stories can be read on this website
don't expect quality from these summaries. this is a personal project, and is very much opinionated and unprofessional. (I'm just doing this for... well, I can't exactly call it fun... but for something I guess. there must be something.) also, there may be spoilers, especially for the longer stories, or the ones where the Big Twist is something racist.
also this is in chronological order of when it was written so the first few are things he wrote as a kid
current progress (as of 06/26/23): 76/104 (6/104 here) although I haven't worked on this in a while on account of I got tired of reading that man's writing
The Little Glass Bottle (written by Lovecraft as a child)
message in a bottle but it was a prank
The Secret Cave or John Lees Adventure (written by Lovecraft as a child)
boy gets lost in a cave and his sister drowns but he finds a box with gold in it
The Mystery of the Grave-Yard (written by Lovecraft as a child)
detective story
[Racism: Some] [Stereotyped Black character]
The Mysterious Ship (written by Lovecraft as a child)
Spooky ship kidnaps guys
[Racism: Little to none?]
The Beast in the Cave
guy gets lost in a cave and chased by a creature. he kills it and gets rescued and then sees the creature and ahhhh it was a dude once
[Racism: Little to none]
[Themes of degeneration]
The Alchemist
guy's family got cursed by a wizard but it turns out the curse was just the wizard sneaking into their house to kill them
The Tomb
guy finds a weird old tomb and becomes obsessed with it, eventually gets in and finds a coffin w his name on it, but actually he was just cray cray and never went in, but the coffin was real
[Racism: Little to none]
[Ableism/sanism]
Dagon
guy's boat ends up in a weird seafloor lookin place, he finds a monolith with weird carvings of fishguys on it. then he sees a fishguy and goes cray cray
[Racism: Mild] [Scary creatures with Black features]
A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson
Parody of Lovecraft's old-sounding writing style I think?
[Racism: Little to none?]
Sweet Ermengarde
Parody of romantic melodramas. Actually funny imo
[Racism: Little to none]
Polaris
Guy has a "false life" dream and then gets yoinked out of it right before the enemies attack
[Racism: A lot] [Caricatured depictions of Inuit people]
The Green Meadow
weird book found inside a meteorite turns out to be a message from a guy trapped in a weird place
[Racism: Little to none]
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
Guy makes a machine to see inside a crazy guy's head during his dreams, turns out there was an entity in there
[Themes of degeneration] [Classism] [Sanism]
Memory
something something humans extinct
Old Bugs
Young guy wants to drink illegal alcohol but old bum stops him and then drops dead. Turns out the old bum was his mom's ex
[Racism: None]
[Classism] [Themes of degeneration]
The Transition of Juan Romero
Guy has a weird ring and a weird friend until the guys accidentally blow a hole into some sorta cavern and his weird friend mysteriously dies or maybe leaves his body n becomes smth else?
[Racism: Some] [Prejudice against Mexicans] ["he's native but not really"]
[Classism]
The White Ship
guy goes on a weird boat and visits all kinds of places but everyone tells him not to go to Cathuria but he does and the ship wrecks. then he wakes up
[Racism: None]
The Doom that Came to Sarnath
ppl in some place destroy a weird fishguy city and celebrate it for 1000 years until they get turned into fishguys on the 1000 anniversary
[Racism: A bit] [Themes of degeneration] [Scary creatures with Black features]
The Statement of Randolph Carter
guy goes into a weird tomb with a tin can phone to his friend, and then shit gets fucky and who was phone
[Racism: None]
The Terrible Old Man
Guys try to extort/rob the weird old guy and end up washing ashore dead
[Racism: Little to none]
[Prejudice against immigrants]
The Tree
two sculptors but one of them dies and then a weird tree grows and a branch falls on the other one and his work
[Racism: None]
The Cats of Ulthar
Some bitch ass couple kill any cat that gets near their house, until one day (with help from visiting kid) all the cats in the town eat them
[Racism: A lot] [Stereotypes and misconceptions of Roma people]
The Temple
Submarine crew discovers a weird underground temple that compels them to approach
[Racism: Little to none]
[Classism, albeit from the main character rather than baked into the work itself]
Facts concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family
The last guy in a fucked up family finds out that his great-whatever grandmother had been an "ape-princess" from Africa and commits die about it.
[Racism: A lot] [Stereotypes and misconceptions about Africa] [Prejudice against immigrants] [Scary creatures with Black features] ["race mixing bad"]
The Street
I think this is just a metaphor for America. As Lovecraft saw it.
