HP Lovecraft: The True Horror of The Great Old Ones

[Music] midway upon the journey of my life i found myself within a dark castle for the straightforward pathway had been lost [Music] strange i have to uncover the mystery of this place and these odd artifacts [Music] these tones are hundreds of years old perhaps older [Music] empty all the pages are blank it doesn't make sense boom it's halloween i'm bored what are you doing let's go trick or oh it's just you organism9186 of course it's me i've been stuck here ever since you destroyed my homeworld and exterminated my species are you really still upset about that organism look we're gonna be here a little bit longer i have to find out more about this weird uncle of mine and why he left me this weird place and this weird box full of strange objects let's go trick-or-treating okay first of all organism there's a pandemic no one is going trick-or-treating second off you are an alien creature no one knows that you exist except for me if i let you outside it would cause a total panic and then third you're an energy being of pure energy and light you can't even digest candy what's in the box what's in the box like i said a bunch of weird stuff my estranged uncle left me in his will along with this house there's artifacts and all these weird books you can check it out with me if you want i was bored as soon as you said books i'm out of here i'm gonna go recalibrate my plasma tendrils all right whatever just don't go too far i guess i'll just make a youtube video then petrificus cotales when guardium [Music] oh you guys are already here i hope i didn't freak you guys out too much i'm just going through my dead relatives things a bunch of items were left to me apparently and i even got this crazy house some of the stuff is pretty cool actually like there's this cool pocket watch and there's this neat hourglass i've always wanted one of these but then look at this silly wand thing i mean this guy think he was a wizard or something and then there's this cane slash staff thing i mean how ridiculous i mean really dude calm down and also rest in peace you know there's been some weird things happening around this house i've been hearing odd noises but i'm sure it's just an old house being old i guess i mean i personally don't believe in ghosts or spirits or anything i guess the coolest thing my uncle left me were these old books i thought they might be old history books or something but weirdly enough though they're clearly very very old there's nothing written in them [Music] that did not just happen i'm seeing things that's it i'm definitely seeing things organism organism 9186 is that you old house being an old house and there's also this weird statue i don't like it very much but something about it looks so familiar [Music] it reminds me of something from an old story it's it's right on the tip of my tongue wait a second this looks just like the creature from hp lovecraft's the call of cthulhu and come to think of it this whole situation the dead uncle the artifacts the the books it's almost like i'm inside of a lovecraft no no lovecraft wrote fiction lovecraft i'm not inside of a lovecraft story lovecraft is fiction at least i hope lovecraft is fiction there's so many stories i would rather be in other than a lovecraft story for multiple reasons but i guess the main one is things don't ever turn out good for the protagonist in lovecraft stories or at least almost never or just calm yourself down quinn calm yourself down lovecraft wrote fiction i mean the short story the call of cthulhu is one of the scariest and most enduring horror stories of all time but lovecraft was writing fiction he wasn't channeling anything that was real no true horrors or was he you know what it's a good thing i always keep a copy of the lovecraft compendium on hand i need to find out what happens in this story it's the only thing that can help me out of this sticky situation i can't shake the feeling that bad things are gonna happen guys i have no choice i've gotta do a halloween special [Music] the cosmos is endless it is sprawling beyond comprehension science tells us that the universe is mostly empty made up of distant stretches of vast silent emptiness with only star systems passing by swiftly only to return into the void galaxies themselves even are silent wanderers separated by incomprehensible cosmic gulfs with all we know now the wise are aware of the fact that we have merely observed an infinitesimally small portion of our universe lovecraft's cosmic horror filled the gaps in our knowledge of the universe with unspeakable terrors he wrote of things wandering through the dark things so great so beyond our reasoning or understanding that perhaps they wouldn't even see us as living beings ourselves or even be bothered by our presences enough to consider us nuisances but in the call of cthulhu the horror does not await in distant space it is not bound to another realm of existence only able to cross over when summoned by the necronomicon cthulhu slept beneath the very ocean itself in 1997 scientists recorded one of the loudest underwater sounds ever to occur it became known as the bloop researchers at the national oceanic atmospheric administration had been listening to volcanic activity in the southern pacific ocean the sound was