Lovecraftian horror

A 1934 drawing by Lovecraft of Cthulhu, the central cosmic entity in Lovecraft's seminal short story, "The Call of Cthulhu", first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928

Lovecraftian horror, also called cosmic horror or eldritch horror, is a subgenre of horror, fantasy, and weird fiction originating from the United States that emphasizes the horror of the unknowable and incomprehensible more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after 20th-century American author H. P. Lovecraft, whose work emphasizes strange and eldritch (unnatural) phenomena, with themes of cosmic dread, forbidden and dangerous knowledge, madness, non-human influences on humanity, religion and superstition, fate and inevitability, and the risks associated with scientific discoveries, which are now associated with Lovecraftian horror as a subgenre. The cosmic themes of Lovecraftian horror can also be found in other media, notably horror films, horror games, and comics.

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