The Great God Pan
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"Great God, what simpletons! Show them Arthur Machen's Great God Pan and they'll think it a common Dunwich scandal!"
—from "The Dunwich Horror" by HP Lovecraft
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Written by Arthur Machen in 1894 and originally published in a magazine, The Great God Pan is known for being one of the prototypes of the Cosmic Horror genre. It was a huge influence on HP Lovecraft, who used it as the basis for his own story The Dunwich Horror, as well as for the deity Shub-Niggurath. It is worth noting that the main themes of the story - the idea that there are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and horrors outside of our reality that we do not understand - are very Lovecraftian in nature, making these tropes older than you think.
The Great God Pan is also considered by Stephen King to be "one of the best horror stories ever written. Maybe the best in the English language." He has stated that 2008 novella N. was a "riff" on it.
In Wales a scientist, Dr. Raymond, experiments on a woman named Mary to enable her to "see Pan". Sadly, her mind is broken and Clarke, who watched the experiment, gives up occultism. Cut to several years later in London, where another man named Villiers meets an old friend of his who was led to misery by his wife Helen Vaughan. Curious, Villiers begins investigating. Meanwhile, an alarming number of wealthy, prominent men are being driven to madness and suicide following their encounters with a mysterious woman known as Mrs. Beaumont. Though Clarke is initially hesitant to give him the information he needs, Villers soon learns that Mrs. Beaumont is indeed Helen Vaughan, the daughter of Mary and the pagan nature deity Pan.
You can read it here.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Helen (when she doesn't have the Uncanny Valley effect going on) often appears to be a beautiful and charming woman.
- Break the Cutie: It was what got everyone into that mess.
- Campbell Country: Takes place in Britain. Was way before Ramsey Campbell's works.
- Cosmic Horror Story: As mentioned above, Lovecraft cited this story as one of his main influences.
- Death by Sex: The unspeakable horrors that drive Helen's victims to suicide are strongly implied to be sexual in nature, although Victorian propriety prevented Machen from elaborating.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: More like "Were you just raped by Cthulhu" and "Did you just romance Wilbur Whateley."
- Don't Go in The Woods: "Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go in the forest with Helen?"
- "The man in the wood! father! father!"
- Driven to Suicide: Both Helen's victims and herself.
- Eldritch Abomination: This version of Pan is definitely very different from the satyr god of Greek Mythology. In addition, it is strongly implied Pan is also the Celtic god Nodens, who would later join Lovecraft's works as one of his eldritch deities...
- Gone Mad From the Revelation
- Half-Human Hybrid: Implied to be less of a hybrid and more an avatar.
- Have a Gay Old Time: Take a shot every time "queer" is used instead of "weird" or "strange". Also: "gay curtains".
- Humanoid Abomination: Helen was probably one of the first in modern literature.
- Mad Scientist: Dr. Raymond has a lot of this going on.
- Mystery Magnet
- Nature Spirit: A very, very dark version.
- Noodle Incident: Quite possibly the most skillful and frightening use of this trope ever.
- Occult Detective: Villiers would qualify if he knew what he was investigating was supernatural.
- Platonic Cave: Raymond believes in this, and it is what drove him to perform the experiment.
- Shaggy Search Technique: Pretty much every single clue in the mystery is found this way. This was actually a staple in pretty much all of Machen's early works.
- Supernatural Fiction
- Take Our Word for It: There's a lot of unspeakably awful stuff that's hinted at or only described off-screen.
- Things Man Was Not Meant to Know
- Uncanny Valley: Invoked: several characters describe Helen as beautiful but . . . wrong.
- The Vamp: Helen.
- You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Pan is described this way.