unlike anything they had ever heard some begin to speculate that the noise originated from some unknown animal but for an animal to be able to make such a loud noise it would have had to have been enormous christopher fox who worked for the n-o-double-a at the time was interviewed by david woleman on the extraordinarily loud noise which emanated from the depths this is a text excerpt from the interview fox's hunch is that the sound nickname bloop is most likely to come from some sort of animal because its signature is a rapid variation in frequency similar to that of sounds known to be made by marine beast there's one crucial difference however in 1997 bloop was detected by sensors up to 4 800 kilometers 3 000 miles apart that means that it must be far louder than any whale noise or any other animal noise for that matter is it even remotely possible that some creature bigger than any whale is lurking in the ocean depths the sound became the subject of wild speculation and eventually some connected an eerie dot as i said in low crafts the call of cthulhu the horror is here on earth asleep beneath the ocean and there is more the source of the mysterious bloop was triangulated to approximately 50 degrees longitude and 100 degrees latitude a remote area in the southern pacific ocean an eerie fact for the fans of the work of lovecraft for you see cthulhu sleeps dead dreaming at relay a sunken underwater city in a remote place within the southern pacific ocean had lovecraft been prescient had cthulhu called out from his city heralding his return preparing to rise forth to reclaim the earth which was his to rule well no it took about 10 years but the scientists did finally discover that the origin of the bloop was cracking sea ice not as dramatic but a huge relief for most of us but although the bloop was not actually the sound of cthulhu calling up from his undersea city the fear that the sound of the bloop invokes is a part of the true horror that cthulhu represents the most merciful thing in the world i think is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents we live in a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity and it was not meant that we should voyage far the sciences each straining in its own direction have hitherto harmed us little but someday the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and of our frightful position therein that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age what do we really know about the universe about our own world even since the dawn of mankind oceans have been a source of mystery awe and terror the ocean could bring life or death it could smash apart ships swallow up cities bringing storms that turn the sky the color of blood the ocean is often personified in stories as the dwelling place of divine beings or as a divine being itself there are many examples of this from poseidon of greek mythology to manin of celtic mythology gods in the work of lovecraft however are different from gods as they appear in the vast majority of mythologies for one they are not truly gods but they are being so great so beyond us that we can only call them divine in mythology gods are often wrathful appeased by sacrificed fueled by belief though many worship the gods of lovecraft's universe their worship is in vain for humankind is not significant we are ants to them less than ants the implication in the call of cthulhu is that one day cthulhu will rise and when he does we cannot stop him we can only bend to his will cthulhu represents the fear of something horrible in the future something inevitable that cannot be stopped you may not know when just that it is coming and horrors await um i think this is the right way i don't remember this hallway though oh god i think i'm lost oh man maybe i should have listened to quinn wait what am i saying i hate that guy i want candy i gotta get the heck out of this place oh what's this weird ouija board oh it looks just like that weird ugly statue that quinn's playing with in the other room what is your pleasure sir i am called mr haldy well you can talk what are you doing in here what is this weird place this is my place of course i am a teller of stories and a collector i hope that you i don't care about any of this i just want to get out of this place and get my freedom very well you must ask the ouija luigi boy what kind of question should i ask the ouija board i don't know what to say you have only to speak and you will know how do i escape this b r i n g bring u s us q u i in in [Music] ringo's quinn this doesn't feel right what is this place where are you why why do i feel like i can't move what are you what's happening i feel like you will do for now [Music] hp lovecraft's the call of cthulhu is set in the year 1926. a man named francis waylon thurston has been left with all of his uncle's things after the man's sudden and unexplained death and he soon begins to piece together a terrible secret it begins with the discovery of a box containing old news clippings notes and letters from the professor as well as a peculiar and eerie baa relief depicting a terrifying vaguely humanoid monster all of the items seem to relate to a mysterious near unpronounceable phrase cthulhu fatagen the bar relief was made of clay and appeared to have been carved recently the flat