Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Name: The Statement of Randolph Carter
Author: Howard Phillips Lovecraft

The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

Summary

“The Statement of Randolph Carter”, published in 1949, is a work by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It explores elements such as Warren, slab and spades.

Quotes from The Statement of Randolph Carter (Howard Phillips Lovecraft)

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ Nothing has been distorted or concealed, and if anything remains vague, it is only because of the dark cloud which has come over my mind—that cloud and the nebulous nature of the horrors which brought it upon me.
Again I say, I do not know what has become of Harley Warren, though I think—almost hope—that he is in peaceful oblivion, if there be anywhere so blessed a thing. It is true that I have for five years been his closest friend, and a partial sharer of his terrible researches into the unknown. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ My first vivid impression of my own presence in this terrible necropolis concerns the act of pausing with Warren before a certain half-obliterated sepulcher and of throwing down some burdens which we seemed to have been carrying. I now observed that I had with me an electric lantern and two spades, whilst my companion was supplied with a similar lantern and a portable telephone outfit. No word was uttered, for the spot and the task seemed known to us; and without delay we seized our spades and commenced to clear away the grass, weeds, and drifted earth from the flat, archaic mortuary. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ I constantly consulted my watch by the light of my electric lantern, and listened with feverish anxiety at the receiver of the telephone; but for more than a quarter of an hour heard nothing. Then a faint clicking came from the instrument, and I called down to my friend in a tense voice. Apprehensive as I was, I was nevertheless unprepared for the words which came up from that uncanny vault in accents more alarmed and quivering than any I had heard before from Harley Warren. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ And now for the first time my memory records verbal discourse, Warren addressing me at length in his mellow tenor voice; a voice singularly unperturbed by our awesome surroundings.
"I'm sorry to have to ask you to stay on the surface," he said, "but it would be a crime to let anyone with your frail nerves go down there. You can't imagine, even from what you have read and from what I've told you, the things I shall have to see and do. It's fiendish work, Carter, and I doubt if any man without ironclad sensibilities could ever see it through and come up alive and sane. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ I tell you, you can't imagine what the thing is really like! But I promise to keep you informed over the telephone of every move—you see I've enough wire here to reach to the center of the earth and back! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ I will not deny, though my memory is uncertain and indistinct, that this witness of yours may have seen us together as he says, on the Gainsville pike, walking toward Big Cypress Swamp, at half past eleven on that awful night. That we bore electric lanterns, spades, and a curious coil of wire with attached instruments, I will even affirm ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ Then he returned to the sepulcher, and using his spade as a lever, sought to pry up the slab lying nearest to a stony ruin which may have been a monument in its day. He did not succeed, and motioned to me to come to his assistance. Finally our combined strength loosened the stone, which we raised and tipped to one side.
The removal of the slab revealed a black aperture, from which rushed an effluence of miasmal gases so nauseous that we started back in horror. After an interval, however, we approached the pit again, and found the exhalations less unbearable. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, The Statement of Randolph Carter (1949)

“ Again I called down, "Warren, are you there?" and in answer heard the thing which has brought this cloud over my mind. I do not try, gentlemen, to account for that thing—that voice—nor can I venture to describe it in detail, since the first words took away my consciousness and created a mental blank which reaches to the time of my awakening in the hospital. Shall I say that the voice was deep; hollow; gelatinous; remote; unearthly; inhuman ”

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

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Quotes from The Statement of Randolph Carter (Howard Phillips Lovecraft)

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