
The Whisperer in Darkness
What I desire to say now is, that I am afraid your adversaries are nearer right than
yourself, even though all reason seems to be on your side. They are nearer right than they
realise themselves - for of course they go only by theory, and cannot know what I know.
If I knew as little of the matter as they, I would feel justified in believing as they do. I
would be wholly on your side.
You can see that I am having a hard time getting to the point, probably because I really
dread getting to the point; but the upshot of the matter is that I have certain evidence that
monstrous things do indeed live in the woods on the high hills which nobody visits. I have
not seen any of the things floating in the rivers, as reported, but I have seen things like
them under circumstances I dread to repeat. I have seen footprints, and of late have seen
them nearer my own home (I live in the old Akeley place south of Townshend Village,
on the side of Dark Mountain) than I dare tell you now. And I have overheard voices in
the woods at certain points that I will not even begin to describe on paper.
At one place I heard them so much that I took a phonograph therewith a dictaphone
attachment and wax blank - and I shall try to arrange to have you hear the record I got. I
have run it on the machine for some of the old people up here, and one of the voices had
nearly scared them paralysed by reason of its likeness to a certain voice (that buzzing
voice in the woods which Davenport mentions) that their grandmothers have told about
and mimicked for them. I know what most people think of a man who tells about
"hearing voices" - but before you draw conclusions just listen to this record and ask some
of the older backwoods people what they think of it. If you can account for it normally,
very well; but there must be something behind it. Ex nihilo nihil fit, you know.
Now my object in writing you is not to start an argument but to give you information
which I think a man of your tastes will find deeply interesting. This is private. Publicly I
am on your side, for certain things show me that it does not do for people to know too
much about these matters. My own studies are now wholly private, and I would not think
of saying anything to attract people's attention and cause them to visit the places I have
explored. It is true - terribly true - that there are non-human creatures watching us all the
time; with spies among us gathering information. It is from a wretched man who, if he
was sane (as I think he was) was one of those spies, that I got a large part of my clues to
the matter. He later killed himself, but I have reason to think there are others now.
The things come from another planet, being able to live in interstellar space and fly
through it on clumsy, powerful wings which have a way of resisting the aether but which
are too poor at steering to be of much use in helping them about on earth. I will tell you
about this later if you do not dismiss me at once as a madman. They come here to get
metals from mines that go deep under the hills, and I think I know where they come from.
They will not hurt us if we let them alone, but no one can say what will happen if we get
too curious about them. Of course a good army of men could wipe out their mining
colony. That is what they are afraid of. But if that happened, more would come from
outside - any number of them. They could easily conquer the earth, but have not tried so
far because they have not needed to. They would rather leave things as they are to save
bother.
I think they mean to get rid of me because of what I have discovered. There is a great
black stone with unknown hieroglyphics half worn away which I found in the woods on
Round Hill, east of here; and after I took it home everything became different. If they
think I suspect too much they will either kill me or take me off the earth to where they
come from. They like to take away men of learning once in a while, to keep informed on
the state of things in the human world.