Who We Are and How We Got Here
HPLHS in a Nutshell
The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS) is an organization founded in 1986 for the purpose of having fun within the worlds envisioned by 1920s gothic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Now a for-profit business located near Los Angeles, we are the world’s premiere producer of Lovecraftian entertainment, creating motion picture, audio drama, book, game, spoken word and musical projects with a unique blend of respect for the source material, respect for humankind, authentic period details, production value and a sense of humor. In addition to our entertainments, we create a wide variety of other products for Lovecraft fans (e.g. shirts, mugs, props, and much more) and sell them in our Glendale store and online. And we are indeed also a society with active members all over the globe.
We recognize that Lovecraft was racist in his personal views, and grapple constantly with the challenge of reconciling apprehensions about the man with appreciation for his artistic creations. We strive to recontextualize those creations for a new era. We fully agree that Black lives matter. We can’t change Lovecraft, but we can help change our world. We must evaluate the past unflinchingly, see the present honestly, and embrace changes to create a future that brings justice and equality to everyone. To pursue that change, the HPLHS donates a portion of its profits to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Further, we do our best to work with a diverse team of artists to ensure that the products we make are inclusive and welcoming to all.
HPLHS History
The HPLHS officially came into being around 1986 in Boulder, Colorado. Prior to that, we were a bunch of friends who met doing high school theatre in the early '80s. Sean Branney had the classic Chaosium role playing game Call of Cthulhu, and invited Andrew Leman, Darrell Tutchton and some other friends over to play it. Those frightening and thrilling nights when we gathered around a kitchen table in Englewood, Colorado paved the way for many strange and improbable events that followed.
While we all enjoyed playing an RPG game around the table, as theatre folks we were driven to, well, act. We thought the game would be even more fun if we put on some costumes, hid some clues around town and played the game in character out in the real world. At this point, we’d never heard of the idea of Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games, so we invented a system of rules that served our purposes called Cthulhu Lives!™ Soon we were staging games in creepy basements, vintage mansions and deserted mountainsides in Colorado. Many friends played in these games with us, and for most of them, once they tried it they were hooked. In one notable gaming incident, Sean ran an adventure on the campus of the University of Colorado at Boulder in which black-clad ninjas attacked some of the investigators on the college campus. Passers-by who did not understand what was going on alerted campus police, and when they demanded an explanation from a quick-thinking Sean, he told them the group was the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society. The police were mollified, and the name stuck.
In a Boulder pizzeria in 1986, Sean Branney, Phil Bell and Andrew Leman decided to make the group a real official thing, and The HPLHS was born. People in other parts of the world heard about what we were doing and were interested. We published a small monthly fanzine called Strange Eons which documented the group’s activities and published articles on Lovecraft, history, and other items of interest. Even in the pre-internet age, we soon racked up nearly 200 members across the English-speaking world. As a college project in 1988, the HPLHS produced its first motion picture, an adaptation of "The Statement of Randolph Carter" that was shot and edited on VHS videotape.
College years came to an end, and by 1988 Branney went off to graduate school in California and Leman went off to graduate school in Illinois. Both of them quickly recruited new groups of players, including Jamie Anderson in Illinois, and started staging more elaborate Cthulhu Lives!™ games. Ever ambitious, by this time the Keepers were designing games that lasted for weeks and might involve a tribe of Indians, a herd of horses, or use locations like Death Valley National Park or the British Museum. Games became big undertakings: rather like making a movie, but without a camera. You can read in much more detail about Cthulhu Lives!™ in our Games section.
In the 1990s, the Internet came to be and that worked wonders for connecting folks who were interested in the HPLHS with one another. The HPLHS had a digital archive of the more than 60 Cthulhu Lives!™ games produced over the years and that archive (a HyperCard stack, for those who remember such things) became the basis of the HPLHS’s first website.
By the end of the '90s, Leman left Chicago to move out to Los Angeles, and shortly thereafter the HPLHS decided to produce a new film, a mockumentary entitled A Shoggoth on the Roof. The 20-minute short investigated a supposed 1970s stage production which melded the works of Lovecraft with the Broadway musical A Fiddler on the Roof. The completed film went on the HPLHS site and was submitted to the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon. The mockumentary was well received among a crowd of likeminded folks and the HPLHS decided it would be worth pursuing other film projects.
