It appears again and again in horror fiction: The lost journal detailing the events of the story. While there are plenty of good horror stories that are written in third person, many of the best are written in the first person. One thinks of William Hope Hodgson’s House on the Borderland, Poe’s MS. Found in a Bottle, Guy Maupassant’s The Horla.

More interesting is when such novels use multiple forms of media with multiple narrators to tell the story. The media might be journal entries, letters, or even newspaper reports. I will look at three examples: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu,” and Jean Ray’s Malpertuis.

Of the three, Dracula is the best known. However, those unfamiliar with the original novel may be surprised at the differences between Stoker’s Count and how he is portrayed in most media. (For example, he appears in sunlight.)

What is interesting about the novel is it is made up of various letters and journal entries. The beginning chapters of the novel are in fact letters Jonathon Harker is writing to his wife-to-be Mina Murray. We follow him as he meets the Count, sleeps in his castle, and begins to become suspicious of his host. The novel follows the pattern of slowly revealing that Dracula is a vampire and then becomes a chase as the heroes led by Professor Van Helsing hunt the Count across Europe. While the revelation of Dracula’s true nature lacks impact since the modern reader already knows that Dracula is a vampire, a reader when it was originally published would not have known Dracula is a vampire or even what a vampire was.

However, our common knowledge may make the opening chapters more suspenseful. There is tension from the fact that we know Dracula is a vampire and Harker does not. The mystery of what is going on is gone, but the suspense is stronger. If you add in the Gothic atmosphere and the frightening imagery the opening chapters are probably the best part of the book.

Like Dracula, Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” is made up of multiple documents. It has a jigsaw puzzle plot that the narrator pieces together. The effect this creates is the nature of the story is revealed piece by piece. What is notable is that each revelation is more sinister than the last.

It begins with the discovery of a strange bas-relief. The statue is the creation of an artist who is tormented by nightmares of ancient cities and creatures under the sea. This is merely eerie, but it hints at darker things to come. Next comes the narrative of a police raid on what is thought to be a voodoo cult in Louisiana. In lesser hands this would be a standard pulp story of stalwart heroes against a strange menace, but in Lovecraft’s it is revealed that what is thought to be a cliché voodoo cult is in fact something older and stranger. Finally, there is the narrative of a Norwegian sailor which serves as the climax of the story in which what began with simple eeriness develops into an almost surreal horror.

From an interview with an artist to the news report of a police raid in Louisiana to a horrifying account of a Norwegian sailor, Lovecraft leads us through the rising tension of the story until Cthulhu himself rises from the seas at the climax. The sense of cosmic horror, which Lovecraft does so well, builds through out the story as more and more is revealed. 

Less well known, at least in America, is Belgian writer Jean Ray’s novel Malpertuis. The novel begins with an unnamed thief recounting his robbery of a monastery. Among the loot are some strange documents relating to a house, Malpertuis, and its history. These documents make up the majority of the novel. There are in fact four main narrators of the story: the thief, the fallen priest Doucedame the Elder (whose son plays an important role in the novel—I said he was a fallen priest), Jean-Jacques Grandsire, heir to the crumbling house after which the novel is named, and Father Euchere of the Covent of the White Penitents. The story follows the inhabitants of the house of Malpertuis. The house belonged to the dead warlock Quentin Cassave. According to his will, in order to receive his wealth his beneficiaries have to live the rest of their lives in Malpertuis. The last two survivors are to marry if they are male and female.

Like “The Call of Cthulhu,” it has a jigsaw puzzle plot in which each piece reveals more about Cassave’s sinister plan. The pieces include a horrifying sea journey, the lives of the inhabitants of Malpertuis and true nature of the gods of ancient Greece. Since the novel is not as well known in America it retains the ability to surprise the reader in ways that Dracula does not. Even if one is familiar with the novel, Ray has the ability to create a feeling of nightmarish intensity with only a few words.

Ray uses an interesting two part structure in which the story has not one but two climaxes. The majority of the first half deals with the inhabitants of Malpertuis and their lives inside the accursed house. Strange event followed by strange event occurs inside the house until the first climax in which the narrative descends into phantasmagoria. Jean-Jacques Grandsire flees Malpertuis. The first part would be a horrifying tale in itself, though one in which many questions are left unanswered. The second half of the narrative deals with Grandsire’s search for the meaning of the events he witnesses. The revelation of Cassave’s true plan and the true nature of the inhabitants of the house makes up much of the narrative until the final tragic climax.

Of the three works I have talked about, “The Call of Cthulhu” has the tightest plot. Malpertuis, for example, has a murder which is never fully explained. Lovecraft is also alone of the three in that he invented his own mythology. Stoker and Ray relied on Slavic folklore and Greek mythology respectively. It is also notable how the presence of the antagonist of each story is felt even though they are off screen most of the time. Dracula disappears for chapters at a time. Cthulhu remains dreaming under the sea for the most of his story. Quentin Cassave dies early in Malpertuis but his shadow falls over the events of the story.

I believe that the use of letters, journal entries, and so on tends to give a verisimilitude to the works in question. You feel not as if you are reading a work of fiction but as if you are reading a true account. It also allows one to piece together the plot bit by horrifying bit until the climax. The use of multiple first person narrators also solves a problem often inherent in first person stories: the fact that if a character is writing the story you know that character will survive. When there is more than one narrator anyone can die.

All three works are in my opinion classics of horror.