Hello, my darling. I need to tell you about our sponsor anchor dot f m. Anchor is a podcast creation and distribution tool. And it gives you everything you need to record edit. Plus they'll distribute your podcast to all of the major channels including Spotify Apple podcasts and Google podcasts free of charge you can make money with no minimum listenership and it couldn't be easier. Download the anchor app or go to Anchor dot f m-- to get started sweet dreams. Hello my darling and welcome back to our reading of HP lovecraft's at the mountains of madness. Please close your eyes relax and enjoy the sounds of this incredible thunderstorm. While I read to you. This is chapter 5. I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed all Wonder Terror and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the past and Sol would lay Beyond of course, we must have had some natural theory in the back of our heads to study our faculties for the moment. Probably we thought of such things as their grotesquely weathered Stone. So the Garden of the Gods in Colorado or the fantastically symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert, perhaps we even have thought the site de Mirage like that. We had seen the morning before and first approaching those mountains of Madness. We must have had some such normal Notions to fall back upon as our eyes swept the The bit less Tempest guard plateau and saw the almost Limitless Labyrinth of coloful regular and geometrically youth rhythmic Stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet. Not more than 40 or 50 feet deep at its thickest and in some places obviously thinner. The effect of the Monstrous site was Indescribable for some bean dish violation of some unknown natural law seems certain that the outset here on a hellishly ancient table and fully twenty thousand feet high and in a climate deadly to habitation such a pre-human age not less than 500,000 years ago. they're stretched nearly to the Visions limit the tangle orderly Stone, which only the desperation of mental self defense could possibly attribute to any but a conscious and artificial cause we had previously dismissed so far as serious thought was concerned any Theory the cubes and ramparts of the mountainsides other than natural, you know, Jen how could they be? Otherwise when man himself could scarcely have been differentiated from the great apes of the time when this region succumbed to the present unbroken reign of glacial death it now this way of Reason seemed he reputedly shaken or the cyclopean masive squared curved and angular blocks had features which Cut Off full Well Refuge, it was very clearly the Blasphemous city of the Mirage and Stark objective reality that damnable portent had a material basis after all there had been some horizontal stratum of ice dust in the upper air. And this shocking Stone survival had projected its image across the mountains according to the simple laws of reflection. Of course, the Phantom had been twisted and exaggerated and had contained things which are real Source did not contain yet. Now as we saw that real Source, we thought it even more hideous and menacing and it's distant image only the Incredible unhuman massiveness of these vast Stone towers and ramparts had saved the bright little thing. Annihilation in the hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of years. We had brooded their midst of the class of oblique a planned. Corona Mundi roof of the world all sorts of fantastic phrases sprang to our lips as we looked dizzily down at the unbelievable spectacle. I thought again of the eldrick Primal Miss, but it's so persistently haunted me since my first sight of this dead-end hurting world of the Demonic plant our blang of the me go or minimal snowman of the Himalayas or the manuscripts with their bravery human implications of the Cthulhu Cult of the Necronomicon and of the hyper bourgie and legends of formless Sato Guam and the worst Then formless star spawn associated with that semi and is he for boundless miles in every direction the things stretched off with very little Opening indeed as our eyes followed it to the right and left them all in the base of the low gradual Foothills, which separated it from the actual Mountain rim. we decided that we could see note bending at all except for an interruption of the left of the pass through which we had come we had merely struck at random a limited part of something of incalculable extend the foot hills were more sparsely sprinkled with grotesque stone structures linking the terrible City to be already familiar cubes and ramparts which had evidently performed its Mountain outposts these ladder as well as the strange cave mouths or as thick on the inner as on the outer sides of the mountains the nameless Stone Labyrinth consisted for the most part of walls from 10 to 150 feet in ice clear height and of a thickness varying from 5 to 10 feet and was composed mostly of prodigious blogs some dark primordial slaved schist and Sandstone blocks in many cases as large as 4 by 6 by 8 feet though in several places at seemed to be carved out of a solid uneven Bedrock of brain Cambrian slate. The buildings are far from equal in size therapy innumerable honeycomb Arrangements of enormous extent as well as smaller separate structures, the general shape of these things tended to be conical pyramidal or terrorist though. There were many permitting cylinders