Lovecraft meets Ligotti

[LeglessSaltyDiogenes]

Around the time I started meditating, I began remembering my dreams more often. This one happened when I took a 12 min. nap on the couch.

I was a kind of disembodied presence, on an abandoned street in what was undoubtedly Detroit (I've never been there, but most of my favorite music was inspired by Detroit artists). Pallid houses leaned and sagged. Down the street came a massive insectoid being, black and tall, with a look of insane joy on its face. It was aware of me but totally indifferent to my presence. It strolled away, then I woke up. It was terrifying, but also quite interesting to me, hopefully some of you have some crab people stories.

Can't resist posting a few frames from one of my favourite Basil Wolverton strips. You can see the whole thing here should your sanity be impervious to assault.

rcubedagain: They Crawl by Night! (by Basil Wolverton)

Hmmm. Crab horrors, you say? Well, leaving Guy N. Smith aside (though he certainly has a cadre of UK pulp devotees) one of my picks for qualification would be Charles Birkin's tale "The Smell of Evil". Birkin's tales are a guilty pleasure of mine. I hold him to be a wry stylist, though I've often seen him dismissed as reactionary.

Mark S.

[ramonoski]

The first version I read of Kafka's The Metamorphosis said that Gregor Samsa found himself turned into "something abominable." I first imagined it as something like a black crab lying on its back, moving its many legs in an undulating, awkward pattern. It wasn't until later that I realized most other translations had him turned into an insect, and Samsa was portrayed by artists and illustrators as something resembling a beetle or even a cockroach. But the image of the giant black crab kept lingering in the back of my head, and still pops out every now and then to haunt me

[MTC]

Don't know about crab people but William Hope Hodgson has written some scary stories about giant crablike things making a living on abandoned ships. Adrift on the Haunted Seas collects some of the best. Excellent thread btw.

[LeglessSaltyDiogenes]

This thing was, as much as I can remember, a vaguely humanoid insect, hence crab people. A crustacean, for sure. The head was definitely crab-like, like the picture mark_samuels posted. I hadn't read much Burroughs yet but when I did the trope of "insect eyes" haunted me more than the erotic executions. Its also interesting to note that many DMT users experience insectoid beings in their visions (I never experienced this vision, mine were more like Irish elves). This makes me wonder, if an insect gained as much sentience as a human, would it have a better chance of reaching Enlightenment without the mammalian impulses? Insects, despite their ferocious birth rate, seem to maintain symbiosis with their environment more often than humans do. They rarely become a hazard to their own habitat, barring human intervention.

[Murony_Pyre]

Quote Originally Posted by LeglessSaltyDiogenes

Insects, despite their ferocious birth rate, seem to maintain symbiosis with their environment more often than humans do.

This strikes me as an hilariously tentative statement/understatement but quite correct, nevertheless.
Also, I'm jealous of your "daymare", by the way.

[LeglessSaltyDiogenes]

The Birthday Party did a few numbers like "King Ink" that dealt with the "Metamorphosis" without being too obvious about it. At least I think thats what Nick Cave is singing about in between all the scuttling and bashing going on. Another music of note is darkcore techno: When the scene turned dark the beats got a lot faster and twisted, often reminding one of the junky's itching "crank bugs".