Beyond the Wall of Sleep by H.P. Lovecraft
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
by H.P. Lovecraft
Written 1919 
Published October 1919 in Pine Cones, Vol. 1, No. 6, p. 2-10 
I have often wondered if the majority of mankind ever pause to reflect upon the 
occasionally titanic significance of dreams, and of the obscure world to which 
they belong. Whilst the greater number of our nocturnal visions are perhaps no 
more than faint and fantastic reflections of our waking experiences - Freud to 
the contrary with his puerile symbolism - there are still a certain remainder 
whose immundane and ethereal character permit of no ordinary interpretation, and 
whose vaguely exciting and disquieting effect suggests possible minute glimpses 
into a sphere of mental existence no less important than physical life, yet 
separated from that life by an all but impassable barrier. From my experience I 
cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed 
sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life 
we know, and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger 
after waking. From those blurred and fragmentary memories we may infer much, yet 
prove little. We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the 
earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space 
do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this 
less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the 
terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon. 
It was from a youthful revery filled with speculations of this sort that I arose 
one afternoon in the winter of 1900-01, when to the state psychopathic 
institution in which I served as an intern was brought the man whose case has 
ever since haunted me so unceasingly. His name, as given on the records, was Joe 
Slater, or Slaader, and his appearance was that of the typical denizen of the 
Catskill Mountain region; one of those strange, repellent scions of a primitive 
Colonial peasant stock whose isolation for nearly three centuries in the hilly 
fastnesses of a little-traveled countryside has caused them to sink to a kind of 
barbaric degeneracy, rather than advance with their more fortunately placed 
brethren of the thickly settled districts. Among these odd folk, who correspond 
exactly to the decadent element of "white trash" in the South, law and morals 
are non-existent; and their general mental status is probably below that of any 
other section of native American people. 
Joe Slater, who came to the institution in the vigilant custody of four state 
policemen, and who was described as a highly dangerous character, certainly 
presented no evidence of his perilous disposition when I first beheld him. 
Though well above the middle stature, and of somewhat brawny frame, he was given 
an absurd appearance of harmless stupidity by the pale, sleepy blueness of his 
small watery eyes, the scantiness of his neglected and never-shaven growth of 
yellow beard, and the listless drooping of his heavy nether lip. His age was 
unknown, since among his kind neither family records nor permanent family ties 
exist; but from the baldness of his head in front, and from the decayed 
condition of his teeth, the head surgeon wrote him down as a man of about forty. 

From the medical and court documents we learned all that could be gathered of 
his case: this man, a vagabond, hunter and trapper, had always been strange in 
the eyes of his primitive associates. He had habitually slept at night beyond 
the ordinary time, and upon waking would often talk of unknown things in a 
manner so bizarre as to inspire fear even in the hearts of an unimaginative 
populace. Not that his form of language was at all unusual, for he never spoke 
save in the debased patois of his environment; but the tone and tenor of his 
utterances were of such mysterious wildness, that none might listen without 
apprehension. He himself was generally as terrified and baffled as his auditors, 
and within an hour after awakening would forget all that he had said, or at 
least all that had caused him to say what he did; relapsing into a bovine, 
hall-amiable normality like that of the other hilldwellers. 
As Slater grew older, it appeared, his matutinal aberrations had gradually 
increased in frequency and violence; till about a month before his arrival at 
the institution had occurred the shocking tragedy which caused his arrest by the 
authorities. One day near noon, after a profound sleep begun in a whiskey 
debauch at about five of the previous afternoon, the man had roused himself most 
suddenly, with ululations so horrible and unearthly that they brought several 
neighbors to his cabin - a filthy sty where he dwelt with a family as 
indescribable as himself. Rushing out into the snow, he had flung his arms aloft 
and commenced a series of leaps directly upward in the air; the while shouting 
his determination to reach some "big, big cabin with brightness in the roof and 
walls and floor and the loud queer music far away." As two men of moderate size 
sought to restrain him, he had struggled with maniacal force and fury, screaming 
of his desire and need to find and kill a certain "thing that shines and shakes 
and laughs." At length, after temporarily felling one of his detainers with a 
sudden blow, he had flung himself upon the other in a demoniac ecstasy of 
blood-thirstiness, shrieking fiendishly that he would "jump high in the air and 
burn his way through anything that stopped him." 
