An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In “Cool Air,” the slatternly landlady of the brownstone on West 14th Street in New York City where Dr. Muñoz lives. Her son Esteban brings food, laundry, medicine, and other necessities to Dr. Muñoz, but when the latter’s condition worsens, his mother refuses to permit Esteban to run errands for him.

Hiram.

In “The Tomb,” Jervas Dudley’s faithful servant, who promises Dudley that he will be interred in the Hyde family vault.

“History of the Necronomicon.”

Sketch (915 words); written in the fall of 1927 (see SL2.201). First published as a pamphlet (Oakman, Ala.: Rebel Press, [1938]) by Wilson Shepherd; rpt MW

A tongue-in-cheek “history” of the sinister book and its equally sinister author, Abdul Alhazred. HPL traces the book’s history from its writing in the eighth century to its translation into Greek, Latin, and other languages, stressing the rarity of

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surviving copies of any edition of the book. HPL drew up the history largely in order to be consistent in subsequent references to the tome in fiction.

Hoadley, Abijah.

In “The Dunwich Horror,” a Congregational minister who in 1747 delivers a sermon on “the close presence of Satan and his imps” in Dunwich.

Hoag, Jonathan E[than] (1831–1927).

Poet living in and around Troy, N.Y., who entered amateur journalism late in life. HPL wrote birthday poems to him from 1918 to 1927; they presumably corresponded, but no letters have surfaced. Hoag’s descriptions of the Catskill Mountains may have contributed to the topographical atmosphere of “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” and “The Lurking Fear,” set there. HPL compiled and wrote an introduction to Hoag’s Poetical Works(privately printed, 1923); it constituted the first appearance of a work by HPL in hardcover. HPL, Samuel Loveman, and James F.Morton revised some of Hoag’s poetry in the process of editing the volume. The book was funded by Hoag (not by HPL, as has sometimes been asserted). The poems “Death” ( Silver Clarion,November 1918) and “To the American Flag” are included in the book; they were later attributed to HPL (first by Rheinhart Kleiner, who reprinted the poems in the Californian,Summer 1937), but seem clearly to be Hoag’s; possibly HPL revised them. HPL wrote an elegy, “Ave atque Vale” ( Tryout,December 1927), at Hoag’s death. Hoag may have been a partial inspiration for the character Zadok Allen in “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” whose life-dates exactly match Hoag’s.

Hodgson, William Hope (1877–1918).

Weird novelist and short story writer who died in Belgium during World War I. He wrote four novels — The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”(1907), The House on the Borderland(1908), The Ghost Pirates (1909), and The Night Land(1912)—all written around 1902–5, probably published in reverse order (see Gafford). There is also a story collection, Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder(1913), imitating Blackwood’s “psychic detective,” John Silence. HPL read Hodgson in 1934 at the urging of bibliophile Herman C. Koenig, who was circulating his Hodgson volumes among HPL’s circle. HPL wrote an enthusiastic article, “The Weird Work of William Hope Hodgson” ( Phantagraph,February 1937), and added a section on him for a putative revised version of “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (this revised version was not published until its appearance in O). The cosmic terror of The House on the Borderlandand The Night Landmay have influenced “The Shadow out of Time.” Much of Hodgson’s work was collected and published posthumously. HPL’s enthusiasm for Hodgson’s work no doubt influenced August Derleth’s decision to republish much of it through Arkham House. See Sam Moskowitz, “William Hope Hodgson,” in Hodgson’s Out of the Storm(1975); William Hope Hodgson: Voyages and Visions,ed. Ian Bell (1987); Sam Gafford, “Writing Backwards: The Novels of William Hope Hodgson,” Studies in Weird FictionNo. 11 (Spring 1992): 12–15.

Holm, Axel (1612–1687).

In “The Trap,” a Danish scholar expert in both glass working and magic who designs a mirror that can draw human beings and other

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objects into a strange fourth-dimensional world within itself. He achieves a kind of immortality in this manner (so long as the mirror itself is intact), but finds existence to be extremely tiresome, enlivened only by drawing other people into the mirror-world.