HPLHS News & Events Summer 2025

The Spark Devil

• September 9, 2025

We are now taking pre-orders for our latest gaming project: The Spark Devil. This is a complete adventure for Call of Cthulhu®, licensed by Chaosium. The Spark Devil is an original scenario written by the HPLHS' Sean Branney with a fantastic set of props created by Andrew Leman. The adventure makes extensive use of real Providence history and locations to create the most authentic setting possible. Investigators can explore Lovecraft's home town as they strive to stave off an entirely new Mythos threat. Both newcomers to Call of Cthulhu and seasoned veterans will find this story an engaging mystery filled with perilous surprises. The deluxe box set measures 13.5 x 11.75 x 4.5 inches and weighs almost 5 pounds. We expect the game will be shipping by mid-October.

HPL Film Festival

• September 6, 2025

Two weeks from today we will be performing Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: "The Temple" LIVE on stage at the Hollywood Theater in Portland, Oregon. The show will feature some exciting guest actors, and will be accompanied by live music on the mighty Wurlitzer organ by Dean Lemire. If you can get yourself to Portland, it should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And that's not all! Our movie of The Call of Cthulhu will be returning to the HPLFF for a 20th Anniversary screening and Q&A! It will be the opening night feature at 7:40 PM, and also accompanied LIVE on the Wurlitzer pipe organ. Even if you've seen the film before, you've never seen it like this. Card-carrying HPLHS members can collect two bonus stamps during the weekend. And we'll be vending some of our newest offerings in the theater lobby. Please come say hello!

M.U. Podcast

• September 1, 2025

We were delighted to join in to the Miskatonic University Podcast episode 331 to talk about some of the many things recently released! Thanks to Bridgett and Evan for their gracious hospitality!

Happy Birthday HPL

• August 20, 2025

HPL was born in Providence 135 years ago today! We thank him for all the many works he created that have disturbed and inspired us. To celebrate, we are cutting the prices of our movie adaptations of "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Whisperer in Darkness" in half from now until August 24. No discount code needed! If you'd like to take advantage, just go over to the movies department of our online store! We regret we can't cut the prices of all DVDs, but some things are beyond our control....

Featured Member

• August 1, 2025

Our Member of the Month for August, 2025 is Jeffrey Gilbert of Indianapolis, Indiana.

Jeffrey says: “I have been interested in Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I never knew where to start so I did not know many of his stories. I was an avid tabletop RPG player though and started to play Call of Cthulhu in the '90s. For a long time though I still only knew a couple of Lovecraftian stories and really nothing about the man himself. Fast forward to Gen Con 2019, that is when I found the HPLHS. It reawakened my curiosity about the Mythos and learning more about the man behind the stories. Since that time I have read all of Lovecraft’s Mythos stories and own a few of his poems I hope to get to at some point soon. Though the man himself has serious issues, I can still love and enjoy his work and admire certain aspects about him.”

Purgatory Chasm!

• July 25, 2025

At long long last, after years of technical issues, platform changes, and other unexpected obstacles, we are very happy to announce the release of Purgatory Chasm! Years in the making, this epic episode of Dark Adventure "Two-Way" Radio Theatre offers a thrilling interactive story hosted by longtime friend of the HPLHS, Nick Offerman! Some few were allowed to beta test it, and some other few heard a live version in Providence years ago, and now we're ready to make it available to YOU!

Audio Props

• July 25, 2025

We are happy to release the first volume of Audio Props. Created for tabletop gamers playing Call of Cthulhu™ and Delta Green's "God's Teeth", these fun audio files bring new life to your gaming. This first volume includes scenarios from Chaosium's "Pulp Cthulhu", "Mansions of Madness" and "Cthulhu by Gaslight™", in addition to Arc Dream Publishing's disturbing game set in the modern era. More audio props are in the works: stay tuned!

Dagon Collection Nominated

• July 24, 2025

We were delighted to learn that The Dagon Collection has been nominated as "Best Anthology" for a World Fantasy Award. The HPLHS' own Sean Branney and Andrew Leman contributed one of the many items in the book, and Andrew did the graphic design. Nate Pedersen is the editor. The winner of the award will be announced at the convention on November 2nd.

The H.P. Lovecraft Experience

• July 9, 2025

We are extremely happy to announce that a project we have been working on for about a year is nearly ready for release.The H.P. Lovecraft Experience is a new and deluxe edition of the collected works of HPL presented in a dynamite embossed case with cover art by friend of the HPLHS Lee Moyer. S.T. Joshi provided the edited texts of the fiction itself, and Sean and Andrew of the HPLHS wrote the introduction and a reader's guide to ten of the most significant tales. The set also comes with a bunch of Miskatonic University ephemera, including a course book, diploma, decals and more. It has been lavishly produced by Insight Editions and will be available for sale nationwide by mid-August. Currently available for pre-order!

Featured Member

• July 1, 2025

Our Member of the Month for July, 2025 is Samantha Hickey of Sydney, Australia.

Sam says: “Sam Hickey (she/her), currently living in Sydney, Australia, with partner Greg, and cats Sherlock and Watson. Diagnosed by the Arkham Sanitarium Sanity Assessment as unstable, recommended for institutionalisation with liberal privileges (do not startle).

I don’t think there was ever a time where I didn’t read weird fiction - As a kid I was absolutely omnivorous when it came to books and my parents seemed happy to let me determine my own literary interests. I would go to the library with a box because I needed it to carry all the books I was borrowing, and one of my fondest childhood memories is the day my family discovered a second hand bookshop in a random country town while on holidays in regional NSW. The prices were so absurdly low that we spent what felt like hours exploring books stacked on the floor and in heaps, and half-filled the boot of the car with our acquisitions (when we went back in later years the store was no longer there - I suspect it was one of *those* shops).

