The Very Old Folk and other short stories form H.P. Lovecraft

The Very Old Folk (1927), Near Pompelo, Roman soldiers have grouped to address the worries of the local people, who are afraid, that the strange, wild folk living in the hillside will unleash their wrath upon them. Each year they have come down and taken people to sacrifice them in the Sabbath rituals. As the Romans approach the ritual site, something terrible attacks them, and then the narrator of the story wakes from his dream.

The story was originally taken from a letter Lovecraft wrote to Donald Wandrei, a fellow American horror writer. The name for the story was given by the publisher. As a whole, The Very Old Folk isn't a strong story, but then again, I doubt it was meant to be published. It's kind of a draft of an idea and that's what it works as. The idea is decent, I can actually see this being something someone like Robert E. Howard could have easily turned into a nice little action yarn.

The Thing in the Moonlight (1927, Lovecraft, Chapman Miske), In this short story, Morgan, an illiterate man, pens up a letter, not from himself, but channelling a person called Howard Phillips. Through Morgan, Howard relates his anguish of having been trapped in a nightmarish dream world. He knows he is dreaming but is unable to wake up.

This is another story, that was picked up from Lovecraft's letters, finalized by the publisher and released in 1941, around 4 -years after his death. It's not long a long story, but it is well written. The epilogue and prologue are credited to Chapman Miske, the rest of it, the dream description is all Lovecraft.

A History of the Necronomicon (1927), Sadly enough, unlike the name suggests, this short story is not the definitive history of the ill-famed book of unspeakable secrets. While it does give the original name for Necronomicon, Al-Azif, it doesn't go into any detail on how the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred penned it. What it does present is the publication history of the book from the original form to its modern print. And that's that, really. As a side note, this was another text taken from his numerous letters to other authors.

Ibid (1928), I have very little to say about this one. Apparently, Lovecraft wrote this short biography of a scholar Ibidius to satirize pompous academic scholarship. That's what T.S. Joshi and David E. Shultz claim at least. The name ibid comes from Latin and is used to refer to cited sources. The best-known work of Ibid mentioned Op. Cit. means "the work cited". I'd say it's safe to skip this.