Who Killed St. John Chart?

If you've ever wondered about the circumstances behind the grisly death of St. John in H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Hound," you aren't alone. D.F. Lewis, an active participant of the Thomas Ligotti Online forums and a weird author in his own right, posted an old article from "The Crypt of Cthulhu" investigating this very mystery. Lovecraft himself would surely marvel over students toying with an incident from "The Hound." The Providence writer considered it a sub-par work, and it's similarly dismissed by many giants of Lovecraft scholarship today. Nevertheless, the ambiguous and fatal interaction between St. John and the Hound remains a bewildering subject in one small quadrant of Lovecraft's fiction.


Even better than the scanned article provided by Lewis is the accompanying chart. Above, the full range of possibilities engendering St. John's demise can be seen. Lovecraft expressed an unusual relationship between bats and the Hound's appearance multiple times in the tale, and luckily, this chart covers the most logical permutations. If nothing else, the St. John quandary is a great puzzle to wrap your mind around, as well as an ultra-obscure piece of literary Lovecraftiana.

-Grim Blogger