An unusual ‘letter + story’ reading from Horrorbabble, “The Thing in the Moonlight” by H.P. Lovecraft, new on YouTube…

“The Thing in the Moonlight” is a short story based on one of H.P. Lovecraft’s dreams by Chapman Miske, first published in the January 1941 edition of Bizarre magazine. This recording includes both the letter Lovecraft sent to Donald Wandrei detailing the dream, and the short story itself.

The text is very short, and hardly a story. Derleth later ranked and published it as a “fragment”. But Horrorbabble reads it and the letter at 11 minutes.

Who was Chapman Miske? He was co-editor of Scienti-Snaps with Walter E. Marconette, and being duplicated this title would now be termed a fanzine. But obviously one of quality. Scienti-Snaps had earlier done something similar for Lovecraft by publishing one of several versions of the ‘Lovecraft as Roman’ dream, as “The Very Old Folk” in Summer 1940. This was accompanied by the bio-article “H.P. Lovecraft: Strange Weaver” and the poem “The Nightmare Lake”.

Scienti-Snaps was then renamed Bizzare in Summer 1940, and given a more news-stand appearance. But it failed after one issue. Hevelin Fanzines has Bizarre #1 scanned. Here is the Hannes Bok cover and the first page of the Lovecraft appearance.

Regrettably Hevelin Fanzines doesn’t appear to have the Scienti-Snaps issue for Summer 1940, the ‘Lovecraft Special’. However, its “H.P. Lovecraft: Strange Weaver” article is to be found collected in the book A Weird Writer in Our Midst.