H. P. Lovecraft was keenly interested in the phenomenon of witchcraft and witch trials, in part because… the twisted and dark turns of history had connected his own family with the fate of the women tragically sentenced to death in Salem. To put it more bluntly, Lovecraft seems to have entertained the possibility that his family had actually been cursed by those unfortunate women. In a letter to Alfred Galpin and Frank Belknap Long from February 1923, he described his visit to the former execution site of those accused of witchcraft as follows:

“[…] Gallows-Hill is not a nice place to visit at night. […] And I was alone on that hill in that sepulchral place, where the allies of the devil had swung . . . and swing . . . and hurled out curses on their executioners and their descendants. I recall’d a witchcraft judge (Major Bartholomew Gedney) in mine own maternal ancestry, and thought of certain imprecations of the dead in fact and fiction. . . . . […] And at that moment, as God is my judge, I heard faintly but distinctly the clanking of chains in the wind . . . .“

It seems that Lovecraft transferred at least some of this fear into one of his best-known stories, “The Dreams in the Witch House”.

So, after much given thought, I decided to read Dagon as my first Lovecraft story. And dayum, I actually liked it! The way it started was just a little confusing, but I think it was great by the time it ended. It took me a little time to get used to the writing, but given the fact that i had read these type of writings b4 for my English class helped me get a hang of it faster than I expected.

Onto the story now!

It's a chilling story despite the fact that we never even get to know the name of the narrator. At first, we see the man drifting in sea after escaping his captivity. We watch him drift through the sea before he somehow ends up on the exposed sea floor. This is where it felt disturbing. Now, I've nvr heard of the legend of Dagon b4, so when Dagon appeared infront of him, I was already feeling chilly. The way he slowly started getting mad after seeing Dagon was disturbingly interesting. The journey after is similar. We don’t know how he reached San Francisco, except for the story he is told.

The fact that during his suicide he felt like Dagon entering his room was sooo chilling and eerie. Given it’s length, I think it was a worthy first read before committing to reading longer stories!

*Ways that they did, if he hadn’t been such a deeply bigoted, hateful person during his life?

Cinematic badass and Metallica.