The Horror in the Museum

"The Horror in the Museum"
"The Horror in the Museum"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft
	Artwork by Borja Pindado influenced by "The Horror in the Museum".
Text available at Wikisource
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Publication
Published in	Weird Tales
Media type	Print (magazine)
Publication date	July 1933

"The Horror in the Museum" is a short story ghostwritten by H. P. Lovecraft for Somerville, Massachusetts, writer Hazel Heald in October 1932, published in Weird Tales in July 1933.

Plot

The tale concerns the relationship between Stephen Jones and George Rogers, the owner of a private wax museum specialising in the grotesque in Southwark, London who has been dismissed from Madame Tussauds. Initially cordial, it degenerates as Jones first mocks the self-important Rogers, then comes to suspect that he is demented with his "wild tales and suggestions of rites and sacrifices to nameless elder gods". Jones takes up Rogers's standing offer to spend a night in the museum and is attacked by his host, who is in turn killed by the entity Rhan-Tegoth that he has been making sacrifices to, and ends up becoming part of the display. It is implied that his assistant shot Rhan-Tegoth to make him part of said display.

Authorship and publication

"The Horror in the Museum" is one of five stories Lovecraft "revised" for Heald. Heald had been introduced to Lovecraft by his friend Muriel E. Eddy (spouse of Clifford Martin Eddy Jr.). Starting in 1965, Lovecraft's letters to friends and other writers were published in which Lovecraft claimed that this story was mostly his own work. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith he wrote on June 14, 1933, Lovecraft stated "Yes—the waxwork museum story is mostly my own; entirely so in wording, & also so far as concerns the background of Alaskan archaeology & antique horror. You will find Tsathoggua mentioned."^[1]

"The Horror in the Museum" was first published in volume 22, number 1 of Weird Tales in July 1933 (credited to Heald). The story has been reprinted in several collections, such as The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions (1970) and the inaugural edition of the Pan Book of Horror Stories (1959).^[2]^[3]

References

^ Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2017). Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Hippocampus Press. p. 420. ISBN 9781614981749.
^ Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0974878911.
^ "The Horror in the Museum". Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved March 17, 2025.

External links

Works related to The Horror in the Museum at Wikisource
"The Horror in the Museum" title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

This article about a horror short story (or stories) published in the 1930s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[Joshi2-1] Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2017). Dawnward Spire, Lonely Hill: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. Hippocampus Press. p. 420. ISBN 9781614981749.

[Joshi-2] Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. p. 116. ISBN 978-0974878911.

[ISFDB-3] "The Horror in the Museum". Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved March 17, 2025.

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v t e H. P. Lovecraft
Bibliography
Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time
Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth
Essays	The Cancer of Superstition "Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity
Locations	Arkham Lovecraft Country R'lyeh
Characters	Abdul Alhazred Herbert West Randolph Carter Harley Warren
Deities	Azathoth Cthulhu Nyarlathotep Shub-Niggurath Hastur Dagon
Books about	H. P. Lovecraft: A Life H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia Lovecraft: A Biography Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos
Themes/concepts	Cosmicism Cthulhu Mythos Lovecraftian horror Necronomicon
Lovecraft Circle	August Derleth Clark Ashton Smith Robert Bloch Robert E. Howard Frank Belknap Long
Legacy	Lovecraft studies Works influenced by the Cthulhu Mythos H. P. Lovecraft (band) H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society Adaptations Lovecraft (crater) Cthulhu Macula
Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) The Thing in the Moonlight
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