"Regarding the Necronomicon -- I must confess that this monstrous & abhorred volume is merely a figment of my own imagination! Inventing horrible books is quite a pastime among devotees of the weird, & ..... many of the regular W.T. contributors have such things to their credit -- or discredit. It rather amuses the different writers to use one another's synthetic demons & imaginary books in their stories -- so that Clark Ashton Smith often speaks of my Necronomicon while I refer to his Book of Eibon .. & so on. This pooling of resources tends to build up quite a pseudo-convincing background of dark mythology, legendry, & bibliography -- though of course none of us has the least wish actually to mislead readers"

Now here's were it becomes strange.  Three ficticious versions of  the NECRONOMICON have been published.  You'll find the Hay-Wilson verson on the bookshelf of every Barnes & Noble and Borders.  The Hay-Wilson-Langford-Turner Necronomicon, for example, spins a cock-and-bull story about Lovecraft's father obtaining the Necronomicon through his contacts in Egyptian Masonry and passing the book on to his son before going insane; in fact, while Lovecraft's father was not a Mason, his maternal grandfather, Whipple Phillips, not only belonged to the Masons but had himself founded a Masonic lodge. Clearly it was during little Howard's formative years, when grandfather Whipple took on the role of father to him after driving his real father insane, that the elderly gentleman introduced him to the Book of Hell.(see links page for more information) 

A book that brings madness and damnation to all who read it was the idea.  However, it was first incorporated by Chambers in his the King in Yellow novel.  H.P. Lovecraft ... well kind of borrowed the idea--as I have--along with allusions to the Cthylu Mythos: an ancient race of gods--aptly named the "Old Ones" or "Ancient Ones" who once ruled the earth and still "lurk at the door" to this dimension ... so to speak.  Even though this is pure fiction, created by these wonderful writer's immaginations,  there are those (a cult following of so-called ceremonial magicians) who actually use the "HOAX" NECRONOMICON as if it were an actual Book of Shadows!  Yes, there are those that swear it's the real thing and that the magick works!

Credible scholars have shown that most of the top-ten   black magick books (grimoires) are attributed to real-life historical figures--Soloman, Pope Leo and Honorious--but written much later in time.  And not by the author listed on their cover.

So if fact and fiction become blurred over time, and some choose to believe a fictional Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred of  Ancient Syria, wrote the magick spells instead of Mr. Turner ... what's the harm.  My take is that it's a tribute to the eternal power of the writer's pen and the reader's quest for adventure and mystery.

Go to next archives page for HOAXES that may not be-- quite so harmless!