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About Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Unabridged)

H. P. Lovecraft was an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. His guiding principle was what he termed "cosmic horror": the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally inimical to the interests of humankind. Although Lovecraft was not overly popular during his lifetime, his reputation has grown over the decades. Today he is regarded as one of the most influential horror writers of the 20th century. In "Beyond the Wall of Sleep", an intern in a mental hospital relates his experiences with Joe Slater, a backward Catskills mountain man and now inmate at a hospital for the criminally insane. The inmate was having very strange and vivid dreams which he described in a way seemingly impossible for a man of his limited intellect. The intern decides to use a device he built but never tested, a device that could be used for two-way telepathic communication to monitor the man's dreams. What he discovers is both astonishing and frightening. This story was adapted into a 2006 film with the same title.