carving depicted a winged creature with a tentacled face and bat like wings waylon comes to discover that the bar relief had been carved by a young artist who had seen the image in his dreams he had brought the idol to the professor in the hope that he could possibly identify it and by the most unusual of coincidences the professor actually did recognize the image as well as the phrase the young man had heard in his dreams cthulhu he had first come into contact with the strange phrase and grisly image nearly 20 years earlier in the year 1908 that year the american archaeological society of which my uncle excuse me the characters uncle had been a part of received a visit from a man named john raymond lagrasse a police inspector he brought with him a bizarre green stone sculpture not unlike this one i guess it's made of some strange stone that no one recognizes it's got runes all over it that no one can decipher it was found among some strange cult in new orleans i mean not this one of course the one from the story now you have to understand the archaeologists got very excited about the statue though it was very clearly ancient the stone was unplaceable and the language indecipherable the characters along the base were equally baffling and no member present despite a representation of half the world's expert learning in the field could form the least notion of even their remotest linguistic kinship they like the subject and material belong to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part the statue was a complete anomaly they are all completely baffled except for one man out of all of the archaeologists in the room only one man knew anything about what they were looking at a man named william channing webb nearly 50 years earlier he had encountered something similar during a tour of greenland in search of runic inscriptions it was there that he encountered the cult there was little much known of this cult among the other inuit natives there they spoke of it in hushed tones saying that it had come down from some terribly ancient eons before the earth was even formed the cult engaged in nameless rites involving human sacrifice and performed strange hereditary rituals which they addressed to some supreme elder devil the story uses the inuit name tonasuk in reference to this supreme devil in the inuit religion tornasuk is a very powerful sky god the leader of the tornad a group of protective gods he is also sometimes described as a mischievous demon spirit which in the real world was known to be worshiped by way of offering in greenland and even in the northern eastern parts of north america william channing webb recognized the statue because the cult he had encountered in greenland had danced around a crude by relief depicting the same entity and the words in which the inuit cult had chanted were the same words the new orleans cult had chanted the direct translation being in his house at relay dead cthulhu waits dreaming the natives of the louisiana swamps had called for the police though the cult has presumably always worshipped there something was different now the natives were in the grip of unimaginable terror they spoke a voodoo and darker things drums beat from deep within the black woods into which none dared venture though several of their women and children had gone missing the wild screams and chants could be heard through the night and a hellfire blazed in the distance twenty police set out into the woods which hid the light of day by the time they reached the cult it was night the region they had ventured into was known to be an evil place the natives would come no further into that place of hideous worship there was said to be a black lake there and within it a great formless being worshiped by the cult and the winged things which flew up from black caverns within the earth to look upon it was death it had been there before men and even before the beast of the woods it was nightmare itself and to see it was to die but it made men dream and so they knew enough to keep away the cult members at least 100 of them worshiped at the fringe of this evil place producing inhuman noises which chilled the bones as they echoed through the forest the horror of the place overtook the men as soon as they saw it the cult members danced around a flame circle surrounding a stone pillar at the top of the pillar sat the strange stone statue there were dead men the missing natives impaled upon wooden stakes surrounding the horrific circle one of the policemen joseph d galvez even swore that he could hear the beating of enormous wings just overhead hidden in the darkness and could hear a great inhuman voice call out in response to the ritual as the terrible luminous eyes stared out once the madness was settled 47 of the cult members were captured and interrogated according to the cult members they worshipped the great old ones beings of enormous power who lived eons before men ever walked the world they came to the young earth from beyond the sky those old ones were gone now inside the earth under the sea but their dead bodies had told their secrets and dreams to the first men who formed the cult which had never died this was that cult and the prisoner said it had always existed and always would exist hidden in distant waist and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest