The Whisperer in the Darkness: H.P. Lovecraft Audio Books in Japanese

Finding a decent Japanese language podcast is difficult, with audio books of fiction rarer still. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across these curious recordings…

Lovecraft's works have always read more like travel logs than prose, and hearing his words piped directly into your brain enhances the experience of having stumbled across the dream diary of some ethereal explorer. Free samples are available for each of the nearly thirty stories split between two categories, Cthulhu Mythos and Lovecraft Mythos.

Noteworthy recordings include:
The Color out of Space,
The Statement of Randolph Carter,
and my personal favorite,
Beyond the Walls of Sleep.

Though the production values aren't as high as masterpieces like the Atlanta Radio Theater Company's dramatization of At the Mountains of Madness, they still possess just the right amount of grit and weird while avoiding spilling over into camp.

This is a great springboard for those of you who have always wondered how Lovecraft translates into Japanese but were put off by the prospect of consulting a dictionary at every instance of cyclopean, eldritch, and gibbering. And if Lovecraft's not your cup of turn of the century pulp, they've got Sherlock Holmes up for your listening pleasure as well.