Lovecraft's Dreaming Part I

HPL started dreaming early ...

"I began to have nightmares of the most hideous description, peopled with things which I called night-gaunts ... these figures came from an edition deluxe of Paradise Lost with illustrations by Dore ... it is fully fifteen years ... since I have seen a nightgaunt, but even now, when half-asleep ... I feel a thrill of fear ... & instinctively struggle to keep awake. That was my own prayer back in '96 - each night - to keep awake & ward off the night gaunts!"

This is when he was 6 years old and a bot after his grandmother passed.


referenced as SL.I. 34-35, note 4 in HP Lovecraft In His Time: A Dreamer and a Visionary, S T Joshi, Liverpool University Press, 2001, pp. 19-20. As an aside, this is an abridgement of HP Lovecraft: A Life, ST Joshi, Necronomicon Press, 1996,