"The Transition of Juan Romero" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on September 16, 1919, and first published in the 1944 Arkham House volume Marginalia.
The story involves a mine that uncovers a very deep chasm, too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom. The narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside, drawn by a mysterious rhythmical throbbing in the ground. Both Romero and th...
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"The Transition of Juan Romero" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on September 16, 1919, and first published in the 1944 Arkham House volume Marginalia.
The story involves a mine that uncovers a very deep chasm, too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom. The narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside, drawn by a mysterious rhythmical throbbing in the ground. Both Romero and the narrator, plunge into abysses. The narrator peers cautiously over the edge, sees something - "but God, I dare not tell you what I saw!" and flees back to the camp. That morning he and Romero are both found in their bunks, Romero dead. Other miners swear that neither of them left their cabin that night.
Lovecraft seems to have disavowed the story early in his writing career. He did not allow it to be published in the small press during his lifetime, and it does not appear on most lists of his stories. He seems not to have shown the story to...
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