Hold on to your hats horror fans--the eldritch portal has opened up, and we’re being beckoned
forth by a horrifying host of anomalous tendrils--calling us into the eternal abyssal void of Lovecraftian
fiction once again.
So let’s go!
Come on guys, you know that it’s our favourite thing--and you also may be aware that we’ve
scoured the Cthulhu Mythos for quite some time, picking out the most terrifying creations
of it’s cosmic horror.
But luckily for us--some fresh real estate has just opened up, so forget about monsters
for a moment--and let’s take a look at the terrifying neighbourhoods that populate the
works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.
Hello horror fans, what’s going on--and once again welcome back to the scariest channel
on YouTube--Top 5 Scary Videos.
As per usual, I’ll be your horror host Jack Finch--as today, we curiously take a look
at the Top 5 Scariest Places In Lovecraftian Fiction.
Roll the clip.
Ahhhhhh.
I get chills every time--and for the curious amongst you, that scene was from Season One
of True Detective, starring Matthew McConahey and Woody Harrelson--perhaps one of the finest
pieces of television ever made--and whilst that may be giving away a little bit about
the events of that phenomenal season--don’t worry.
Because Carcosa is only the destination--it’s the journey that matters.
And yeah--if Carcosa sounds a little familiar, then--that’s because it is, and time is
a flat circle.
Anyway.
Let’s lay on some cosmic horror.
Kicking off at Number 5--Innsmouth
And yes, of course--our first destination on this whistle stop tour of Lovecraftian
Fiction has to be the one place that you surely wouldn’t want to spend your summer holiday
in--well, unless you were looking for that particular Innsmouth look--of course, the
small town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts.
Now, before we see what all the fuss is about, it’s probably best that we briefly talk
about a little place called Lovecraft Country--because it’s going to pop up a few times here and
there.
As some of you may know, within his fictional works, H.P Lovecraft created a small area
of New England that featured recurrently in his many tales of cosmic horror--oftentimes
bleak, East Coast, Atlantic towns and villages--sleepy suburbs that harboured some deep, dark and
downright dank secrets.
One of those is this place.
Innsmouth, a coastal town founded way back in 1643--famed for its otherwise fishy disposition.
You see, as the primary backdrop of Lovecraft’s 1931 novella, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the
story’s narrator, Robert Olmstead, quickly discovered that the strange denizens of the
town were in fact members of the Cult of Dagon--and had kept an ancient pact with the horrifying
keepers of Dagon, the Deep Ones--fish like, horrifying monstrosities.
As part of their pact with the Deep Ones--the residents of Innsmouth were forced to interbreed
with them, creating a long line of rather fishy looking individuals.
And not only that--as is also revealed later in the novella, those of Deep One heritage,
eventually fully transform into their fishy ancestors--and flee to a place called Devil’s
Reef, just off the coast of Innsmouth--where the ancient city of Y’ha-nthlei resides.
Yeah, it’s safe to say that if your date tells you they’re actually from Innsmouth--it’s
probably best not to order the seabass--and just walk away.
Swinging in at Number 4--Arkham
And again, a place that I'm sure many of you expected to appear on this list--and a name
that many of you will be familiar with, even if you’re not as up to date with the many
places and names of Lovecraftian fiction.
Yeah, I’m looking at you Arkham Asylum--what a great game.
Anyway--as we said previously, Lovecraft Country is perhaps the most densely populated--and
also widely unfortunate places in the Lovecraft Universe.
With Innsmouth, Dunwich, Kingsport and Providence--it’s safe to say that all of them merely linger
in the shadow of the misty town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
As Lovecraft described in The Thing on the Doorstep--the ancient, mouldering and subtly
fearsome town in which we live--witch cursed, legend haunted Arkham--whose huddled, sagging
gambrel roofs and crumbling Georgian balustrades brood out the centuries beside the darkly
muttering Mistaktonic.
I mean, Lovecraft often gets a bit of stick for his lack of technical prose--but what
an awesome sentence that is.