The making of the A Shoggoth on the Roof documentary led to the production of a cast album for the fabled show. Its popularity led to a CD and songbook for A Very Scary Solstice, a collection of Lovecraftian Christmas carols. There were fans out there who enjoyed the kind of weird stuff the HPLHS was producing and the Internet made it possible to find them and for them to find the Society. And after a couple of projects in a humorous vein, we felt the time had come to do something serious: to make a feature film of a Lovecraft story.
Branney and Leman decided to adapt Lovecraft’s iconic tale “The Call of Cthulhu” and to shoot it the way it might have been shot during Lovecraft’s lifetime – as a silent film. After eighteen months of production, with indispensible help from cinematographer/editor David Robertson, the film was released in 2005 and is often heralded as the most faithful adaptation of Lovecraft’s work ever filmed. The Call of Cthulhu played at film festivals and other events worldwide.
Following on the success of The Call of Cthulhu, the HPLHS embarked on another motion picture: Lovecraft’s "The Whisperer in Darkness", shot as a feature length talkie. The post-production process proved arduous and during some of the downtime, we undertook another experiment in retro-storytelling. We adapted Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness as a 1930s-style radio play, with an original score, sound effects and a large cast of actors. The endeavor proved successful and paved the way for many subsequent episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre.
The Whisperer in Darkness was released in the spring of 2011 and quickly became another fan favorite for its commitment to the source material and the spirit of Lovecraft. Like The Call of Cthulhu, Whisperer won a number of awards and played at major film festivals worldwide.
In the ensuing years, the HPLHS has firmly established itself as the world’s premiere producer of Lovecraftian entertainments. Our large online store offers our films and audio CDs, books, clothing, mugs, props and much much more to the ever-growing Lovecraftian fan base. We continue to grow popular series like Dark Adventure Radio Theatre and have a number of varied and exciting new projects in the works.
The HPLHS, though global and even transdimensional in scope and aspiration, is for practical purposes a small organization operating at capacity in a small, cold, dark cell. We do our best to get things right but sometimes we make mistakes. We're happy to try to fix them when they are politely pointed out. We also try to fix them when they are impolitely pointed out. Also we are not lawyers.
The Society will continue to strive to produce the best in Lovecraftian games, movies, music, audio dramas, books, props and novelty items for the enjoyment of fans throughout the world, to collaborate with talented scholars, artists, writers and composers, and to spread and support fandom for H. P. Lovecraft and appreciation of his works and worlds, his life and times.
The Society depends on the support of its growing worldwide membership, and hopes that members will share their enthusiasms with friends and families while still preserving the solemn mysteries of Society membership. In other words, tell your friends to buy their own copies of The Whisperer in Darkness and/or Dark Adventure Radio Theatre!
The Society can accept no responsibility for any loss of sanity resulting from the use of its website or other products. We lost ours long ago.
Membership
The HPLHS has thousands of members in dozens of countries around the world. In addition to elaborate membership cards and certificates, those who officially join the HPLHS receive exclusive website and email content, a private facebook group, discounts on merchandise, access to society resources, and opportunities for direct interaction with staff and fellow members. The HPLHS greatly values its members and promotes their efforts whenever it can. One card-carrying member is chosen at random every month to be profiled on the website and to receive a free gift. Members are encouraged to participate actively in society endeavors by means of a fun bonus stamp collecting program. Membership is available on an annual or lifetime* basis.
* that's the society's lifetime, not necessarily yours....
HPLHS Bios
Sean was born in Englewood, Colorado. He received a BFA degree in Theatre from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He then moved to Southern California to attend the California Institute of the Arts where he earned his MFA in Acting. He founded Theatre Banshee in Burbank, California with his wife, Leslie Baldwin, and produced and directed many theatrical productions, winning awards for Acting, Directing and Producing from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.
With his colleague, Andrew Leman, he founded and continues to run the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society in Glendale, California. With the HPLHS, Sean has co-produced the films The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness. Sean adapted The Call of Cthulhu for the screen and directed The Whisperer in Darkness. He’s been a writer, performer and producer of sixteen feature-length 1930s-style radio dramas for the acclaimed series Dark Adventure Radio Theatre. He’s also co-written and co-produced a variety of Lovecraftian musical projects, including A Shoggoth on the Roof, A Very Scary Solstice, An Even Scarier Solstice and The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Mass. He continues to explore new ways to share Lovecraft’s cosmic horror with new audiences.
In addition to his Lovecraftian pursuits, Sean regularly plays ice hockey and plays with his four chinchillas. He’s delighted to be Leslie’s husband and Aidan’s dad.
