The Night Ocean

Summary

A quiet, contemplative tale steeped in atmosphere and artistic beauty. A painter retreats to a seaside cottage in search of rest and inspiration, but soon begins to sense strange presences along the shore and beneath the waves. Are they ghosts, sea ghouls, or beings older than time itself? The answers drift just out of reach, like mist over the ocean.

The story focuses on the sensations and intuitions of the main character, imbuing the whole narrative with an evocative taste of elusive dread, quite distinct from overt horror. The Night Ocean has long been part of the Lovecraftian canon, even though a manuscript discovered in the early 2000s, with Lovecraft’s revisions, reveals that only 10% of ‘The Night Ocean’ can be attributed to the writer from Providence. This realization underscores how sensitive and precocious the eighteen-year-old Robert H. Barlow was at the time.

It stands as the last existing work of fiction in which Lovecraft participated.