While I’m fairly sure I read specific Lovecraft stories in childhood, and definitely read the Lovecraft Omnibus set with the monstrous covers in my late teens (hand waves at the early 1990’s), I ‘rediscovered’ Lovecraft some time around the early 2010’s. A combination of travel for work and access to ebooks meant I was going through a process of inhaling weird fiction and horror anthologies and using these to jump off and more deeply and systematically explore the authors I enjoyed. I think it was at this point the contents correlated and I realised that Lovecraft’s influence was … well… inescapably everywhere. I had to know more and trace it back to the source. Investigating the mythos helped me find the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast (now Strange Studies of Strange Stories, and I’m still listening today), which in turn led me to the HPLHS Dark Adventure Radio Theatre production of At the Mountains of Madness… and then it was too late to escape. The mythos had me hooked and Life Membership of the HPLHS was the only option left to me.

Coming to the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG (and props!) was a separate strand. I’ve been a TTRPG player since my teens - but always Dungeons & Dragons. After an intense decade-long 4th ed D&D campaign I was keen to explore different systems and different stories, and Covid lockdowns in Australia in 2020 meant that catching up with friends online to tell stories together had a lot of appeal. Call of Cthulhu offered a serendipitous combination of themes I love exploring (the slow dissolution of sanity, self, and identity in the face of inexplicable and inescapable cosmic horror) and a system that felt accessible and well suited to a more narrative-focused experience with less complex combat. For the first time I mustered up the confidence to give my forever-GM partner Greg a break, running a mix of short scenarios and eventually a home-brew Gaslight campaign for friends. Researching the real and fictional Victorian London was an absolute joy - I recommend the Charles Booth's Poverty Map (1886-1903) to anyone running Gaslight scenarios - and my research into the era taught me that no matter how strange I tried to make my NPCs there was always a much weirder real historical figure that would better serve my story.

More recently Call of Cthulhu has opened up the world of convention games for me. The community here in Australia has been welcoming and a lot of fun, and the opportunity to meet new people and share a love of horrific stories, amazing props, and role playing in general inspires me. If you ever see me at a Con please don’t hesitate to come say hello!”

ChaosiumCon Australia

• June 30, 2025

Chaosium Con Australia was a load of fun, and we extend our most sincere gratitude to Chaosium for inviting us and to Michael O'Brien and Andrew Bean for looking after us while we were there. It was great to finally meet a number of Australian friends and characters in the flesh, and we only wish we had had more time to spend with them. Among many highlights was the chance to meet R.J. Ivankovic, shown above, the genius author/artist who has created the ongoing series of Dr. Seuss/HPL mashups. And of course another was the 20th anniversary screening of The Call of Cthulhu at the lovely art deco Sun Theatre in Yarraville. Thanks to all who turned out in costume to celebrate with us!

ChaosiumCon Australia

• June 20, 2025

Sean and Andrew will be heading off to Melbourne to be international guests of honor at Chaosium Con Australia, 27-29 June at the Moonee Valley Racing Club. They are scheduled to run a number of games, including two adventures currently in development for imminent(?) release and the Arkham Sanitarium Sanity Assessment. They will also present a 20th Anniversary screening of The Call of Cthulhu at the Sun Theatre in Yarraville on 26th June (ticketed separately). There will be bonus stamps for attending members for both the Con and the screening!

Gilman House Lounge Hospitality Set

• June 20, 2025

We are enormously pleased now to be shipping the Gilman House Lounge Hospitality Set! It's a delightful little box full of whimsical accoutrements that you might find in your room at the Gilman House Hotel in Innsmouth. It can be used as a prop in a game set in Lovecraft's fictional seaside town, or as a collectible in its own right.

Featured Member

• June 1, 2025

Our Member of the Month for June, 2025 is Joshua Childress of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Joshua says: “I was dimly aware of Lovecraft's body of work while growing up in Burke County, North Carolina. Edgar Allan Poe was more familiar to me as a kid. I recall reading "The Dunwich Horror" in my early teenage years in the mid-'90s and finding it intriguingly eccentric. I was unknowingly exposed to numerous Lovecraftian or Lovecraft adjacent materials throughout my childhood, such as The Thing, Hellboy and the Dagon television movie on Sci-Fi.

Like many of the Society, I found myself in search of stories to distract myself from the global insanity of COVID-19 precautions in 2020. While serving on active orders for the North Carolina Army National Guard in Fayetteville (North Carolina), I walked into one of my favorite haunts, the Hobbit Hobby Shop. One of the employees presented me with the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set when I asked for any horror themed tabletop game. I was instantly hooked. I began reading all of Lovecraft's work before continuing to devour the likes of Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Algernon Blackwood, Robert E. Howard, Matthew Davenport, C.T. Phipps and others. The same Hobbit Hobby Shop employee later asked me, "have you heard of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre or the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society?" I had not. This was soon remedied and I took the plunge (gleefully) for Life Membership in the Society in July, 2022.

I now live in Wilmington, North Carolina with my wife, Natalie, and our two cats. I've retired from the North Carolina Army National Guard and currently serve as a Robbery & Homicide Detective with the Wilmington Police Department. I also serve as the Pipe Major for the Wilmington Police Pipes & Drums. Strange, possibly eldritch, music is often heard from our residence courtesy of the Great Highland bagpipes. Nat and I can usually be found pottering in our garden, traveling abroad on adventures or on our boat (the Swell Times) exploring the Cape Fear River and Intracoastal Waterway in search of local wildlife and historical artifacts.

LUDO FORE PUTAVIMUS”