Many great authors have been tall. Oscar Wilde was 6′3″, Aldous Huxley was 6′4″. Some lousy authors have been tall as well: Michael Crichton is 6′9″. Which brings me to my point: what’s the deal with H. P. Lovecraft? Was he superhumanly tall?

This is the only picture I’ve ever seen of the quirky Rhode Island master of horror. Consider for a moment, if you will, the massive jaw of Howard Philips Lovecraft. Doesn’t he look like he might have some kind of gigantism thing going on? He looks like the Giant on Twin Peaks. “It is happening…again.” (More accurately, he looks a lot like acromegalic Dutchman Carel Struycken, who played the Giant, and also Lurch in the Addams Family movies.)

I hope it’s not insensitive to say that, if there’s one author who really should have had some kind of medical conditions that gave him spooky, slightly “off” facial features, Lovecraft is the guy.

Or maybe he was just stretched out of normal human proportions through a lifetime of terrifying exposure to the Great Old One Nyogtha, the Thing Which Should Not Be!