perfect cubes clusters of cubes and other rectangular forms and A peculiar. Playing of angled oedipus's caused by pointed ground plan roughly suggested modern fortifications. The builders had made constant and expert use of the principle of the arch and domes had probably existed in the city's heyday. Tangle was monstrously weathered and the glaze you'll surface from which the towers projected was strewn with pollen blocks and immemorial debris where the glaciation was transparent. We can see the lower parts the gigantic piles and noticed the ice preserved Stone Bridges which connected the different towers and varying distances above the ground. On the exposed walls, we could detect the scarred places where other and I are bridges and the same sword that existed closer inspection revealed countless largest Windows. Some of which were closed the shutters of a petrified material originally would the most gaped open in a Sinister and menacing fashion. many of the rooms of course were ruthless with uneven the wind rounded upper edges whilst others the more sharply comical or pyramidal model or else protected by a higher surrounding structures preserved intact outlines, despite the omnipresent crumbling and pitting With the field glass we can barely make out with seem to be sculptural decorations in horizontal bands decorations, including those curious groups of dots whose presence on the Ancients of stones now assumed a vastly larger significance. In many places the building's weren't only ruined and the ice sheet deeply ribbon from various geologic causes and other places the stonework was worn down to the very level of the glaciation one broad swath extending from the plateaus interior took left in the Foothills about a mile to the left of the past we had traversed. Was wholly free from buildings and probably represented. We concluded the course of some great river which in tertiary times millions of years ago had poured through the city and into some prodigious Subterranean abyss of the Great Barrier range. Certainly. This was all above a region of caves Gold City Underground Secrets Beyond human penetration. Looking back to our Sensations Nicole in our days at Miss. I've been doing this monstrous survival from Aeons. We had not pre-human. I can only wonder that we preserve the semblance of equilibrium which we did. Of course, we knew that something chronology scientific theory or our own Consciousness was woefully, awry. Yet be kept enough poised to God through the plane observe many things quite neatly and take a careful series of photographs which may yet serve both us and the world in good stead in my case in Grain scientific habit may have helped form of all my me wonderment and a sense of Menace. They're burned and dominant curiosity to Fathom more. I miss age-old secret to know what sort of beings and builds lived in the same calculate gigantic place and what relation to the general world of its time or whether times so unique the concentration of life could have had for this place could be no ordinary City. I must have formed the primary nucleus and center of some archaic an unbelievable chapter of Earth's history whose outward ramifications recalled only dimly in the most obscure and distorted myths had vanished utterly admits the chaos of terrine convulsions long before any human race. We know had shambled out of a victim. hair sprawled a Paleo jelly megalopolis compared with which the fabled city of Atlantis and lemuria as we flew above that tangle of star Titan Towers. My imagination sometimes escaped all bounds and Road aimlessly and rounds of fantastic associations. Even wearing links between fixed this lost world and some of my own Wildest Dreams concerning the Mad whore of the camp the plane's fuel tank in the interest of great lightness. I'd only been partially filled, hence. We now had to exert caution in our Explorations even so however, we covered an enormous extent of and or rather are after swooping down to a level where the wind became virtually negligible there seemed to be no limit to the mountain range or the length of the bright purple stone city, which bordered its inner Foothills 50 miles of flight in each Direction showed no major change in the Labyrinth of rock and masonry but flawed up corpse leg through To the Eternal ice there were though some highly absorbing diversifications such as the carvings on the canyon for the Broad River and once pierced the Foothills and approached it sinking place in the great range. The headbands of the streams and Trends had been boldly carved in the cyclopean pylons and something about the riggi barrel-shaped designs start up on leaving Hague hateful and confusing semi remembrances involved and forth and me. We also Came Upon several star-shaped Open Spaces evidently public squares and noted various undulations in the terrain. Where a sharp Hill Rose. It was generally home move into some sort of rambling Stone edifice, but there were at least two exceptions of these latter one was too badly weathered to disclose what had been on the jutting Eminence while the other is still bore fantastic conical Monument carved out of the solid rock and roughly resembling such things as the well-known snake tomb in the ancient Valley of Petra. My in land from the mountains we discovered that the city was not of infinite with even though it's length along the Foothills seemed endless after about 30 miles the