From Project Gutenberg = Australia: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0605651.txt
Really enjoyed this story and the discussion with Glenn and Lars Henriks. I'll be looking for Lars' work as well.
The discussion about extending or completing this story was great fun. Turning this into an occult detective story sounds like a great idea. Glenn should get on that immediately.
Personally, I think this is an X-Files episode waiting to happen. I'm imagining Mulder finding a group of similar cases somewhere on the US East Coast - like Providence RI, to give us a little nod to HPL. He somehow ties that to the Ewers story and comes up with some crazy idea that Ewers was really writing the truth but had to publish it as fiction because no-one would believe him. Ewers being a Nazi sympathizer who was eventually kicked out could tie in with all the Operation Paperclip stuff from the early seasons. Maybe he was witnessing or participating in Nazi mind control experiments and tried to reveal them to the world with his fiction.
Anyhow, Mulder ends up staying in the haunted room. He looks across the street and a woman who looks way too much like Scully is over there, miming the scene. Mulder flips out - fade to black, then he wakes up with Scully coming in to find him. Of course, nothing is resolved because it's X-Files.
@ktvician What an imagination! 😂
I also envision The Spider well as a Hitchcock film (Glenn already mentioned Psycho in the discussion).
I really loved this episode: it makes me want to read more of Ewers and watch stuff by Lars Henriks. I love German expressionist films and this story definitely fits in there.
As a teenager I found the music video of Lullaby fascinating and I'm glad I've watched in again now. I did a little bit of research, but according to most people the song refers to Smith's earlier drug addiction, or (according to Smith himself) to fear of the dark and nightmares, among other things not related to Ewers' story. I also found no clue when reading about Tim Pope, the video director. So, my guess is that this is a case of coincidence. (Though the music video really seems to be influenced by early German expressionism!)
Haha, that's the perfect X-Files episode right there.
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