The Whisperer in Darkness

The Whisperer in Darkness is a short horror story written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1931.

Albert Wilmarth is a professor at Miskatonic University in the town of Arkham. He is investigating strange creatures seen floating in the Vermont River in an attempt to understand, with some skepticism, the meaning of the sightings.

He is a specialist in folklore and mythology and will try to clarify the local legend with no real basis. To do so, he will contact a local farmer who claims to have heard some sounds that he cannot explain and of which he has managed to make a recording...

In this short story, Lovecraft leaves a little aside his more classic horror of the Cthulhu myths to go into a story that deals more with science fiction than the supernatural horror so characteristic.

"Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred—that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night—is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness the impression produced on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong in my hideous inference."