This essay explores how the reader cognitively reacts to reading H. P. Lovecraft’s horror story “The Shadow Out of Time” (1936). I analyse the text to see how it invites readers to beaffected by it. I specifically look at invitations to envisionment, subjective experience andintersubjectivity. The literary horror terms uncertainty and uncanniness are used inconjunction with cognitive theory to explain how the readers may react to readingLovecraft’s stories. These are in turn reinforced by the reader's ongoing envisionment of thestory, and their sharing of the character’s experiences via subjective experience. For example,the separation between the mind and body of the protagonist creates an uncanny dissonanceto his own identity, which disrupts the reader’s understanding of the character. This maycause distress in the reader due to the subjective experience that connects the reader to thecharacter. Additionally, the disrupted sense of reality in the book affects the narrator'sperceptions of both his surroundings and his own mental faculties. Subsequently, the reader’sunderstanding of the text is also in a state of flux which affects their envisionment of thestory. This disrupts understanding and may enhance feelings of unease. My theory istherefore that unease is invited by certain horror techniques, such as uncertainty anduncanniness, which in turn influence the reader specifically through subjective experienceand envisionment.

Deivisceris is a four-player role-playing tabletop game that focuses on themes of horror. It looks into ideas from the horror genre as a whole while combining aspects from the body horror and cosmic horror subgenres to create a discomforting horror experience. The game features illustrations and written events with a choice-based narrative that can have multiple outcomes depending on a player's decisions, stats, and items. Deivisceris utilizes randomness in order to create a new experience each time it is played through randomized characters and a randomized game board that is built up as it is played. The game reveals its narrative through clues within the gameplay, illustrations, and written text as characters enter the game's world blindly. Deivisceris is an immersive tabletop horror experience that can be further expanded on in the future with the possibility of a larger production. / Master of Fine Arts / Deivisceris is a four-player tabletop game that looks into the ways horror can be created in a board game format. It examines various ideas from the horror genre as a whole while taking inspiration more directly from two subgenres of horror: body horror and cosmic horror, each of which has very different ways of evoking horror. The game includes a variety of full-color illustrations and written situations that give players a chance to make their own decisions. Deivisceris utilizes randomness in order to create a new experience every time it is played. The game board is built up differently every time it is played and characters' stats, such as strength, intelligence, and endurance, may be different in each game. The game's story is revealed through clues within the gameplay, illustrations, and text. Deivisceris is a tabletop role-playing horror experience that can be further expanded on in the future with the possibility of a larger production.

Finding outdated views and racism in older literature is not uncommon, but the works of H.P. Lovecraft are especially rife with such instances. In the short stories “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Horror at Red Hook”, Lovecraft attempts to horrify his readers using techniques such as nested narratives and omission of detail. However, in both of these stories, the author’s racism also becomes central in creating horror. Through frequent use of othering, as defined by McConeghy and Khair, Lovecraft describes the villainous forces present in his short stories with racist terms, creating a contrast between the racialized other and the “safe” white protagonist in order to horrify his readers. In addition, I analyze The Ballad of Black Tom in order to uncover how author Victor LaValle develops his protagonist in order to separate him from Lovecraft’s story and give him the agency that the othered, antagonistic force in “Red Hook” never had. The evil, racialized mass of people that Lovecraft describes in “Red Hook” are recontextualized by LaValle, serving as a critique of the way Lovecraft constructs his villains. The aim of this paper is to argue that Lovecraft uses racism and othering in “The Call of Cthulhu” and “The Horror at Red Hook” to terrify his readers, but that LaValle gives us a Lovecraftian horror from the perspective of the “monster” essentially in order to critique Lovecraft’s othering.

My essay is called “Alive but Insignificant: An Analysis of Cosmic Horror in H.P. Lovecraft’s Writing”. Howard Phillips Lovecraft has written many short stories surrounding the idea of “cosmic horror”. In this essay I seek to investigate how this cosmic horror works and what connections it has to occultism by analyzing six of his short stories: The Call of Cthulhu, The Colour Out of Space, The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath, The Haunter of The Dark, The Nameless City and Nyarlathotep. In the essay I use sources that show Lovecraft’s biography and letters to build an idea of how he might have been thinking when writing and in the theory segment I bring up the sublime to show what “cosmic horror” means when analyzing Lovecraft. I analyze the stories based on three categories: The Fear of Cosmos, The Fear of The Occult and The Fear of The Abyss.   In the second to last segment called discussion I got through everything that I have found through my analysis: Within The Fear of Cosmos, I analyze The Colour Out of Space, Nyarlathotep and The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath to find that the fear comes from the idea that there is a force somewhere out in space that can destroy humanity on a whim and humans have no way of stopping it. Within The Fear of The Occult, I analyze the Cthulhucult in The Call of Cthulhu by bringing up Lovecraft’s connections to occultism and potential connections to Helena Blavatsky. To enforce the connection between Lovecraft and Blavatsky I use a quote from Haunter of The Dark that presents a book that Blavatsky has ties to. There I find that the fear comes from the idea that a malevolent monster is whispering in the ears of people, encouraging them to commit horrific acts and to abandon their humanity in its name. In The Fear of The Abyss, I analyze The Nameless City and The Call of Cthulhu to find that the fear comes from the idea that there is a powerful and horrifying monster sleeping somewhere under the earth and the ocean, waiting for the right time to awaken and come out of hiding, all while humanity is unaware of it.   In the very last segment I go through some comments regarding the essay, where I share my biggest problems with Lovecraft and why certain parts of the essay was cut out.