The Wendigo
Fixed the wendigo permanently in horror's bestiary, influencing everyone from Lovecraft (who borrowed it for his Ithaqua mythology via Derleth) to Stephen King's Pet Sematary.
Book Entry · Horror
What is The Shadow over Innsmouth about?
A sightseeing student takes the cheap bus route through the decaying Massachusetts port of Innsmouth, where the locals have flat noses, unblinking eyes and an arrangement with things in the sea: the Deep Ones, immortal amphibian traders in gold and grandchildren. The night-time escape through the rotting town is Lovecraft's best sustained suspense sequence, and the final twist — the narrator's own ancestry surfacing like something rising through dark water — turns the horror inward. The only Mythos tale published as a book in his lifetime.
Why it matters
Source of horror's entire 'fishy seaside town with a secret' tradition, and the story where Lovecraft's hereditary anxieties are most nakedly the engine.
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