Hypnos

By: H. P. Lovecraft

Narrated by: Michael Troy

"Hypnos" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, penned in March 1922 and first published in the May 1923 issue of National Amateur. "Hypnos" is a first-person narrative, written from the perspective of an unnamed character living in Kent and later London, England. The narrator writes that he fears sleep, and is resolved to write his story down lest it drive him further mad, regardless of what people think after reading it. - The narrator, a sculptor, recounts meeting a mysterious man in a railway station. The moment the man opened his "immense, sunken, and widely luminous eyes", the narrator knew that the stranger would become his friend--"the only friend of one who had never possessed a friend before." In the eyes of the stranger, he witnessed important knowledge of the mysteries he always sought to learn...

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A Bad Trip for the Ages

The main characters in this story, who are left unnamed, meet by random chance and become fast friends. The narrator describes how his friend introduced him to mind altering substances which gave them the ability to explore the world of dreams and the reality between consciousness and unconsciousness. His descriptions of this place and its ethereal beauty and mystery are masterful, and I defy any filmmaker or photographer to replicate this place of dreams faithfully. The unexpected escalation in the severity of their situation, and the unknown menace haunting the narrator's companion from the other world, builds a tension to the story which was satisfyingly culminates in the peculiar and terrifying ending. The end also leaves a question of how much of the narrator's testimony is to be trusted, and what really lies waiting for him when he inevitably sleeps again. I highly recommend this story, especially since it's one of Lovecraft's few good works that isn't flagrantly racist.