hist. Anc. pp. 66–67."
# Members of witch-cult were buried face downward. Man investigates ancestor in family tomb and finds disquieting condition.
# Strange well in Arkham country - water gives out (or was never struck  - hole kept tightly covered by a stone ever since dug) - no bottom - shunned and feared - what lay beneath (either unholy temple or other very ancient thing, or great cave-world). (Used in "[[Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Well]]", and possibly also "[[The Colour Out of Space (fiction)]]".)
# Hideous book glimpsed in ancient shop - never seen again.  (Possibly "[[The Book (fiction)]]", still never completed by Lovecraft.)
# Horrible boarding house - closed door never opened.  (Maybe used in "[[The Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)]]"?)
# Ancient lamp found in tomb - when filled and used, its light reveals strange world. (Used in "[[Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Lamp]]"; Derleth may have abused this in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Any very ancient, unknown, or prehistoric object - its power of suggestion - forbidden memories.
# Vampire dog.  (Might have been used in "[[The Hound (fiction)]]" or "[[The Shunned House (fiction)]]"?)
# Evil alley or enclosed court in ancient city - Union or Milligan St. (Used in "[[Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Courtyard]]".)
# Visit to someone in wild and remote house - ride from station through the night - into the haunted hills - house by forest or water - terrible things live there.  (Might have appeared in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]".)
# Man forced to take shelter in strange house. Host has thick beard and dark glasses. Retires. In night guest rises and sees host's clothes about - also mask which was the apparent face of whatever the host was. Flight.  (Used in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]".)
# Autonomic nervous system and subconscious mind do not reside in the head. Have mad physician decapitate a man but keep him alive and subconsciously controlled. Avoid copying tale by W. C. Morrow.  (Lovecraft is referring to the story "[[The Monster Maker (fiction)]]".)
# Black cat on hill near dark gulf of ancient inn yard. Mew hoarsely - invites artist to nighted mysteries beyond. Finally dies at advanced age. Haunts dreams of artist - lures him to follow - strange outcome (never wakes up? or makes bizarre discovery of an elder world outside 3-dimensioned space?)
# Trophonius - cave of. Vide Class. Dict. and Atlantic article.  (The Atlantic article is uncertain, but Lovecraft refers to Cave of Trophonius, a Greek mythological character. 'Descend the Cave of Trophonius' is synonymous with experience a great horror. The cave itself is an oracle, hence the interest for this.  Perhaps used in "[[The Thing on the Doorstep (fiction)]]"?)
# Steepled town seen from afar at sunset - does not light up at night. Sail has been seen putting out to sea. (Used in "[[Fungi from Yuggoth (poem)|Fungi from Yuggoth - The Port]]".)
# Adventures of a disembodied spirit - thro' dim, half-familiar cities and over strange moors - thro' space and time - other planets and universes in the end.
# Vague lights, geometrical figures, etc., seen on retina when eyes are closed. Caus'd by rays from other dimensions acting on optick nerve? From other planets? Connected with a life or phase of being in which person could live if he only knew how to get there? Man afraid to shut eyes - he has been somewhere on a terrible pilgrimage and this fearsome seeing faculty remains.  (Sounds like "[[Dreams in the Witch House (fiction)]]"?)
# Man has terrible wizard friend who gains influence over him. Kills him in defence of his soul - walls body up in ancient cellar - BUT - the dead wizard (who has said strange things about soul lingering in body) changes bodies with him . . . leaving him a conscious corpse in cellar.  (Used in "[[The Thing on Doorstep (fiction)]]".)
# Certain kind of deep-toned stately music of the style of the 1870's or 1880's recalls certain visions of that period - gas-litten parlours of the dead, moonlight on old floors, decaying business streets with gas lamps, etc. - under terrible circumstances.
# Book which induces sleep on reading - cannot be read - determined man reads it - goes mad - precautions taken by aged initiate who knows - protection (as of author and translator) by incantation.
# Time and space - past event - 150 yrs ago - unexplained. Modern period - person intensely homesick for past says or does something which is psychically transmitted back and actually causes the past event.
# Ultimate horror - grandfather returns from strange trip - mystery in house - wind and darkness - grandfather and mother engulfed - questions forbidden - somnolence - investigation - cataclysm - screams overheard - 
# Man whose money was obscurely made loses it. Tells his family he must go again to THE PLACE (horrible and sinister and extra-dimensional) where he got his gold. Hints of possible pursuers - or of his possible non-return. He goes - record of what happens to him - or what happens at his home when he returns. Perhaps connect with preceding topic. Give fantastic, quasi-Dunsanian treatment.
# Man observed in a publick place with features (or ring or jewel) identified with those of man long (perhaps generations) buried.
# Terrible trip to an ancient and forgotten tomb.  (Used many times, "[[The Statement of Randolph Cater (fiction)]]", "[[The Tomb (fiction)]]" and "[[The Nameless City (fiction)]]", etc.)
# Hideous family living in shadow in ancient castle by edge of wood near black cliffs and monstrous waterfall.
# Boy rear'd in atmosphere of considerable mystery. Believes father dead. Suddenly is told that father is about to return. Strange preparations - consequences.
# Lonely bleak islands off New England coast. Horrors they harbour - outpost of cosmic influences.
