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My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to think the greater part of it a mere dream; but sometimes in the autumn, about two in the morning when winds and animals howl dismally, there comes from inconceivable depths below a damnable suggestions of rhythmical throbbing ... and I feel that the transition of Juan Romero was a terrible one indeed.

H. P. Lovecraft#7

FearMemoryNightSuspenseDoubt

About this quote

What does it mean?
The narrator doubts their experience in daylight but finds its horror undeniable in the dead of night when sounds suggest a terrible transition occurred.
In plain terms
He thinks it was a dream until night sounds remind him it was real.
What can you take from it?
Fear and memory persist despite rational skepticism.

Where it applies

  • personal reflection
  • horror storytelling
  • psychological doubt

Putting it to work

  • acknowledge lingering fear
  • trust sensory memory

Questions to consider

  • What makes the memory real?
  • How do we trust perception?

Another view

Rational doubt is a healthy defense against panic.

More from H. P. Lovecraft

  1. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The windo…

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  2. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtu…

    Permalink to quote #8
  3. I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes…

    Permalink to quote #5

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