Andrew Leman grew up in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, in a large family that owned a publishing company. He was surrounded by books, graphic design, and handcrafting from an early age. Fascinated by the 1920s/'30s, he is one of the founding members of the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society, and has produced a number of literary, film, theatrical, music, prop and gaming projects there with his longtime friend and collaborator Sean Branney. He wrote and directed the first HPLHS student film, The Testimony of Randolph Carter, directed The Call of Cthulhu, and co-wrote and co-produced The Whisperer in Darkness. He co-writes, produces, and performs in the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre series. He co-created the HPLHS musical sensations A Shoggoth on the Roof, two albums of Lovecraftian holiday music, the jazz vocal album Ogham Waite: Live at the Gilman House, and The Curious Sea Shanties of Innsmouth, Mass.
Leman earned his MFA in acting from the University of Illinois, and has been seen on professional stages in Chicago and Los Angeles. He greatly enjoys reading for The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast and being an occasional guest host. When not pursuing any of these many other occupations, Leman is a graphic and type designer, and his typographical work has been seen in books and on movie screens, Trader Joe’s products, and billboards nationwide.
Andrew is devoted to his husband Glenn Alfonso and their rescue dogs. He rides his bike as often as he can, which is never often enough.
Kevin Stidham is the current HPLHS Shipping Shoggoth. He hails from Bolton, England. He originally moved to the U.S. to pursue professional baseball after many years on the Great Britain national team, but found his true passion in the craft of acting. While here in the United States, Kevin has earned a B.S. Ed. in Theatre/Speech and an MFA. He has worked professionally as an actor on stage and screen across the country. He presently resides in Los Angeles where he continues to act in film and television. Some recent works include, The Binding (feature film ), Shine (feature film), Loosely Exactly Nicole (MTV sitcom) and Lines (Award-winning Short).
His talents can be found littered throughout many Dark Adventure Radio Theatre productions, notably as Charles Dexter Ward in "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward", Richard Upton Pickman in "A Solstice Carol", Edward Derby in "The Thing on the Doorstep" and Baron Hauptman in "The Brotherhood of the Beast".
Kacey met Sean and Andrew through their work together at Theatre Banshee and Dark Adventure Radio Theatre. One innocent foray into silk screening near the Solstice rush began her shoggoth slide into madness. She can be found in the darkest corner of the HPLHS warehouse gibbering softly to herself.
Stephanie helps out in the HPLHS workshop. She has a background in instructional design, graphic design, and film-emulsion photography. A long-time TTRPG enthusiast, she was introduced to the works of HP Lovecraft through Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu® back in 1992. Today, she is an unwavering fan of it all.
During gaming sessions she usually finds herself behind the screen as Keeper of Arcane Lore. Stephanie played in Cthulhu Lives! games in the mid-'nineties and joined the HPLHS staff in July 2021.
Jamie began his Cthulhu Lives career in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he met Andrew Leman attending the University of Illinois. Jamie’s first experience was as Investigator Jackson Basil Carleton in The Ninth Talisman. Jamie was immediately hooked on Cthulhu Lives and began to co-produce elaborate games with Andrew, creating epic adventures such as The Mistress of Nyarlahotep and The Sentence.
Jamie and Andrew also began using many of the present Cthulhu Lives standards, such as kokens for safety and special effects, consumer grade fireworks as simple pyrotechnics, and a firm belief that the “luck of the keepers” will prevail.
Jamie continued to produce Cthulhu Lives after leaving Champaign-Urbana, such as Dirt with Andrew Leman, and with other collaborators, such as We Thought It Would Be Fungi with his wife, Katia, and their friends, Rob Cimmerusti and Sue Marker.
Philip Bell is one of the co-founders of the HPLHS, and wrote and ran many games of Cthulhu Lives!™ in the society's early Colorado years. He has since moved on to more respectable pursuits, earning his Ph.D. in education, and is now a professor of the Learning Sciences & Human Development and holds the Shauna C. Larson Chair in Learning Sciences at the University of Washington.
Mike Dalager first encountered the HPLHS when he was cast as Guerrera, the doomed sailor who releases Cthulhu from his lair in 2005's The Call of Cthulhu. Numerous Society castings followed, with vocals on An Even Scarier Solstice and an infamous nipple-gilded Easter Egg appearance in The Whisperer in Darkness to name a couple. In 2010 Mike was hired full time as the Society's Shipping Shoggoth. For nearly four years he served the HPLHS mission with gusto, shipping and receiving with shoggothy fervor, providing talent when called upon, representing the Society at annual worldwide conventions and festivals, and even co-producing some fabulous audio products, most notably Live at the Gilman House (voice of Ogham Waite) and Dreams in the Witch House: A Lovecraftian Rock Opera. In 2014, Mike took on more demanding maritime obligations as a Coast Guard Reservist, ending his full time shoggoth reign. He now continues to carry the HPLHS torch as a trusty Lovecraftian ally and foot soldier, his Lovecraftian arsenal at the ready for the next HPLHS evolution.