# What hatches from primordial egg.
# Strange man in shadowy quarter of ancient city possesses something of immemorial archaic horror.
# Hideous old book discovered - directions for shocking evocation.  (Possibly "[[The Book (fiction)]]", still unfinished.)
# Pre-human idol found in desert.
# Idol in museum moves in a certain way.  (Might have been used in "[[Out of the Aeons (fiction)", "[[The Horror in the Museum (fiction)"?)
# Migration of Lemmings - Atlantis.
# Little green Celtic figures dug up in an ancient Irish bog.
# Man blindfolded and taken in closed cab or car to some very ancient and secret place.  (Vaguely similar to some situations in "[[The Thing on the Doorstep (fiction)]]"?)
# The dreams of one man actually create a strange half-mad world of quasi-material substance in another dimension. Another man, also a dreamer, blunders into this world in a dream. What he finds. Intelligence of denizens. Their dependence on the first dreamer. What happens at his death.  (Apparently written after "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]".)
# A very ancient tomb in the deep woods near where a 17th century Virginia manor-house used to be. The undecayed, bloated thing found within.
# Appearance of an ancient god in a lonely and archaic place - prob. temple ruin. Atmosphere of beauty rather than horror. Subtle handling - presence revealed by faint sound or shadow. Landscape changes? Seen by child? Impossible to reach or identify locale again?
# A general house of horror - nameless crime - sounds - later tenants - (Flammarion) (novel length?).
# Inhabitant of another world - face masked, perhaps with human skin or surgically alter'd human shape, but body alien beneath robes. Having reached earth, tries to mix with mankind. Hideous revelation. Suggested by [[Clark Ashton Smith]].  (Theme recurs in/from "[[Through the Gates of the Silver Key (fiction)]]", "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]", "[[The Festival (fiction)]]".)
# In ancient buried city a man finds a mouldering prehistoric document in English and in his own handwriting, telling an incredible tale. Voyage from present into past implied. Possible actualisation of this.  (Used in "[[The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)]]".)
# Reference in Egyptian papyrus to a secret of secrets under tomb of high-priest Ka-Nefer. Tomb finally found and identified - trap door in stone floor - staircase, and the illimitable black abyss. [x]  (Sounds like "[[Under the Pyramids (fiction)]]"?)
# Expedition lost in Antarctic or other weird place. Skeletons and effects found years later. Camera films used but undeveloped. Finders develop - and find strange horror.  (Used in ''[[At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)]]''.)
# Scene of an urban horror - ''Sous le Cap'' or ''Champlain'' Streets - Quebec - rugged cliff-face - moss, mildew, dampness - houses half-burrowing into cliff.
# Thing from sea - in dark house, man finds doorknobs etc. wet as from touch of something. He has been a sea-captain, and once found a strange temple on a volcanically risen island.
# Dream of awaking in vast hall of strange architecture, with sheet-covered forms on slabs - in positions similar to one's own. Suggestions of disturbingly non-human outlines under sheets. One of the objects moves and throws off sheet - non-terrestrial being revealed. Sugg. that oneself is also such a being - mind has become transferred to body on other planet.  (Seems to have been used in "[[Through the Gate of the Silver Key (fiction)]]" and "[[The Shadow Out of Time (fiction)]]".)
# Desert of rock - prehistoric door in cliff, in the valley around which lie the bones of uncounted billions of animals both modern and prehistoric - some of them puzzlingly gnawed.  (Sound a bit like the Vale of Pnath in "[[The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath (fiction)]]"?)
# Ancient necropolis - bronze door in hillside which opens as the moonlight strikes it - focussed by ancient lens in pylon opposite?
# Primal mummy in museum - awakes and changes place with visitor.
# An odd wound appears on a man's hand suddenly and without apparent cause. Spreads. Consequences.
# Thibetan ROLANG - Sorcerer (or NGAGSPA) reanimates a corpse by holding it in a dark room - lying on it mouth to mouth and repeating a magic formula with all else banished from his mind. Corpse slowly comes to life and stands up. Tries to escape - leaps, bounds, and struggles - but sorcerer holds it. Continues with magic formula. Corpse sticks out tongue and sorcerer bites it off. Corpse then collapses. Tongue become a valuable magic talisman. If corpse escapes - hideous results and death to sorcerer.
# Strange book of horror discovered in ancient library. Paragraphs of terrible significance copied. Later unable to find and verify text. Perhaps discover body or image or charm under floor, in secret cupboard, or elsewhere. Idea that book was merely hypnotic delusion induced by dead brain or ancient magic.
# Man enters (supposedly) own house in pitch dark. Feels way to room and shuts door behind him. Strange horrors - or turns on lights and finds alien place or presence. Or finds past restored or future indicated.
# Pane of peculiar-looking glass from a ruined monastery reputed to have harboured devil-worship set up in modern house at edge of wild country. Landscape looks vaguely and unplaceably wrong through it. It has some unknown time-distorting quality, and comes from a primal, lost civilisation. Finally, hideous things in other world seen through it.  (Derleth abused this in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?  Used in fragment "[[The Rose Window (fiction)]]"?)
# Daemons, when desiring an human form for evil purposes, take to themselves the bodies of hanged men.
