The Haunter of the Dark

"The Haunter of the Dark" is a horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote it between 5 and 9 November 1935, and it appeared in the December 1936 issue of Weird Tales. It was the last original story Lovecraft completed, aside from a few later collaborations, and belongs to the Cthulhu Mythos. The story opens with an epigraph taken from the second stanza of Lovecraft's 1917 poem "Nemesis". It serves as a sequel to Robert Bloch's 1935 story "The Shambler from the Stars". Bloch later wrote a third story in the sequence, "The Shadow from the Steeple", published in 1950.

The plot follows Robert Blake, a young writer interested in the occult who lives in Providence. From his lodgings on the city's east side, he becomes fascinated by a large, disused church on Federal Hill. His research uncovers the church's sinister history: it was once home to a cult called the Church of Starry Wisdom, and local immigrant residents fear it as haunted by an ancient evil. Blake enters the church and climbs the tower. There he finds the skeleton of Edwin M. Lillibridge, a reporter who vanished in 1893. He also discovers an ancient stone artifact called the Shining Trapezohedron, which can summon a terrible being from beyond time and space. The artifact rests in a metal box with a hinged lid, carved with designs of alien creatures. The box sits on a column also covered in alien markings. Blake's actions accidentally summon the malign entity of the title, and he flees.

The being can only move in darkness, so at night it is trapped in the tower by the city's lights. During a thunderstorm, the electrical power weakens, and local people hear terrifying sounds from the church. They call on Catholic priests to lead prayers against the demon. Blake, knowing what he has unleashed, prays for the power to stay on. But an outage occurs, and the being flies toward his quarters. Blake is found dead, staring out his window at the church with a look of horror. His last words describe the approaching entity: "I see it-- coming here-- hell-wind-- titan-blur-- black wings-- Yog-Sothoth save me-- the three-lobed burning eye..." His death is attributed to a lightning strike. A superstitious local doctor later removes the box containing the Shining Trapezohedron from the church and throws it into Narragansett Bay.

Robert Harrison Blake is a fictional horror writer who first appeared unnamed in Robert Bloch's "The Shambler from the Stars". In Lovecraft's sequel, Blake dies while investigating the Starry Wisdom cult of Enoch Bowen. Lovecraft modeled Blake on Bloch, but also gave him traits of Clark Ashton Smith and Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft indicated in letters to Bloch that the character was a thinly veiled way to kill off a friendly correspondent.

In 1936, Bloch published a story continuing the joke, in which Blake is possessed by Nyarlathotep and kills a character based on Lovecraft. Blake's death is the starting point for Bloch's "The Shadow from the Steeple". Blake's fiction is also referenced in Ramsey Campbell's "The Franklyn Paragraphs" and Philip José Farmer's "The Freshman". Lovecraft's tale names five stories written by Blake: "The Burrowers Beneath", "Shaggai", "The Stairs in the Crypt", "In the Vale of Pnath", and "The Feaster from the Stars".

Robert M. Price noted these are friendly spoofs of Bloch's tales. Lin Carter wrote pastiches using all five titles. Shaggai is mentioned in "The Haunter of the Dark" as a planet more distant than Yuggoth, suggesting Blake's story title foreshadows his mental link with the Haunter, which he believes is an avatar of Nyarlathotep. Brian Lumley borrowed "The Burrowers Beneath" for his first novel.

Fritz Leiber used a similar title for a story later revised. Robert M. Price also used "The Burrower Beneath" for a story in the Eibonic mythos. Leigh Blackmore's poem "The Conjuration" was inspired by "The Feaster from the Stars", and his story "The Stairs in the Crypt" was inspired by Blake's tale of that name.

Edwin M. Lillibridge was a reporter for the Providence Telegram who investigated the Church of Starry Wisdom and disappeared in 1893. Blake finds his skeleton in the Free-Will Church on Federal Hill, along with a notebook and a cryptogram written in Aklo. The cryptogram provides a history of the trapezohedron. Later, Lillibridge's oddly damaged skeleton disappears from the church before police can investigate reports of movement in the steeple. Enoch Bowen is also a character in the story.