grotesque Stone buildings began to thin out and in 10 more miles. We came to an unbroken waste virtually without signs of sentient artifice. the course of the river beyond the city seemed marked by a bra depressed my own the land assumed is somewhat greater ruggedness seeming to slope slightly upward as it receded into the Mist hazed West so far we had made no Landing it only the plateau about an attempted entering some of the monsters structures would have been inconceivable accordingly. We decided to find a smooth place in the Foothills near are navigable pass their grounding the plane and preparing to do some exploration on foot though. These gradual slopes were Partly covered with a scattering of ruins low-flying soon disclosed an ample number of possible Landing places selecting that nearest to the passed since our next flight would be across the Great range and back to camp we succeeded about 12:30 p.m. In coming down on a smooth hard snow feel wholly devoid of obstacles and well adapted to a Swift and favorable take off later. Iran It did not seem necessary to protect the plane with the snow baking for so brief a time and then so comfortable and absence of high winds of this level. Hence. We merely saw the blending skis were safely lodged another vital parts of the mechanism were guarded against the cold. For our foot journey, we discarded the heaviest of our wine purse and took with us a small outfit consisting of pocket compass hand camera light Provisions voluminous notebooks and paper geologists hammer and chisel specimen bags coil of climbing rope and Powerful electric torches with extra batteries. This equipment having been carried in the plane on the chance that we might be able to effect a landing take Brown pictures make drawings and topographical sketches and obtain Rock specimens from bear slope outcropping or Mountain cave. Fortunately. We had a supply of an extra paper to tear up place in a spare specimen bag and use on the ancient principle of The hounds were marking our course idiom Terrier mazes. We might be able to penetrate. This had been brought in case we found some cave system are quiet enough to allow rapid easy method in place of the usual Rock shipping method trailblazing mocking cautiously down a hill over the crusted snow tour in the stupendous Stone Labyrinth and leaned against the opalescent West. We felt almost as keenest sense of imminent Marvel's as we had felt When approaching the unfathomed mountain pass for hours previously true. We had become visually familiar with the incredible secret concealed by the barrier Peaks yet the prospect of actually entering primordial walls reared by conscious beings perhaps millions of years ago before any known. So man could have been tested was nonetheless awesome and potentially terrible ones implications of cosmic abnormality. Though the thinness of the air and his prodigious altitude made exertion somewhat more difficult than usual book Danforth and I found ourselves bearing up very well and felt equal to almost any task which might fall to our lives. took only a few steps to bring us to the shapeless ruin or level with the snow while ten or fifteen rods farther on there was a huge ruthless Rampart still complete its gigantic five-pointed outline and rising to an irregular height and 10 or 11 feet for this ladder we headed and when at last we were able actually to Jen's weathered cyclopean blocks, we found that we had established an unprecedented and almost Blasphemous linked with forgotten Aeons normally close to our species this Rampart shaped like a star and perhaps 300 feet from point to point was builds of Jurassic Sandstone blocks of a regular sized averaging six by eight feet in surface. There was a row of barged loopholes or Windows about four feet wide by 5 feet high spaced quite symmetrically alone the points of the star and at its inner angles and with the bottoms about Fort Meade from the glaciated service looking through these we could see that the masonry was fully five feet thick that there are no partitions remaining within and that there were traces of banded carvings. On the interior walls facts we had indeed guest before when flying low over this Rampart and the others like it the lower parts must have originally existed all traces of such things or now. Holy of scared by the Deep layer of ice and snow at this elevation. We crawled through one of the windows and vainly tried to decipher. I'm merely a face to be royal designs but did not attempt to disturb the glaciated for orientation flight said indicated that many buildings in the city proper or less ice-choked and that we might perhaps find the only clear Interiors leading down to the true ground level if we entered those structures still roofed at the top. Before we left the ramparts, we photographed and carefully and studied. It's more or less cyclopean masonry with complete bewilderment. We wish that the body were present for his engineering knowledge might have helped us guess how such Titanic blocks could have been handled in them from moving remote age when the city and its outskirts or built up. That mile off downhill to the actual City but the upper wind shrieking vainly and savagely to the Skyward peaks in the background was something whose smallest details will always remain engraved on my mind. Only invent a stick nightmares could any human beings but Dan poor than me conceived such Optical