# Loss of memory and entry into a cloudy world of strange sights and experiences after shock, accident, reading of strange book, participation in strange rite, draught of strange brew, etc. Things seen have vague and disquieting familiarity. Emergence. Inability to retrace course.
# Distant tower visible from hillside window. Bats cluster thickly around it at night. Observer fascinated. One night wakes to find self on unknown black circular staircase. In tower? Hideous goal.  (Would become a scene in "[[The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)]]".)
# Black winged thing flies into one's house at night. Cannot be found or identified - but subtle developments ensue.
# Invisible Thing felt - or seen to make prints - on mountain top or other height, inaccessible place.  (Might have been used in "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]"?)
# Planets form'd of invisible matter.
# A monstrous derelict - found and boarded by a castaway or shipwreck survivor.  (Maybe appears in "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]"?)
# A return to a place under dreamlike, horrible, and only dimly comprehended circumstances. Death and decay reigning - town fails to light up at night - Revelation.
# Disturbing conviction that all life is only a deceptive dream with some dismal or sinister horror lurking behind.
# Person gazes out window and finds city and world dark and dead (or oddly changed) outside.  (Used in "[[The Music of Erich Zann (fiction)]]" or "[[Nyarlathotep (fiction)]]"?)
# Trying to identify and visit the distant scenes dimly seen from one's window - bizarre consequences.  (Used in "[[The Music of Erich Zann (fiction)]]" and/or "[[The Haunter of the Dark (fiction)]]"?)
# Something snatched away from one in the dark - in a lonely, ancient, and generally shunned place.
# (Dream of) some vehicle - railway train, coach, etc. - which is boarded in a stupor or fever, and which is a fragment of some past or ultra-dimensional world - taking the passenger out of reality - into vague, age-crumbled regions or unbelievable gulfs of marvel.  (Sounds like it would evolve into the fragment that would become "[[The Thing in the Moonlight (fiction)]]"?)
# Special Correspondence of NY Times - March 3, 1935: "Halifax, N.S. - Etched deeply into the face of an island which rises from the Atlantic surges off the S. coast of Nova Scotia 20 m. from Halifax is the strangest rock phenomenon which Canada boasts. Storm, sea, and frost have graven into the solid cliff of what has come to be known as Virgin's Island an almost perfect outline of the Madonna with the Christ Child in her arms.  The island has sheer and wave-bound sides, is a danger to ships, and is absolutely uninhabited. So far as is known, no human being has ever set foot on its shores."  (Might appear in "[[The Call of Cthulhu (fiction)]]"?)
# An ancient house with blackened pictures on the walls - so obscured that their subjects cannot be deciphered. Cleaning - and revelation. (Lovecraft is referring to Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Edward Randolph's Portrait".)
# Begin story with presence of narrator - inexplicable to himself - in utterly alien and terrifying scenes (dream?).
# Strange human being (or beings) living in some ancient house or ruins far from populous district (either old New England or far exotic land). Suspicion (based on shape and habits) that it is not all human.  (Recurring theme, "[[The Whisperer in Darkness (fiction)]]", "[[Through the Gate of the Silver Key (fiction)]]".)
# Ancient winter woods - moss - great boles - twisted branches - dark - ribbed roots - always dripping....
# Talking rock of Africa - immemorially ancient oracle in desolate jungle ruins that speaks with a voice out of the aeons.
# Man with lost memory in strange, imperfectly comprehended environment. Fears to regain memory - a glimpse....  (Might have been used in "[[The Shadow out of Time (fiction)]]"?)
# Man idly shapes a queer image - some power impels him to make it queerer than he understands. Throws it away in disgust - but something is abroad in the night.  (Abused by Derleth in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Ancient (Roman? prehistoric?) stone bridge washed away by a (sudden and curious?) storm. Something liberated which had been sealed up in the masonry of years ago. Things happen.  (Abused by Derleth in a "[[Posthumous Collaboration]]"?)
# Mirage in time - image of long-vanish'd pre-human city.  (Sounds a bit like a scene from ''[[At the Mountains of Madness (fiction)]]''?)
# Fog or smoke - assumes shaped under incantations.
# Bell of some ancient church or castle rung by some unknown hand - a thing... or an invisible Presence.  (Apparently becomes part of the fragment "[[The Descendant (fiction)]]", never finished.)
# Insects or other entities from space attack and penetrate a man's head and cause him to remember alien and exotic things - possible displacement of personality.  (May 11, 1935 letter to [[Robert H. Barlow]]: "I had a very vivid dream fragment only last night - perhaps in part derived from that extremely clever plot idea outlined toward the end of your letter. You speak of a cranium containing, in place of a brain, a curious metal device - implying that the latter is either an alien and conscious entity itself, or else a sort of receiving set by which remote outside entities can control the body in which it is planted. Well - in my dream I was, while walking in a familiar rural region, suddenly attacked by a swarm of swift-darting insects from the sky. They were tiny and streamlined, and seemed to be able to pierce my cranium and enter my brain as if their substance were not strictly material. No sooner had they entered my head, than my identity and position seemed to become very doubtful. I remembered alien and incredible scenes...."  [[Ramsey Campbell]] would adapt this to "[[The Insects from Shaggai (fiction)]]"; it also sounds like "[[The Terror from the Depths (fiction)]]" by [[Fritz Leiber]]?)

