LOVECRAFT/BLOCH TRILOGY

H.P. Lovecraft had several writers he corresponded with regularly.  One of those men was the great Robert Bloch.  Bloch would become best known as the author of Psycho, from which Hitchcock’s revolutionary film was based.  He wrote a number of stories in Lovecraft’s unique world.  The last story Lovecraft published before his death formed the middle segment of a loose trilogy.  Bloch wrote the other two parts.  Part one was “The Shambler From The Stars”.  In it he made the main character a writer of weird fiction from New England searching for diabolical knowledge, which in the end appears to draw him towards imminent death.  Lovecraft wrote part two, “The Haunter of the Dark”, and made the main character a writer named Robert Blake.  Notice any similarities in the name?  The address given for Blake in the story even matches Bloch’s real address at the time.  He in turn killed off the pseudo-Bloch in his story.  Several years later, Bloch wrote the final installment and included Lovecraft, by his name this time, as a character in the tale. It was titled “The Shadow From the Steeple”.  

1. “The Shambler From The Stars” By Robert Bloch (1935) – A writer of weird fiction becomes obsessed with learning things that go beyond that of known reality.  He sought out evil texts to plunder for their obscure knowledge and finally chanced upon a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis or ‘Mysteries of the Worm’.  The old book was written by an alchemist, necromancer and reputed mage who was said to have invisible familiars who did his bidding. Unfortunately, the book was written in Latin so he was forced to seek out help in translating the tome.  He finds a friend capable of the task, and they set to work late one moonlit night.  Their translation attempts ends up summoning something preceded by a disembodied torrent of “hysterical cackling.” The results are horrific for those involved.

2. “The Haunter of the Dark” By H.P. Lovecraft (1936) – A writer named Robert Blake (for Robert Bloch) becomes obsessed with the steeple of an odd church he can see from his window and seeks it out.  Inside he finds the skeletal remains of a reporter with a notebook filled with bizarre notes about the place and its occult history.   When his meddling reawakens an ancient dark entity inside the abandoned church, he starts to realize that he and it share a mental connection he cannot break.

3. “The Shadow From the Steeple” (1950) – This story starts with a man named Edmund Fiske, a friend to Robert Blake and fellow writer of the weird, searching out what truly happened to Blake.  In the story Blake and Fiske were said to be a part of the ‘Lovecraft circle’ of writers who corresponded with one another about the supernatural.  Lovecraft is said to have helped the late Blake in his quest involving the dark church.  Fiske spends many years of his life following leads regarding the night of Blake’s death but finds most of those involved have either died or cannot be located.  He comes across the name of a Doctor Ambrose Dexter who stole a black box that came from the church and contained something called a Shining Trapezohedron, a large gem that was a focus of evil and capable of summoning The Haunter of the Dark.  He disposed of it by casting it into “the deepest channel of Narragansett Bay”.  The Doctor is alive but very difficult to track down.  This story explains a lot of things left unknown from “The Haunter of the Dark”.  

 These are a fun read, particularly the last two segments, as the first is only tied in very loosely with the rest.

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