The fact is, Lovecraft--as well as August Derleth and many other Cthulhu Mythos writers--had
such a high reverence for Arkham.
It was a place crafted with a love for cosmic horror--and also, a place that featured more
often than any others in their works.
Herbert West Reanimator, The Colour Out of Space, The Whisperer In Darkness--The Dreams
In The Witch House--The Shadow out of Time--and many others, all either feature Arkham, or
make a note of it’s shadowy reputation.
And of course--as you’ll all be waited with bated breath for me to mention, it is home
to the notorious Miskatonic University--the home of the largest collection of arcane literature
and tomes of the occult known to mankind.
It says something that the many professors that form Lovecraft’s protagonists--were
primarily the faculty of Miskatonic University.
Getting a job there--or even living in Arkham for that matter--was quite the occupational
hazard.
Next up at Number 3--The Plateau of Leng
And now we’re getting into perhaps the more genuinely terrifying landscapes of Lovecraftian
fiction, where space and time cease to function in all manners that we understand.
Now, if we’re being honest--there are countless places alluded to in the Cthulhu Mythos, perhaps
a sentence here and there in reference to it’s horrifying mysteries--but none of them
are as fleshed out as the Plateau of Leng is--which is an impressive feat, given the
fact that it’s actually never been fully described.
Yeah, I know--but that’s just cosmic horror for you, I guess.
As it first appeared in 1922’s The Hound--Leng is a cold and arid plateau--whose location
seemingly varies entirely depending on who is observing it.
In The Hound--the Necronomicon details that it’s location actually resides in Central
Asia--and it is inhabited by a human corpse-eating cult.
Seemingly, the notorious scholar Abdul Alhazred describes it as a place where different realities
converge--which could perhaps explain why its precise location can never be pinned down.
Again, in 1926’s The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath--the Plateau of Leng is said to be
located in the north of the Dreamlands--and strangely enough, it is the residence of the
High Priest Not To Be Described--a mysterious figure who dwells alone in a strange, prehistoric
monastery to the Great Old Ones--accompanied by a race of vile, goatish humanoids.
Yeah.
And if it doesn’t sound like a nice place, that’s because it really, really isn’t.
In fact--it is also believed that in the legendary novella, At The Mountains of Madness--the
expedition featured in that particular tale who discovers an ancient abandoned city of
impossible dimension, created by the Elder Things--is in fact a manifestation of the
Plateau of Leng--a crossover of the ancient places of the Cthulhu Mythos--emerging from
the fabric of twisted time and space.
Yeah, essentially--if you end up on the Plateau of Leng--you’re probably in for a bit of
a terrifying ruckus.
Coming in at Number 2--R’lyeh
Come on guys.
You only knew it was a matter of time--because in his house at R’lyeh--dead Cthulhu waits
dreaming.
And if we’re talking about abandoned cities of impossible dimension and terrifying architecture--then
we need only take a quick glance at The Sunken City to realise just exactly what Lovecraft’s
intention was.
Because--it’s crazy that we can even elaborate on this--but the reality is, old Howard Phillips
*made*--*architecture*--*scary*.
He really did.
And we can only admire what an impressive feat that really is.
First appearing in Lovecraft’s 1928 short story, The Call of Cthulhu--R’lyeh is a
sunken city located deep beneath the Pacific Ocean--a treacherous place characterized by
it’s bizarre architecture of non-Euclidean geometry--and of course, the place where the
Great Old One, The High Priest himself--Cthulhu--waits dreaming.
As Lovecraft first describes: The nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh was built in measureless
eons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars.
-- There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes--hideen in green slimy vaults--until the end.
Again, the man knew just exactly how to turn pillars of stone into looming behemoths of
a place that our frail human minds could never comprehend.
Now, if you haven’t read The Call of Cthulhu--then please, dive into it--because it’s a fantastic
read, but as is described in that story--Lovecraft details R’lyeh as a city of panorama--vast
angles of stone surfaces too great to belong to anything right and proper for this earth.