[Racism: A lot] [Prejudice against Native Americans] [Prejudice against immigrants] [Themes of degeneration]
[Classism]
Poetry and the Gods
Girl recites a poem and then the gods show up and show her cool things
[Racism: None]
Celephaïs
Guy looks for a city in his dreams and does drugs to have more dreams and gets evicted and eventually finds the city. but he dies irl
[Racism: None]
From Beyond
This guy Crawdad invented a machine that lets ppl see ghosts or smth. and then he goes cray cray(fish) and starts killing people and has a heart attack
[Racism: None]
Nyarlathotep
Nyarlathotep shows up and shows people some fucked up things
[Racism: A little] ["he's black but not really"]
The Picture in the House
Guy goes in a house and the old guy there shows him a creepy book with a picture of a cannibal butchers shop which maybe made the old guy a cannibal
[Racism: A lot] [Themes of degeneration] [Classism] [Stereotypes and misconceptions about Africa] [N word said]
The Crawling Chaos
Guy ODs and has a bad trip where he's in the future and a flood consumes the earth and then drains into a ravine
[Racism: Little to none]
Ex Oblivione
Old person has vivid dreams and there's a gate in them that they can't go thru. They take a special drug to go through it and (dr coomer voice) There's Nothing There and probably they die
[Racism: None]
The Nameless City
Archaeologist investigates the ruins of a weird city and ignores all the evidence that the inhabitants weren't human, until it hits him.
[Racism: Some]
[Themes of degeneration]
The Quest of Iranon
Immortal prettyboy (and, briefly, his mortal probably-boyfriend) spends years looking for his beautiful home city, and then learns he'd made it up as a kid. Then he walks out into the desert and ages and dies
[Racism: None]
[Themes of degeneration]
The Moon-Bog
Guy tries to drain a bog and it goes uhhhh badly
[Classism] [Prejudice against the Irish]
The Outsider
MC escapes the freaky castle they grew up in, sees some people who then run away in terror, looks around and sees a terrible monster... but then realizes it's a mirror
[Racism: None]
The Other Gods
Guy climbs a weird cliff and gets some freaky divine revelations and then the sky eats him just like magnus archive
[Racism: None?]
The Music of Erich Zann
Mute violinist plays some freaky music and then disappears (retroactively erasing the entire street he lived on from existence)
[Racism: None?]
Herbert West - Reanimator
uy tries to perfect his special sauce that reanimates the dead... it never goes well
[Racism: A lot] [Caricatured Black character]
Hypnos
Guy and his weird friend do drugs and have freaky dreams until one of them goes too far and shit gets fucky
[Racism: Little to none]
What the Moon Brings
Shit looks freaky in the moonlight sometimes
[Racism: None]
Azathoth
Guy has uhhh weird dreams because of the stars?
[Racism: None]
The Horror at Martin’s Beach
Fishermen pull up a weird giant fishthing but it's a babby and then its parent gets reveange
[Racism: None]
The Hound
Graverobbers dig up a guy and steal his fancy amulet with a dog on it. And then a spooky dogthing comes after them
[Racism: None]
The Lurking Fear
Weird deaths around a deserted mansion, turns out the rich family who used to live there turned into freaky creatures living underground
[Racism: Little to none]
[Themes of degeneration]
The Rats in the Walls
dude finds out his ancestors used to breed ppl as food, goes cray cray
[Racism: Jesus FUCK] [Cat named the N word] [Themes of degeneration]
The Unnamable
writer guy calls stuff unnamable which pisses off his other writer friend. but then they both experience some fucked up creature and other guy has to admit it was unnamable
[Racism: Little to none]
Ashes
Guy invents a liquid that can turn anything except glass into ashes. Ends up getting dunked in it himself
[Racism: none]
The Ghost-Eater
Ghost werewolf eats a ghost guy
[Racism: none?]
The Loved Dead
Necrophilia
The Festival
Guy goes back to their family's old hometown for a festival but things go freaky and there's creatures
[Racism: Little to none]
Deaf, Dumb, and Blind
deafmute blind paraplegic dude hears and sees somethign so fucked up it kills him
[Racism: Little to none]
[Ableism]
Under the Pyramids
Houdini expy goes to Egypt for tourism and gets kidnapped and lowered into a hole where he sees freaky creatures
[Racism: A lot] [Stereotypes of Middle Eastern people] [Stereotypes and misconceptions about Islam]
The Shunned House
Some fucked up house where a lot of people died has fucked up shit in the cellar. Guy and his uncle go into the cellar trying to clear out whatever it is and the guy's uncle gets melted. Then he gets acid and melts some creature under the cellar with it.
[Racism: Little to none]
The Horror at Red Hook
Fucked up stuff involving human trafficking and necromancy happens in this weird ass town
[Racism: A lot] [Prejudice against immigrants] [Stereotypes of Asian people] [Prejudice against Kurdish people]
He
weird old guy shows normal guy a window that opens to any time, and then gets got by the ghosts of native americans who he'd wronged
[Racism: Some]
In the Vault
Local undertaker cut the feet off of a corpse to fit it in the coffin. this comes back to bite him in the ankles
[Racism: Little to none]
[Classism]
The Descendant
Guy has serious anxiety but doesn't say anything about why until his neighbor asks him to help him read the Necronomicon. And then he doesn't say anything useful.
