Lovecraft’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, in an unabridged 2014 reading made by Martin Reyto and kindly made available as a free Public Domain recording.

It’s the best free reading I could find, though slightly sibilant when heard with good headphones. That can be cured in AIMP thus…

You may also want to boost the Bass, and I ramped it up quite a bit. The MP3 doesn’t take kindly to real-time pitch shifting, though.

There’s another fairly good one I’ve heard, which is to be found in the Eldritch Tales: A Miscellany audiobook, although this is paid and appears to only be available in the USA. There’s also a reading of Kadath in the $20 USB stick from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, from the Joshi corrected text and apparently with some music. Unlike Amazon, the Society seem willing to ship Kadath around the world.

It would be great to crowd-fund to pay someone like Phil Dragash to tackle this as a semi-dramatised unabridged reading with his voices, full sound effects, environmental ambience and music.


The zebra seen on the book cover above only appears for a short while, but is ridden by Carter. Later he takes to a yak. I wonder if this was a reflection of Lovecraft’s boyish desire to ride on some of the animals seen at Roger Williams Park in Providence, during his boyhood?

But perhaps it more likely reflects the boy Lovecraft’s ardent desire to get the zebra at the Roger Williams Park merry-go-round, rather than one of the more mundane horses…