“The Horror in the Burying-Ground” by H. P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald (c. 1933-34). Newly recorded as a free 35 minute audio story, narrated by Ian Gordon, who always does a good reading.

The Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that, given the dating, Lovecraft was having some fun with the story and was not taking it overly seriously…

this is evidently the last of the tales he ghostwrote for her. Much of the story is narrated in a backwoods patois [and was likely meant,] if not as an actual [self]parody, at least as an instance of graveyard humor.

Nevertheless it found its way to Weird Tales and was published May 1937 under Heald’s name.

One wonders if the illustration’s somewhat Lovecraft-like head, looking over the shoulder of and spooking a vaguely Heald-like face, was meant to convey anything to Weird Tales insiders?

Almost upon us, the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre dramatised full-cast edition of The Lurking Fear should be shipping/releasing in a day or two…

Downloads of The Lurking Fear will become available when the CD begins shipping. That date is currently estimated to be 21st June 2019 and may change.

You may also enjoy accompanying this, or preparing for it, with my free Annotated “Lurking Fear” PDF.

If you want CDs rather than downloads, you can also get a Boxed Set with old-time radio case that neatly holds four CDs…

When you provide your billing and shipping info at check out, please use the Customer Comments box to tell us which shows you’d like.

By which method you can pick up Fear plus another three CDs you may have missed, such as The Horror at Red Hook; The Haunter of the Dark; and The Rats in the Walls, among others.

Bear in mind that these are radically re-worked as 1930s style radio dramatisations, as if the broadcast rights for Lovecraft’s stories had been purchased by a slick New York radio theatre. This may not be to your taste if you prefer straight Wayne June -style readings of Lovecraft, so if you’re new to Dark Adventure you may want to listen to some samples and trailers… before you send your PayPal balance spiralling gibbering into the black gulf of cosmic nothingness.

This week’s The SFFaudio Podcast #526 is a full two-hour unabridged audiobook reading of “Herbert West: Reanimator” by H.P. Lovecraft, read by Jim Moon. Apparently it’s a re-run of a Hypnogoria podcast that I can’t immediately find and may no longer be available. “Herbert West” was of course the serial ‘shocker’ that Lovecraft wrote for Home Brew.

Looking for the Hypnogoria original of this audio reading, I was pleased to discover Hypnogoria: Microgoria #65 – Shiver and Shake and the Creepy Creations of Ken Reid. 33 minutes of podcast surveying a British master of fun cartoon monster-creation.

Ken Reid has a series of handsome book re-issues, Creepy Creations Vol 1., Faceache Vol 1: The First Hundred Scrunges, and Ken Reid’s World Wide Weirdies Vol. 1. His work will be fondly remembered by those of a certain generation.

I wonder if anyone still has that old cardboard “dial-a-monster” picture-frame from that time, which one could get through the mail and I for one had a copy of (long lost, now). It was an early generative work, as millions of unique combinations were possible, there being circular dials which would swing a variety of eyes, hair, chins, noses etc into the picture-frame portrait. They were designed so they would all more or less seamlessly blend together.

It’s interesting to see that the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society / Dark Adventure Radio Theatre are branching out into new HPL-alike audio adventures. Their The White Tree runs 72 minutes with their usual full-cast and full-FX approach, and the story sees…

The police inspector who once probed the mysteries of the Cthulhu cult on a case that leads him once again into the foreboding bayous of Louisana.

It’s © 2016 and on release seems to have been CD-only with a prop-pack. But I’ve now noticed it because it’s been released to Audible for download, dated “26th March 2019”.