effects. Between us and the churning Vapors of the West lay that monster is tangle of dark stone Towers. Its outer an incredible forms impressing us afresh and every new angle of vision. It was a mirage and solid Stone and were it not for the photographs. I would still doubt that such a thing could be And general type of masonry was identical with that of the rampart. We had examined but the extravagant shapes which the space in retook in its Urban manifestations were all passed description. Even the pictures illustrate only one or two phases of its infinite bizarre Airy and less variety preternatural massiveness and utterly. alien thing tzadik Menace there were geometrical forms her which include could scarcely find the name cones of all degrees are regularity and truncation Terraces of every sort of provocative disproportion shafts with odd bulbous enlargements broken columns and curious groups and five-pointed or five ridged Arrangements of mad grotesqueness. As we drew nearer, we can see beneath the certain transparent parts of the ice sheet and detect some of the tubular Stone bridges that connected the crazily sprinkled structures at various Heights. Of orderly streets there seem to be none. The only Rod opens, wha being mild to the left by the ancient river had doubtless flowed through the town into the mountains are field glasses showed the external horizontal bands of nearly a face sculptures from da troops to be very prevalent. And we could only have imagined when the city you must have looked like even though most of the roofs and Tower tops and necessarily perished as a whole it had been a complex tangle of Twisted lanes and alleys all of them deep canyons and some little better than tunnels because of the overhanging masonry or overarching Bridges. Now outspread below us. It lubed like a dream fantasy against a Westward Mist through whose Northern and Below reddish Antarctic son of early afternoon was struggling to shine and when for a moment that son encountered a denser obstruction and plunge the scene in the temporary shadow, The effect was suddenly menacing in a way. I can never hope to depict even the paint howling and piping of the unveiled wind in the great mountain passes behind us took on a Wilder note purposeful malignity. The last stage of our descent to the town was unusually Steep and abrupt and a rock outcropping at the edge with a grade changed - to think But an artificial Terrace had once existed there under the glaciation we believed there must be applied of steps or its equivalent. When at last we plunged into the labyrinth in town itself clambering over falling masonry and shrinking from the impressive nearness and warming height of omnipresent crumbling and pitted walls or Sensations again became such That I Marvel at the amount of self-control. We retained Danforth was frankly jumpy and began making some offensively and revel in speculations about the horror at the camp, which I resented all the more because I could not help sharing certain conclusions forced Upon Us by many features of this Mormon survival from Nightmare and think Woody. Speculations worked on his imagination two-for-one in place where debris littered Ali turned a sharp corner. He insisted that he saw a faint traces of ground markings, which he did not like whilst elsewhere. He stopped to listen to a subtle imaginary sound from some undefined point a muffled musical piping. He said not unlike that of the window. Mountain caves it somehow disturbingly different. The ceaseless by pointedness of the surrounding architecture and of the view distinguishable mural arabesques had a dimly Sinister suggestiveness. We could not escape and gave us intention terrible subconscious certainty concerning the Primal entities which in reared and wealth this unhallowed place. Nevertheless our scientific and adventurous Souls were not wholly dead and we beginning we carried out our program on chipping specimens from old different rock types represented in the masonry. We wish to rather pull set in order to draw better conclusions regarding the age of the place. Nothing in the great outer walls seem to date later than a Jurassic Period. Nor was any piece of stone in the entire place of a greater reason see in the pliancy Mage in Stark certainty. We were wandering a midst of death, which had rained at least 500,000 years and in all probability even longer. As we proceeded through this Maze of stone shadowed Twilight. We stopped and all available apertures to study interiors and investigate entrance possibilities. Somewhere above our range whilst others LED only into ice-choked ruins as unroofed and baron has the rampart on our Hill one those spacious and inviting opened on a seemingly bottomless Abyss without visible means of descent now and then we had a chance to study the Petrified Wood a surviving shutter. And we're impressed by The Fabulous antique Woody implied in the still discernible grain. These things had come from Mesozoic gymnosperms and conifers, especially Cretaceous psych hands and from ban poems and early angiosperms of plainly tertiary date. Nothing. Definitely later than the pliocene could be discovered in the placing of these shutters whose edges shown the former presence of strange and long-vanished hinges. You said seem to be varied some being on the outer and some on the inner side of the deep and braziers. They seem to have become wedged in place the surviving