Family and neighbors had now fled in a panic, and when the more courageous of 
them returned, Slater was gone, leaving behind an unrecognizable pulp-like thing 
that had been a living man but an hour before. None of the mountaineers had 
dared to pursue him, and it is likely that they would have welcomed his death 
from the cold; but when several mornings later they heard his screams from a 
distant ravine they realized that he had somehow managed to survive, and that 
his removal in one way or another would be necessary. Then had followed an armed 
searching-party, whose purpose (whatever it may have been originally) became 
that of a sheriff's posse after one of the seldom popular state troopers had by 
accident observed, then questioned, and finally joined the seekers. 
On the third day Slater was found unconscious in the hollow of a tree, and taken 
to the nearest jail, where alienists from Albany examined him as soon as his 
senses returned. To them he told a simple story. He had, he said, gone to sleep 
one afternoon about sundown after drinking much liquor. He had awakened to find 
himself standing bloody-handed in the snow before his cabin, the mangled corpse 
of his neighbor Peter Slader at his feet. Horrified, he had taken to the woods 
in a vague effort to escape from the scene of what must have been his crime. 
Beyond these things he seemed to know nothing, nor could the expert questioning 
of his interrogators bring out a single additional fact. 
That night Slater slept quietly, and the next morning he awakened with no 
singular feature save a certain alteration of expression. Doctor Barnard, who 
had been watching the patient, thought he noticed in the pale blue eyes a 
certain gleam of peculiar quality, and in the flaccid lips an all but 
imperceptible tightening, as if of intelligent determination. But when 
questioned, Slater relapsed into the habitual vacancy of the mountaineer, and 
only reiterated what he had said on the preceding day. 
On the third morning occurred the first of the man's mental attacks. After some 
show of uneasiness in sleep, he burst forth into a frenzy so powerful that the 
combined efforts of four men were needed to bind him in a straightjacket. The 
alienists listened with keen attention to his words, since their curiosity had 
been aroused to a high pitch by the suggestive yet mostly conflicting and 
incoherent stories of his family and neighbors. Slater raved for upward of 
fifteen minutes, babbling in his backwoods dialect of green edifices of light, 
oceans of space, strange music, and shadowy mountains and valleys. But most of 
all did he dwell upon some mysterious blazing entity that shook and laughed and 
mocked at him. This vast, vague personality seemed to have done him a terrible 
wrong, and to kill it in triumphant revenge was his paramount desire. In order 
to reach it, he said, he would soar through abysses of emptiness, burning every 
obstacle that stood in his way. Thus ran his discourse, until with the greatest 
suddenness he ceased. The fire of madness died from his eyes, and in dull wonder 
he looked at his questioners and asked why he was bound. Dr. Barnard unbuckled 
the leather harness and did not restore it till night, when he succeeded in 
persuading Slater to don it of his own volition, for his own good. The man had 
now admitted that he sometimes talked queerly, though he knew not why. 
Within a week two more attacks appeared, but from them the doctors learned 
little. On the source of Slater's visions they speculated at length, for since 
he could neither read nor write, and had apparently never heard a legend or 
fairy-tale, his gorgeous imagery was quite inexplicable. That it could not come 
from any known myth or romance was made especially clear by the fact that the 
unfortunate lunatic expressed himself only in his own simple manner. He raved of 
things he did not understand and could not interpret; things which he claimed to 
have experienced, but which he could not have learned through any normal or 
connected narration. The alienists soon agreed that abnormal dreams were the 
foundation of the trouble; dreams whose vividness could for a time completely 
dominate the waking mind of this basically inferior man. With due formality 
Slater was tried for murder, acquitted on the ground of insanity, and committed 
to the institution wherein I held so humble a post. 
