The Ancestor

"The Ancestor" is a short story by August Derleth, one of his "posthumous collaborations" with H. P. Lovecraft. It first appeared in Arkham House's 1957 collection, The Survivor and Others.
The story describes experiments in recovering hereditary memory by Dr. Ambrose Perry, as recounted by his cousin Henry, who serves as his secretary. Perry is a successful Boston physician who retires to the wilds of Vermont to pursue his theory that a combination of food deprivation, drugs, and music can recover any memory--even memories of distant ancestors. Perry's fanatical investigations lead him to sequester himself in his lab--and eventually to physically regress to a subhuman creature that is killed by Perry's own dog.
The story closely follows the plot of Leonard Cline's The Dark Chamber, a novel praised by Lovecraft in Supernatural Horror in Literature. It also prefigures the central theme of the novel and film Altered States.
Category:Lovecraft Circle Works
Category:August Derleth works