cthulu from his dark house in the mighty city of relay under the waters should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway someday he would call when the stars were ready and the secret cult would always be waiting to liberate him you see mankind was not alone amongst the intelligent beings of the universe and perhaps beside beings of such magnitude mankind cannot even be considered intelligent the figure depicted on the statue was indeed cthulhu the great priest the item was made of no known earthly stone because it did not come from earth for when the old ones came to this small world they brought their images with them the primary form of communication for these beings was the language of thought though by the time men arrived on earth they slept within their ancient city they still could whisper through the void and influence the minds of mortal men it was how they led the first men to their hidden images it was how they inspired the old religion and gave them the rituals and spells which could reawaken them when the time was right for eons it went on this way the old ones dead dreaming in their strange city until one day something happened which cut off the connection the great city of relay where the old ones slept maintained by the spells of the great cthulhu sank beneath the waves the primordial mysterious earthly waters blocked the voices of the old ones from reaching mortal men but the cult never forgot they kept the old ways hidden in the shadowy corners of the world waiting knowing that one day the stars would realign and the time would be right again to awaken the ones who slept beneath the waters but there was another secret the cult kept one which they would dare not utter it was said that other things shapes out of the darkness had come up to visit the faithful they flew up from black caverns within the earth and carried twisted rumors of things to come most of the information the men were able to extract came from one man named castro he claimed to have spoken to elder members of the cult in china undying ones who possessed ancient knowledge they knew of the beings from the stars who had not been entirely made of flesh and blood that had inhabited the earth beforehand and left behind the arts which could revive them when the time was right it was said that to herald their coming the earth would fall into chaos violence and ecstasy every man killing and taking pleasure for his own sake in the distant corners of the world the cult kept those old ways so the great old ones are serious business basically and the cult has kept the knowledge of them and how to revive them when the time is right basically forever since the dawn of mankind itself now that's some pretty ancient knowledge and then there's the necronomicon a book in lovecraft's universe written by the mad arab abdul azeroth they contain all sorts of information on eldritoras how to communicate with them and how to summon them it also supposedly contained dark magic spells honestly it kind of reminds me of some of these old books that my uncle left me but magic isn't real in any way these books are [Music] blank no all of these books were they were blank i i swear it magic isn't real anyway i guess it never hurts to try i why mean it's not like anything bad's gonna happen let's see here this one looks interesting to invoke ancient power i call forth through space and time through shadow at night through earth and sea claim what is old claim what is bound [Music] well what was that it must have been organism9186 somewhere yeah that that's what that was anyway that's enough of all of this back to the call of cthulhu so basically the purpose of this cult is to help the great old ones wake up when the time is right and then cthulhu and the rest of them would be free to do what they do which is what exactly no one ever asks this question what is it that the great old ones are doing so we know that the old ones including cthulhu are cosmic beings they are bound to cosmic will when the stars are right they can leap from world to world but when the stars are wrong they could not live cthulhu is called the great priest and it is said that his spells are the ones which preserve the old ones and relate until the time was right it also says that the old ones aren't dormant but in fact communicate with each other from within their tombs through thought though the religion of the cult members was merely a utilitarian effort on the part of the old ones the fact that cthulhu performs spells implies that they themselves are appealing to a grander cosmic authority and so does the fact that they are extremely subject to cosmic alignment and the idea that they are described as dead dreaming almost implies that they are all collectively engaged in some sort of great prayer reaching out to greater powers even beyond them now great cthulhu does make an appearance in this short story the cult ultimately failed to complete its cold but all the same cthulhu had been released by lost sailors on a stormy sea for whatever reason the stars had been just right the great city of relay rose up from its watery grave and the spectral intercourse of the gods was reconnected with those who inhabit the earth the cult heard it the shadowed ones and caverns beneath the earth heard