He calls it abnormal--impious and filled to the brim of horrible images.
Although no one has ever been there, Lovecraft makes a point that navigating the city on
foot is nearly impossible.
Surfaces that appear flat may be tilted--angles of masonry that appear convex at first glance,
will shift and change to appear concave.
Nothing is as it seems--and R’lyeh is a place that was never intended to be witnessed
by human beings.
Yeah--take note, if you’re trying to write a terrifying location--this is a whole different
level.
And finally, coming in at our Number 1 spot--Carcosa
Of course--because although a place not primarily created by Lovecraft himself--when it comes
to cosmic horror, there are fewer places in the terrifying cosmos that strike such unimaginable
fear in the hearts of us weary humans--as that of Carcosa.
And again, much like with the Plateau of Leng--this place has never been truly comprehended in
the many texts of the Cthulhu Mythos.
And, let’s not beat about the bush--that’s the reason why it’s truly terrifying, right?
Because if there was some kind of revelation that Carcosa, was in fact, the home of a race
of cute, fluffy--bear like Ewoks--we wouldn’t be scared in the slightest.
You see, that *could* be true--that *could* be the case--but the fact that we don’t
know, and the fact that we never will know--is why our curiosity is peaked, and is why we
are fearful of it.
It is the literal definition of cosmic horror.
The fear of the unknown.
First mentioned in the 1886 short story by Ambrose Bierce, An Inhabitant of Carcosa--the
ancient and mysterious city is barely described, and is only ever viewed in hindsight, following
it’s alleged destruction--by the narrator who once lived there.
The city would later be picked up and used more extensively in the Robert W. Chambers
book--The King In Yellow--although the mysterious allusion to its location or even its origin
was still it’s primary function.
Chambers gave us just enough information about Carcosa to keep our intrigue peaked--and in
fact, that has been the same fuel that has kept the mystery of Carcosa in our cultural
memory for so long.
No other place in literature has been passed from pillar to post, from author to author--so
often as Carcosa.
In The King In Yellow--the city of Carcosa is a mysterious, ancient and impossibly cursed
place.
One description of its location is said to be located on the shores of the Lake of Hali--deep
within the Hyades star cluster.
Where's that?
Beats me--but I’m pretty confident that we should all avoid it.
As the Cthulhu Mythos has later elaborated upon, it is believed that Carcosa is the residence
of the Great Old One Hastur--who often merges the reality of Earth with his home dimension
of Carcosa--seemingly plucking humans out of thin air like apples on a tree, to be his
tortured playthings.
Yeah.
Carcosa.
It literally goes without saying--but it’s a pretty terrifying place.
Well, there we have it horror fans--our list for the Top 5 Scariest Places In Lovecraftian
Fiction.
What do you guys think?
Do you agree?
Disagree?
Have any more to add?
Then let us know your thoughts down in the comment section below, as well as any choice
picks of your own.
Before we depart from today’s video though, let’s first take a quick look at some of
your more creative comments from over the past few days.
Gareth Allen says--
Want to hear something really WEIRD?
Before Lost Highway, I could not STAND David Lynch.
Then I watched Twin Peaks, which became my favorite series of all time, although Season
1 of True Detective bounced it down to Number 2.
Brilliant again Jack, Cheers!
--And cheers to you Gareth Allen, thank you very much.
You know what, I agree with a lot of stuff you said in this comment--and I agree, Twin
Peaks is the *lynch* pin--to David Lynch’s works.
See what I did there?
But yeah--listen to Gareth guys, if you’re struggling with some of Lynch’s stuff--watch
Twin Peaks and all will be revealed.
Well, on that note, unfortunately, that’s all we’ve got time for in today's video--cheers
for sticking around all the way until the end.
If you were a fan of this video, or just Top 5 Scary Videos in general, then please--be
a dear and hit that thumbs up button, as well as that subscribe bell, and I’ll be seeing
you in the next one.