2,220 words (11–13 minutes)
Genre(s): Cosmic Horror, Psychological Horror
Originally published in The Vagrant, November 1919.

⸻

Shipwrecked and adrift at sea during World War I, a lone survivor finds himself stranded on a bizarre, nightmarish stretch of newly risen land—an ancient seabed thrust into the light by unfathomable forces. There, among decaying sea creatures and eerie silence, he discovers proof of pre-human civilizations and their grotesque gods. Haunted by visions of what he encountered, the narrator spirals into madness, unable to escape the horrors of the deep or the monstrous entity that still stalks him. Dagon is one of Lovecraft’s earliest and most influential tales, blending isolation, the fear of the unknown, and the terrifying insignificance of humanity in the face of cosmic forces.