There never was any Abdul Alhazred or Necronomicon, for I invented these names myself. Now about the “terrible and forbidden books” – I am forced to say that most of them are purely imaginary. In a letter to Willis Conover, Lovecraft further elaborated:
Lovecraft was asked many times in his own lifetime about the veracity of the existence of a real Necronomicon and always swore that it was nothing more than a fictional creation. It also had illustrations of Cthulhu and Yog-Soggoth.
The original version contained an account of the Old Ones, their history, and the means for summoning them. It got it’s first mention in the Lovecraft story “the Hound” which was written in 1922, though its alleged creator, Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in a story entitled “The Nameless City”. Lovecraft and propagated by his followers as part of the Cthulhu Mythos. For the record the Necronomicon is a wholly fictional grimoire created H.P. Which means from an early age the idea of the Necronomicon was brewing in young Lovecraft’s brilliant mind waiting to be born into our world. It’s been said that he would run around the house as a child with a sheet belted onto his head claiming to be Abdul Alhazred – the character he’d later attribute as the author of the Necronomicon. Lovecraft became obsessed with Arab culture after reading it. One of the books from the American businessman’s extensive collection that captured the imagination of the young child was 1001 Arabian Nights. In the first part of this series, I talked about Lovecraft’s reclusive childhood, as well as his love for old books passed down to him by his grandfather Whipple. We’ll start with the origins of the elusive tome. It’s hard to believe that even today, in the age of the internet and search engines, that there are people who still believe that the Necronomicon is an actual spell book written thousands of years ago. There are so many misconceptions, myths, and superstitions about this fabled book that have endured, thriving in the darkest corners of our collective cultural imagination, that it would be all too easy to lose sight of where the book actually started, especially if you’ve never been properly introduced to Lovecraft’s writing. Although the idea of the Necronomicon is less than a hundred years old it has quickly become one of the most important symbols in horror and supernatural fiction around the world. Lovecraft by studying one of his most endearing legacies – the Necronomicon. Welcome back, horror lovers! Continuing my series on the life and works of the man Stephen King once called the “father of modern horror,” we dive back into H.P.
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