The Horror from the Depths

"The Horror from the Depths" is a short Cthulhu Mythos story cowritten by August Derleth and Mark Schorer. It was first published in Strange Stories in October 1940, though written in the summer of 1931. "Derleth supplied the outlines and later polished the stories Schorer drafted from them," John Haefele reports of this and two other collaborations between Derleth and Schorer.A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos, by John D. Haefele
"The Horror from the Depths" was published in the collection Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People in 1966, and was included in In Lovecraft's Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth in November 1998.
== Synopsis ==
A dredging operation in Lake Michigan in 1931 awakens a group of ancient beings which go on to slaughter and spread madness over the next few nights. Joining forces to combat the threat, an engineer and a university professor discover through their research that the beings were imprisoned beneath the lakes surface by the Elder Gods untold aeons ago.
In an effort to re-inter the creatures, the two locate a number of star-stones which the dredger had also brought up. During the course of their attempt, they unwittingly summon the full power of the Elder Gods which destroys the entities utterly.
== Characters ==
* Sharp, the narrator, a senior engineer working on the land reclamation project.
* Professor Jordan Holmes, a scholar at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.
* Tennant, Sharp's superior.
* Dr. Jameson, an anthropologist with an interest in ancient texts.
* Professor Morrison, an anthropologist.
== Trivia ==
* The creatures disturbed by the engineering project are described as being the "brood of Cthulhu" and having certain octopod traits. This may indicate that they were in fact a group of Cthulhi, also known as the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu.
== External Link ==
* "The Horror From the Depths" complete text at Librarium Cthulhuvius
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:August Derleth works
Category:Mark Schorer works