Help me find a (Poe? Lovecraft?) story on cliffs and creeping biomass!

January 16, 2022 1:59 AM

Thank you in advance! Friend is into mycelium themed horror. Poe or Lovecraft wrote about a craggy village by the ocean (of course) that was being routed by a massive-and-sentient root or mushroom network. It's been so long I can't remember the name! Extended story detail inside.

Have done all-the-googling and can't seem to nail the magic phrase that would reveal this and don't have the right compendiums on hand to skim for it!

The story was roughly as follows: man hikes into small village on a cliff by the ocean. As he's exploring he notices various foreshadowings related something having infected the buildings and landscape.

The culmination of the story, I think, is him investigating a cabin that has been twisted out of shape by this growth. It's rooted its way through the timber and possibly infused an inhabitant, leaving them half-alive and reflecting the menace of the growth itself.

It then becomes apparent through observation or narrative with the creature that entire village, nee the entire world, is on the edge of being consumed in this way.

posted by muppetkarma to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Best answer: There are a number of fungi references in Lovecraft, but I couldn't find one that matched your description (which doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that I couldn't find it in the anthology I've got or in a Google search).

Could it be Fruiting Bodies by Brian Lumley? It "concerns a strange fungus that slowly destroys a town and ultimately consumes the bodies of the last remaining residents, but keeps their form. The story ends ominously as wood from the town has been harvested for use in homes across England, and the narrator has inhaled spores from the strange fungi."

Your friend might also be interested in "The Voice in the Night" by William Hope Hodgson, which is where I found the above description.
posted by underclocked at 4:26 AM on January 16, 2022 [3 favorites]

Your friend might be interested in, or this story may be from, Fungi, an anthology from some years back. (I have a story in it, but the story’s not mine).

It’s a stretch, but there’s also some overlap in your description with The Girl With All The Gifts.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:06 AM on January 16, 2022 [2 favorites]

Could it be the Lovecraft poem "The Fungi from Yuggoth"?
posted by oozy rat in a sanitary zoo at 8:37 AM on January 16, 2022 [1 favorite]

Jeff Vandermeer's City of Saints and Madmen?
posted by ananci at 9:51 AM on January 16, 2022

Response by poster: These are great, thank you - and you've made me realise: I was reading a lot of BIzzaro Horror / Fiction at the time as well so it could also be something very Lovecraftesque I'm mis-attributing. I'll dig through some of those too.

Fruiting Bodies is sounding incredibly close to the mark. At a minimum I'll have a good reading backlog for '22 =)
posted by muppetkarma at 1:02 PM on January 16, 2022

Response by poster: Ok thank you underclocked, Fruiting Bodies was the one! Such a trip down memory lane, really appreciate it =)
posted by muppetkarma at 9:02 PM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]