The Horror Story Set on a Paris Street That Doesn't Exist

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]In 1922, an American writer published a horror story set on a Paris street that doesn't exist, written by a man who had barely left New England. The story is about a deaf, mute old viola player who plays an alien music nightly from his attic window. That writer was H.P.

[00:00:18]Lovecraft. The Paris street he invented is called the Rue d'Auseil, grammatically wrong French that translates approximately to street of the threshold.

[00:00:29]A century later, Lovecraft's cosmic horror has had a Hollywood renaissance, anchoring films like Annihilation in the 2019 Color Out of Space and series like True Detective and Stranger Things.