==Comments / Trivia==
<!--Any factual trivia or comments go here.  Optional; describe anything known or reported by experts about the origin of the story or inspiration for elements of it.
===Background===
===Legacy===
-->


<!--
==Spoilers==
===Synopsis===
Describe the work in detail; no bias allowed.
{{spoiler|
Synopsis
}}


===Associated Mythos Elements===
* deity:  [[GreatOld1]]
* race:  [[Race1]]
* character:  [[Character1]]
* tome: ''[[Tome1]]''
* organization:  [[Organization1]]
* cult:  [[Organization2]]
* setting:  [[Setting1]]
* location:  [[Location1]]
-->
<!-- 
===Keeper Comments, Heresies and Controversies ===
Comments and tidbits for Call of Cthulhu Keepers about this fiction;
Possibly how the work is required reading that can aid your campaign.
This is also a good place to include non-canon and controversial aspects of 
the literature's mythos.  Suggested Alternative Theories include:  Derleth's 
elemental scheme; pseudo-science interpretation; "fanon" interpretations; 
unofficial humorous or eccentric versions; identification with "Real Life" mythological, religious, folklore, natural, and historical phenomena; rumor 
and speculation contribute some flexibility and ambiguity to the mythos.
CLUFFS - from Solar System Heritage (https://www.solarsystemheritage.com/cluffs.html):  
"Cute Little Unfulfilled Fragments of Fascination:  [Pulp] literature is prone 
to these little tantalising snippets, delightful digressions, frustratingly not followed up, which tempt one to wonder at unanswered questions."
Keep general DISCUSSION on the talk page.-->

==See Also==

===External Links=== 
Link to outside reviews or helpful pages.
* http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~cje/mythos/cb.html 
* https://www.yog-sothoth.com/forums/topic/16066-commonplace-book-inspired-stories/

<!--{{DEFAULTSORT:Title, The/A/An}}-->
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Fiction:PosthumousCollaborations]]

__NOTOC__