it poor young wilcox had heard it too and several others from which my uncle dang it the character uncle interviewed they heard the call of cthulhu and while the cult celebrated the coming of a new age the rest if anything saw a maddening dream of a terrible city and poor wilcox had been briefly driven insane but for whatever the reason this was not the right time this had only been a temporary blip in the cosmic cycle the stars moved again and the great city of relay sunk back into the ocean taking cthulhu and the rest of the great old ones with it perhaps these events only herald what is to come cthulhu and the rest of the old ones will wake up one day and we will not be able to stop them and i think right there gets down to the very core of why cthulhu is really scary as i said earlier cthulhu represents the fear of something to come that is unstoppable if we could consider the first humans who ever lived i know impossible humans exist upon a continuum but just do this thought experiment with me consider the first humans they would live and have no knowledge of death until they saw it once one of them died they would have been forced to face the terrible truth that the blackness and stillness of death waited for them all so much of what life is involves staving off death we must constantly intake air find food avoid dangers all to slow down the inevitable but death will come to claim us all just as cthulhu will come to claim his earthly realm death seems to be one of the primary fears amongst conscious beings because we are aware of the fact that our bodies will cease to be functional one day we have created countless different ideas about how our consciousness could potentially exist after death believing in an afterlife or reincarnation makes it easier for a lot of people to deal with the fact that they will die if you rise again after death like the great old ones rising again after the changing of the stars then death is not really death but not all of the ideas that humans have created about the afterlife necessarily depict a positive picture of what's on the other side to me one of the most terrifying ideas about the afterlife is hell [Music] [Music] will bring you [Music] the bible describes a lake of fire but it wasn't until dante's divine comedy that the modern idea of hell was born the divine comedy depicts a man's journey through hell limbo and the heavenly realm midway upon the journey of our life i found myself within a forest dark for the straightforward pathway had been lost dante led by his guide journeys through the nine circles of inferno passing the condemned undying sinners along the way in each circle the sinners are forced to endure different torments at the hands of demons within the ninth circle of hell waited satan himself the idea of eternal torment is a terrifying one to me personally the idea of eternity itself is terrifying that gets back into another lovecraft idea actually humans are finite beings inherently limited our conception of reality is linear we move forward in time we see things in terms of beginning middle and end i've been of the opinion for a long time now that the greatest mysteries in our universe are beyond our understanding when someone stares into the eyes of an eldritch horror in a lovecraft story and goes completely mad upon witnessing it lovecraft is playing with this idea it is a being so complex so beyond our concept of reality that our minds sometimes simply break when we encounter them stephen king plays with this in what i consider to be his homage to lovecraft the book it one of the biggest misconceptions about stephen king's it is that the monster is a clown it's not a clown the clown is one of the infinite forms in which this creature could potentially take it came to earth long ago long before there were any humans it slept and waited for millions of years beneath the town that would one day be dairy because it knew that one day it would have rich food in which to feast upon humans which could envision terrors beyond anything possible for non-intelligent beings it possessed a true form which was unknowable to mortal sight and to stare into its shining eyes illuminated by the dead lights flowing from the cosmic macroverse out of which it was born was to be maddened when they got here it would cast them shrieking insane into the dead lights this idea of cosmic madness is definitely one that lovecraft popularized and this very famous trope of course makes an appearance in the call of cthulhu as well i mentioned that the great priest himself does make an appearance in this short story though some of the men who encounter cthulhu escape some of them go mad at the instant they lay eyes upon him i think the idea that there are things in existence not meant for humans relates back to the quote from the beginning of the video we live on a placent island of ignorance and it was not meant that we should voyage far it suggests that there is some truth that we simply should not be aware of some things that we simply should not see trollian hear these words for i shall only speak them once there is awesome grandeur in the cosmic cycle humankind is insignificant the psycho will exist without you you scared me where have you been all this time tell me quinn have you practiced the magic in those spell books