I have said that I am a constant speculator concerning dream-life, and from this 
you may judge of the eagerness with which I applied myself to the study of the 
new patient as soon as I had fully ascertained the facts of his case. He seemed 
to sense a certain friendliness in me, born no doubt of the interest I could not 
conceal, and the gentle manner in which I questioned him. Not that he ever 
recognized me during his attacks, when I hung breathlessly upon his chaotic but 
cosmic word-pictures; but he knew me in his quiet hours, when he would sit by 
his barred window weaving baskets of straw and willow, and perhaps pining for 
the mountain freedom he could never again enjoy. His family never called to see 
him; probably it had found another temporary head, after the manner of decadent 
mountain folk. 
By degrees I commenced to feel an overwhelming wonder at the mad and fantastic 
conceptions of Joe Slater. The man himself was pitiably inferior in mentality 
and language alike; but his glowing, titanic visions, though described in a 
barbarous disjointed jargon, were assuredly things which only a superior or even 
exceptional brain could conceive How, I often asked myself, could the stolid 
imagination of a Catskill degenerate conjure up sights whose very possession 
argued a lurking spark of genius? How could any backwoods dullard have gained so 
much as an idea of those glittering realms of supernal radiance and space about 
which Slater ranted in his furious delirium? More and more I inclined to the 
belief that in the pitiful personality who cringed before me lay the disordered 
nucleus of something beyond my comprehension; something infinitely beyond the 
comprehension of my more experienced but less imaginative medical and scientific 
colleagues. 
And yet I could extract nothing definite from the man. The sum of all my 
investigation was, that in a kind of semi-corporeal dream-life Slater wandered 
or floated through resplendent and prodigious valleys, meadows, gardens, cities, 
and palaces of light, in a region unbounded and unknown to man; that there he 
was no peasant or degenerate, but a creature of importance and vivid life, 
moving proudly and dominantly, and checked only by a certain deadly enemy, who 
seemed to be a being of visible yet ethereal structure, and who did not appear 
to be of human shape, since Slater never referred to it as a man, or as aught 
save a thing. This thing had done Slater some hideous but unnamed wrong, which 
the maniac (if maniac he were) yearned to avenge. 
From the manner in which Slater alluded to their dealings, I judged that he and 
the luminous thing had met on equal terms; that in his dream existence the man 
was himself a luminous thing of the same race as his enemy. This impression was 
sustained by his frequent references to flying through space and burning all 
that impeded his progress. Yet these conceptions were formulated in rustic words 
wholly inadequate to convey them, a circumstance which drove me to the 
conclusion that if a dream world indeed existed, oral language was not its 
medium for the transmission of thought. Could it be that the dream soul 
inhabiting this inferior body was desperately struggling to speak things which 
the simple and halting tongue of dullness could not utter? Could it be that I 
was face to face with intellectual emanations which would explain the mystery if 
I could but learn to discover and read them? I did not tell the older physicians 
of these things, for middle age is skeptical, cynical, and disinclined to accept 
new ideas. Besides, the head of the institution had but lately warned me in his 
paternal way that I was overworking; that my mind needed a rest. 
It had long been my belief that human thought consists basically of atomic or 
molecular motion, convertible into ether waves or radi ant energy like heat, 
light and electricity. This belief had early led me to contemplate the 
possibility of telepathy or mental communication by means of suitable apparatus, 
and I had in my college days prepared a set of transmitting and receiving 
instruments somewhat similar to the cumbrous devices employed in wireless 
telegraphy at that crude, pre-radio period. These I had tested with a 
fellow-student, but achieving no result, had soon packed them away with other 
scientific odds and ends for possible future use. 
Now, in my intense desire to probe into the dream-life of Joe Slater, I sought 
these instruments again, and spent several days in repairing them for action. 
