H. P. Lovecraft died before the age of flying saucers and Bigfoot. But I think he would have really enjoyed it. The expression these days for such creatures that dwell on the cusp of reality is “cryptid”. Do such beasts actually exist outside the bounds of scientific knowledge? I have no idea. Or are they really denizens of the Cthulhu Mythos? I’m pretty sure they aren’t, but it is fun to speculate.
A little history, first. Let’s start with Yetis. The idea caught on in 1921, after the Royal Geographical Society’s Everest Expedition led by Charles Howard-Bury. In his account of the trip, he mentions Yeti “footprints” he saw. The idea of mountain-dwelling ape-men was taken up almost immediately by the English writer, E.F. Benson, who changed the location to the Alps for his horror story, “The Horror-Horn” (Munsey’s Magazine, November 1922). HPL read this story and mentions it in “The Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927):
Mr. Benson’s volume, Visible and Invisible, contains several stories of singular power; notably “Negotiam Perambulans,” whose unfolding reveals an abnormal monster from an ancient ecclesiastical panel which performs an act of miraculous vengeance in a lonely village on the Cornish coast, and “The Horror-Horn,” through which lopes a terrible half-human survival dwelling on unvisited Alpine peaks.
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