David first joined the HPLHS as the cinematographer and editor of the motion picture The Call of Cthulhu, helping to create Mythoscope™. His sanity irretrievably damaged by the process, David returned to apply his talents again as the Director of Photography and editor of the HPLHS’ The Whisperer in Darkness. David directs and is cinematographer for a variety of television projects in Los Angeles.
A professional make-up artist by trade, Dave offered his services to the HPLHS to make the face and hands of Henry Akeley for the HPLHS’ The Whisperer in Darkness. He’s stayed on as part of the team, lending his makeup and sculpting skills to Lovecraftian projects as needed. Dave lives in Los Angeles but is often out of town working on television and film productions.
Darrell has been a part of the HPLHS since before its inception in the early 1980s. With Sean Branney, he staged the first Cthulhu Lives!™ game in Englewood, Colorado in 1983. He went on to study illustration at the Kansas City Art Institute and earned an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Darrell has been the cover artist for all of the Dark Adventure Radio Theatre episodes and has contributed illustrations to numerous HPLHS projects. He lives in Savannah, Georgia where he draws creepy pictures.
Shop Tour
HPLHS global headquarters in Glendale, Cal. are housed in a former antique store on Victory Blvd. The neighborhood is popular with people who own horses and ride the trails in nearby Griffith Park, and right outside our back door are stables with some very friendly horses and chickens. Inside it's a fascinating place full of inspiring books, works of art, and the tools of creativity. And we have a storefront open to the public on weekdays where visitors are welcome to come by, do a little shopping, consult the books in our library, listen to episodes of Dark Adventure on our 1930s Zenith console radio, and spin a vinyl album or two on our lovely restored Victrola. We host special events in the store, including film screenings, Call of Cthulhu game nights, and special presentations by some of our interesting members. And we always have a stock of free postcards, telegram forms and stamps on hand in case you want to be like Lovecraft and write a letter to someone. We'll even post it for you!
Look for our sign on the west side of Victory Blvd. just south of Western Ave.
Guests at our Open House enjoy checking out our new store space.
The HPLHS library features numerous fascinating books and artifacts from the Miskatonic University Exhibit Museum.
A giant version of our map of Dunwich dominates our boutique of HPLHS products.
Large-scale prints of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre covers decorate the wall leading behind the scenes.
Sean Branney's desk was used as the table holding brain cylinders in The Whisperer in Darkness.
Sean spends a lot of time in the editing bay where we assemble motion pictures and episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre.
The new shipping department is where DART jewel cases get assembled and packed, and where Kevin Stidham sits at the shipping desk, preparing packages full of fun and terror for the afternoon pickup by the U.S. Postal Service.
Most of our t-shirts are printed in-house by Kacey Camp on this silkscreen press. Our new shop has ceiling fans that make the work marginally more pleasant!
Andrew Leman's desk, in the middle of the document prep area, is deliberately small to prevent the clutter from consuming him like a shoggoth.
The document bench is where membership cards and certificates, Cthulhugrams, and many other pieces of ephemera are prepared.
The all-purpose workshop is where prop items like Tupilaks and Cthulhu Fetishes are molded and cast, scenic miniatures are built, and new items are prototyped. The shelves and bins in the background are full of miscellaneous parts and hardware of all kinds.
The back door of the building features an important warning to all visitors and delivery drivers....
Get In Touch
The Society depends on new-fangled electronic methods of communication in conducting most day-to-day business, but also likes to use good old-fashioned paper and ink the way Lovecraft did when possible. We can only hope the U.S. Post Office stays in business. We'll do our part to keep it afloat and hope that you will too. Meanwhile, please feel free to sign up for our occasional electronic-mails and/or send us a message through the aether using this form!
HPLHS Global Domination
The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society is an international organization for fans of the author H.P. Lovecraft. The Society produces motion pictures, audio dramas, musical projects, publications, prop replicas and much more - all of which take Lovecraft’s creations to a whole new level. Our motto is "Ludo Fore Putavimus" (We Thought It Would be Fun).
Useful Links
Contact Us
Glendale, CA 91201
U.S.A.
Phone: (747) 215-6422
Email: keeper@cthulhulives.org
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