yeah but i can't seem to get the spells to work i guess my magic is pretty weak to unleash the full potential you must first awaken the power inside of you yeah and how do you know it is written in the necronomicon how do you know about the necronomicon i thought you hated reading other your questions no more i have found the spell that you need [Music] awakening spell okay it doesn't look too hard i guess we could give it another try let's do it in this shadow night in this dark hour we summon now the ancient powers hear us ruler of the deeps serpent of the black seas rise and commune with me lend me your power yes yes keep chanting priest of old dark lord of cuba i beseech thee awaken you're the one awakening oh my god [Music] whoa i can do magic i feel strong i feel powerful i feel wrong like there's something inside me ah something dark this is what you wanted the power of the gods no this isn't right i know i don't want this you are our vessel our what do you mean our what are you talking about organism i am no longer organism9186 he was easy to possess but you have always been surprisingly strong for years we have waited for a vessel in which to place our dark lord and now it is nearly complete your uncle hid you from us and now we have you there is only one task yet to be done the darkness but he can't live whilst your will remains strong i am afraid we will have to purify the vessel by killing and releasing your pathetic mortal soul so that the dark one can finally make full use of that body no oh stop at the hotel [Music] you are the vessel quinn must die for the garland can live look the stars are right no please no i promise i will tell anybody about the cult you can find another vessel i'll help you i have four brothers you can take any one of them [Music] [Music] well that was terrifying what are you talking about that was great you really do like to see me suffer don't you lighten up it was just a simulation well i guess you're right at least we know now what it would be like if lovecraftian beings actually existed in the real world yeah that was fun hey since it's halloween we should watch a spooky lovecraft movie to celebrate yeah i don't know organism i'm kind of lovecrafted out and plus there's like no good lovecraft adaptations well what about that lovecraft country show well lovecraft country is actually based off of this book by matt ruff it's kind of a weird horror anthology but it's only tangentially related to h.p lovecraft's work i did a review on the book and it was kind of an intense experience for me so i'm not really ready to jump into the show yet well i heard the color out of space with nikola's cage was pretty cool oh please do not get me started on that garbage i have never been so shocked by the lack of plot in a film also nicholas cage screaming about his alpacas the entire movie no thanks two thumbs down well there's gotta be some good left crap related movies or shows you like well there is the lighthouse starring willem dafoe and robert pattinson i really liked it it has a bunch of fire of the gods ideas in there you know like prometheus and such you have a young man and an old man working at this lighthouse now the older man does not allow the younger man to operate the lighthouse he is concealing the illumination just as the gods concealed fire from mankind in greek mythology and there's also some pretty cool lovecraft concepts thrown in it's a pretty intense movie interestingly enough it's actually based off of a short story by edgar allen poe at least loosely who is one of lovecraft's major influences yeah i don't want to watch that two dudes in a lighthouse that sounds lame and it's in black and white black and white films are lame well i guess you wouldn't like annihilation then what's it about well it's based off of this book by jeff vandermeer four scientists go into this area that's being affected by this weird object that's fallen from space many people who go within the area lose track of time and kind of go mad it's basically it's basically a way better adaptation of the color out of space than nicolas cage's stupid adaptation without even being an actual adaptation and also there's a really cool looking mutant bear in the movie well that sounds awesome why wouldn't i like it the main characters are women all of them yes but you said it was a good movie you know organism i just don't think i'm up to watching a movie right now i think i'm gonna go read horror stories i have a new anthology to crack open actually uh yeah the simulation was cool it's a good thing that none of that stuff is real though see you later it's a good thing none [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Quinn's Ideas

Views: 180,199

Keywords: Lovecraft, Cthulhu, Mountains of Madness, New, Movie, Explained, Lore, The Great Old Ones, Old Ones, Cosmic Horror, Cosmic Madness, Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft Country, Color out of Space, Horror, Dune, ASOIAF, Frank Herbert, Stephen King, IT, Stephen King It, Pennywise

Id: Z0xiqF0O2FE

Length: 44min 58sec (2698 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/jsalsman]

So good. And the reviews in the last five minutes are spectacular.

(Quinn, your Lovecraft Country review was superb, and I hope you get the mental space to watch the adaptation.)