the rusting of their former and probably metallic fixtures and fastenings After a time, we came across a row of Windows and the bulges of a colossal 5 urged cone undamaged Apex which led into a vast well-preserved room with stone flooring but these were too high in the room to permit of descent without rope. We had rope with us, but did not wish to bother with this 20-foot drop and less obliged to especially in this thin Plateau are I'm great demands are made upon the heart this enormous room was probably a hall or Concourse of some sort and our electric torches showed bold distinct and potentially Starling sculptures arranged around the walls and Broad horizontal bands separated by equally broad strips of conventional arabesques. We took careful note of this spot planning to enter here unless a more easily gained interior were encountered. Finally though. We did encounter exactly the opening. We wished an archway about 6 feet wide and 10 feet high making the former end of an aerial Bridge which had spend only about five feet above the present level of glaciation. These aren't ways of course or flush with upper story floors. And in this case one of the floors still existed the building the successful was a series of rectangular Terraces on her left facing Westward that across the alley where the other Archway Ian was a decrepit cylinder with no windows and with a curious bulge about 10 feet above the aperture. It was totally dark inside and the archway seemed to open on a well the limit table emptiness. He debris mainly entrance to the vast left hand building ee easy yet for a moment. We hesitated before taking advantage of the long wish chance. I thought we had penetrated into this tangle of archaic mystery are required fresh resolution to carry us actually inside the complete and surviving building the fabulous Elder World whose nature was becoming more and more hideously playing to us in the end. However, we made the plunge and scrambled up over the rubble into the gaping and brazier. The floor Beyond was of greatest slaves labs and seemed to form the outlet of a loan High Corridor sculptured walls. I'm serving the many in our choice which led off from it and realizing we probable complexity of the nest of Apartments within we decided that we must begin on a system of Hare and Hound trailblazing hitherto our compasses together with frequent glimpses of the best mountain range between the towers and our rear had been enough to prevent are losing our way, but from now on the art of Shall substitute would be necessary. Accordingly we reduced our extra paper to shreds of suitable size these things in a bag to be carried by Danforth and prepared to use them as economically as safety would allow this method would gain us immunity from straying since there did not appear to be any strong air currents inside the primordial masonry if such should develop more and more papers oblige. Give out we would have course fall back on the more secure the more tedious method of rock chipping just how extensive a territory we had opened up. It was impossible to guess without a trial the clothes and frequent connection of the different buildings made it likely that we might cross from one to another on Bridges underneath the ice, except where impeded by local collapses and geologic riffs. For a very little glaciation seem to have entered the massive constructions almost all of the areas of transparent ice had revealed. The submerged Windows is tightly shut art as if the town had been left in that uniform state to the glacial sheep came to precise the lower part for all succeeding time. Indeed one game to curious impression of this place had been deliberately closed and deserted in some dim by gone a on rather than overwhelmed by any sudden Calamity or even gradual decay. Then the coming of the ice been foreseen that a nameless population left en masse to seek a less doomed to boat. The precise physiographic conditions attending the formation of the ice sheet at this point would have to wait for a later solution. It had not very plainly but a grinding Drive perhaps the pressure accumulated snow cones had been responsible and perhaps some blood from the river were from the bursting of some ancient glacial down the great range. God help to create a special State now observe a bowl imagination could conceive almost anything in connection with this place. And this my darling ends our reading chapter 5. I hope that you are able to rest well, and they're very sweet and creepy dreams. Good night. Good night.
ASMR Reading You To Sleep: Soft spoken ASMR with thunderstorm in background. At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft, written in 1931. The tale was originally rejected by the magazine Weird Tales for publication, but was eventually published in 1936 when an editor picked up Lovecraft’s tale for Astounding Stories. The story takes place during September 1930 where a group of wary explorers find themselves in disastrous conditions during an expedition in Antarctica. Told from the perspective of Dr. William Dyer, the tale is reflective of Lovecraft’s fascination with the Antarctic continent and his unfulfilled desire for exploration. A special thank you to Kyle, @PostCubicleKyle on Twitter for recommending this story as our next Lovecraft read. Now sit back, close your eyes, and relax as I read HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness to you. 