Hi and welcome back to Nighty Night, bedtime stories to keep you awake. In this week's episode we encounter a master, an icon of the horror genre

HP Lovecraft doing what he does best, taking us on a suspenseful ride from the very opening paragraph

and having us hold our breaths until the very twisted end.

The late Arthur German and his family

by H.P. Lovecraft.

Part 1.

Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it,

pure demonical hints of truth, which make it sometimes a thousandfold

more hideous. Science, already oppressive with its shocking revelations,

will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species, if separate species

we be, for its reserve of unguessed horrors could never be borne by mortal brains if loosed

upon the world.

If we knew what we are, we should do as Sir Arthur German did, and Arthur German soaked himself

in oil and set fire to his clothing one night.

No one placed the charred fragments in an urn or set a memorial to him who had been, for certain

papers and a certain boxed object were found which made men wish to forget.

Some who knew him do not admit that he ever existed.

Arthur German went out on the moor and burned himself after seeing the boxed object which had come from Africa.

It was this object and not his peculiar personal appearance which made him end his life. Many would have disliked to live if possessed of the peculiar features of Arthur German, but he had been a poet and scholar and not minded. Learning was in his blood. For his great-grandfather, Sir Robert German,

had been an anthropologist of note, whilst his great-great-grandfather,

Sir Wade German, was one of the earliest explorers of the Congo region and had written

iruditely of its tribes, animals, and supposed antiquities.

...