An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Crawford Tillinghast is a scientist who has devised a machine that will “break down the barriers” that limit our perception of phenomena to what our five senses perceive. He shows to his friend, the narrator, “a pale, outré colour or blend of colours” that he maintains is ultraviolet, ordinarily invisible to the human eye. As the experiment continues, the narrator begins to perceive amorphous, jellylike objects drifting through what he previously thought was empty air; he even sees them “brushing past me and occasionally walking or drifting through my supposedly solid body.” Later, as the experiment becomes increasingly peculiar and as Tillinghast begins shouting madly about the creatures he controls through his machine, the narrator suddenly fires a shot from a pistol, destroying the machine. Tillinghast is found dead of apoplexy.

The story appears to be a fictionalization of some conceptions that HPL found in Hugh Elliot’s Modern Science and Materialism(1919), a book that significantly influenced his early philosophical thought (see SL1.134, 158). In particular, Elliot exhaustively discusses the limitations of our senseperceptions (specifically citing ultraviolet rays) and goes on to note that most solid matter is largely empty space. Several entries in HPL’s commonplace book written around this time (see #34–#36) appear to derive from Elliot’s book. Some of the characterization and imagery derive from HPL’s Civil War dream of early 1920 (see SL 1.100–102).

In the original draft (revised much later for its first appearance), the scientist was named Henry Annesley. Both “Crawford” and “Tillinghast” are two old and wealthy families of colonial Providence (both are mentioned in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward). The story was submitted to several pulp magazines in the 1920s, including WTand Ghost Stories,but uniformly rejected.

See S.T.Joshi, “The Sources for ‘From Beyond,’” CryptNo. 38 (Eastertide 1986): 15–19; Peter Dendle, “Patristic Demonology and Lovecraft’s ‘From Beyond,’” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts8, No. 3 (1997): 281–93.

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Frome, Nils [Helmer] (1918–1962).

Swedish-born fan of weird and science fiction and late correspondent of HPL (1936–37). Residing for much of his life in Fraser Mills, Canada (a suburb of Vancouver), Frome early became interested in science fiction and solicited from HPL a contribution to his fan magazine, Supramundane Stories. HPL sent him the prose poem “Nyarlathotep” and “Notes on Writing Weird Fiction,” both of which appeared in the second and last issue of Supramundane Stories(Spring 1938). Frome appeared to exhibit an interest in fortune-telling, reincarnation, and other such things, and HPL’s letters to him forcefully argue against their validity. The letters were published (along with those to James Blish and William Miller, Jr.) in Phantastique/Science Fiction Critic(March 1938); rpt. HPL’s Uncollected Letters(Necronomicon Press, 1986).

See Sam Moskowitz, ed., Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Nils Helmer Frome(Moshassuck Press, 1989). Frye Family.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” a family (comprising Elmer and his wife Selina) dwelling on the eastern edge of Cold Spring Glen. They and their farmhouse are “erased” by Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother. Fungi from Yuggoth.

Series of thirty-five sonnets initially, dated December 27, 1929–January 4, 1930 (ms., JHL). The complete cycle of thirty-six poems was not published in its entirety until BWS;the separate appearance Fungi from Yuggoth([Washington, D.C.:] Bill Evans, June 1943) lacks the final three sonnets.

In the first three sonnets, the unnamed narrator obtains a mysterious tome—a “book that told the hidden way/Across the void and through the space-hung screens”—from an ancient bookseller and is followed home by an unseen pursuer. The remaining poems, which HPL considered suitable for publication independent of the introductory poems, are discontinuous vignettes concerning a variety of unrelated weird themes, told in the first person and (apparently) third person. The cumulative effect is that of a series of shifting dream images.