[Racism: A little]
[Stereotyped Jewish character]
Cool Air
guy becomes more and more reliant on his a/c and it turns out its because he's dead and trying not to decay
[Racism: Some]
[Prejudice against immigrants] [Classism]
The Call of Cthulhu
pending
Two Black Bottles
guy stole souls n put them in bottles, then forgor how to give them back when the soulless body comes looking
[Racism: Little to none?]
[Classism]
Pickman's Model
guy paints scary paintings of weird demon things but it turns out he's paintin from life
[Racism: Little to none]
The Silver Key
Randolph Carter stopped having adventures in his dreams and then got depressed until he finds a key and starts having dreams again, and then goes back to his childhood
[Racism: Little to none]
The Strange High House in the Mist
Guy visits Kingsport and gets into that house and comes back but maybe left his soul behind?
[Racism: None]
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath [LONG]
Randolph Carter again. This time while he's dreaming he sees Kadath and wants to go there. Big ol journey. he gets kidnapped by nyarlathotep's minions 3 times and also meets pickman. And then he gets to kadath and its abandoned bc apparetnly the gods went to his dreamland instead. nyarlathotep tells him to bring them back and yeets them into space. and then he wakes up
[Racism: Some]
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward [Long]
Guy gets possessed or something by his ancestor
[Racism: Some] [Cat named the N word]
The Colour out of Space
pending
The Very Old Folk
Some ancient greek guys saw some fucked up things. Except it was a dream some guy had maybe
The Thing in the Moonlight
pending
The Last Test
pending
History of the Necronomicon
pending
The Curse of Yig
Guy is afraid of snakes so his wife kills them but then the native american snake god Yig (not an actual Native belief. Lovecraft made it up) maybe cursed him. Then his wife hallucinates a lot of snakes and kills him and then gives birth to snakey babies
[Racism: A lot] [Stereotypes and misconceptions of Native Americans]
Ibid
Tales of the adventures of some dead greek guy's skull. Parody of academia.
[Racism: None]
The Dunwich Horror
pending
The Electric Executioner
Guy meets a weirdo on a train who shows him his invention (electric chair but just for the head) and tries to use it on him, but he tricks the guy into wearing it instead
[Racism: A bit]
[Sanism]
The Mound [Long]
Guy finds a manuscript buried in a freaky mound, written by a guy who went in and visited K'nyan for years but tried to escape. And then guy himself goes in and sees the guy but turned into a zombie thing.
[Racism: A lot] [Stereotypes and misconceptions about Native Americans] ["he's native but not really"] [Scary creatures with Black features] [Themes of degeneration]
Medusa's Coil
Woman's hair is evil and alive. ~Surprise twist~ /s, she was mixed race.
[Racism: A lot] [Scary creatures with Black features] ["race mixing bad"]
The Whisperer in Darkness [long]
Guy gets letters from other guy who's been seeing aliens in the Vermont hills. Then the letters get weirder after the guy maybe gets brainwashed or replaced by the aliens, and he maybe got taken to space
[Racism: Very little?]
At the Mountains of Madness [LONG]
A bunch of scientists go to Antartica and find some "fossilized" Elder Things/Old Ones. Which then kill half of them. And the survivors find the Old Ones' city... and osme freshly murdered Old Ones. And then nearly get killed by a shoggoth.
[Racism: A little?]
[Themes of degeneration]
The Shadow Over Innsmouth [Long]
guy visits a town full of scary half-fish weirdos, is freaked out. later learns that he's related to them and is going all fishy, is surprisingly ok with this
[Racism: A lot?] ["race mixing bad"]
The Trap
Kid gets sucked through a mirror into the fourth dimension. He gets rescued but comes out reversed mirrorways
[Racism: A little]
The Dreams in the Witch House
Guy sleepwalks into the 4th dimension. Also Nyarlathotep is there
[Racism: A little] ["he's black but not really"]
other stories still pending reading:
The Man of Stone
The Horror in the Museum
Through the Gates of the Silver Key
Winged Death
Out of the Aeons
The Thing on the Doorstep
The Evil Clergyman
The Horror in the Burying-Ground
The Hoard of the Wizard-Beast
The Slaying of the Monster
The Book
The Tree on the Hill
The Battle that Ended the Century
The Shadow out of Time
“Till A’ the Seas”
Collapsing Cosmoses
The Challenge from Beyond
The Disinterment
The Diary of Alonzo Typer
The Haunter of the Dark
In the Walls of Eryx
The Night Ocean