The story is narrated by an unnamed seeker of “strange horrors” who is investigating the massacre of a community of some six dozen backwoods degenerates in an obscure region of the Catskills, a massacre which occurred during a particularly violent electrical storm and seems to have been perpetrated by an unidentified clawed beast. The narrator soon discovers that the most sinister legends of the region centre around the abandoned Martense mansion, and he decides—together with two companions—to spend the night in the big old house. And thus our lengthy, four-part tale begins. (Goodreads)
Howard Phillips Lovecraft;(August 20, 1890 – March 15, 1937) was an American writer who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. He was virtually unknown and published only in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, but he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life. Among his most celebrated tales are "The Rats in the Walls", "The Call of Cthulhu", At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time, all canonical to the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft was never able to support himself from earnings as author and editor. He saw commercial success increasingly elude him in this latter period, partly because he lacked the confidence and drive to promote himself. He subsisted in progressively strained circumstances in his last years; an inheritance was completely spent by the time he died, at age 46. (Wikipedia)