When they were complete once more I missed no opportunity for their trial. At 
each outburst of Slater's violence, I would fit the transmitter to his forehead 
and the receiver to my own, constantly making delicate adjustments for various 
hypothetical wave-lengths of intellectual energy. I had but little notion of how 
the thought-impressions would, if successfully conveyed, arouse an intelligent 
response in my brain, but I felt certain that I could detect and interpret them. 
Accordingly I continued my experiments, though informing no one of their nature. 

It was on the twenty-first of February, 1901, that the thing occurred. As I look 
back across the years I realize how unreal it seems, and sometimes wonder if old 
Doctor Fenton was not right when he charged it all to my excited imagination. I 
recall that he listened with great kindness and patience when I told him, but 
afterward gave me a nerve-powder and arranged for the half-year's vacation on 
which I departed the next week. 
That fateful night I was wildly agitated and perturbed, for despite the 
excellent care he had received, Joe Slater was unmistakably dying. Perhaps it 
was his mountain freedom that he missed, or perhaps the turmoil in his brain had 
grown too acute for his rather sluggish physique; but at all events the flame of 
vitality flickered low in the decadent body. He was drowsy near the end, and as 
darkness fell he dropped off into a troubled sleep. 
I did not strap on the straightjacket as was customary when he slept, since I 
saw that he was too feeble to be dangerous, even if he woke in mental disorder 
once more before passing away. But I did place upon his head and mine the two 
ends of my cosmic "radio," hoping against hope for a first and last message from 
the dream world in the brief time remaining. In the cell with us was one nurse, 
a mediocre fellow who did not understand the purpose of the apparatus, or think 
to inquire into my course. As the hours wore on I saw his head droop awkwardly 
in sleep, but I did not disturb him. I myself, lulled by the rhythmical 
breathing of the healthy and the dying man, must have nodded a little later. 
The sound of weird lyric melody was what aroused me. Chords, vibrations, and 
harmonic ecstasies echoed passionately on every hand, while on my ravished sight 
burst the stupendous spectacle ultimate beauty. Walls, columns, and architraves 
of living fire blazed effulgently around the spot where I seemed to float in 
air, extending upward to an infinitely high vaulted dome of indescribable 
splendor. Blending with this display of palatial magnificence, or rather, 
supplanting it at times in kaleidoscopic rotation, were glimpses of wide plains 
and graceful valleys, high mountains and inviting grottoes, covered with every 
lovely attribute of scenery which my delighted eyes could conceive of, yet 
formed wholly of some glowing, ethereal plastic entity, which in consistency 
partook as much of spirit as of matter. As I gazed, I perceived that my own 
brain held the key to these enchanting metamorphoses; for each vista which 
appeared to me was the one my changing mind most wished to behold. Amidst this 
elysian realm I dwelt not as a stranger, for each sight and sound was familiar 
to me; just as it had been for uncounted eons of eternity before, and would be 
for like eternities to come. 
Then the resplendent aura of my brother of light drew near and held colloquy 
with me, soul to soul, with silent and perfect interchange of thought. The hour 
was one of approaching triumph, for was not my fellow-being escaping at last 
from a degrading periodic bondage; escaping forever, and preparing to follow the 
accursed oppressor even unto the uttermost fields of ether, that upon it might 
be wrought a flaming cosmic vengeance which would shake the spheres? We floated 
thus for a little time, when I perceived a slight blurring and fading of the 
objects around us, as though some force were recalling me to earth - where I 
least wished to go. The form near me seemed to feel a change also, for it 
gradually brought its discourse toward a conclusion, and itself prepared to quit 
the scene, fading from my sight at a rate somewhat less rapid than that of the 
other objects. A few more thoughts were exchanged, and I knew that the luminous 
one and I were being recalled to bondage, though for my brother of light it 
would be the last time. The sorry planet shell being well-nigh spent, in less 
than an hour my fellow would be free to pursue the oppressor along the Milky Way 
and past the hither stars to the very confines of infinity. 
A well-defined shock separates my final impression of the fading scene of light 
from my sudden and somewhat shamefaced awakening and straightening up in my 
chair as I saw the dying figure on the couch move hesitantly. Joe Slater was 
indeed awaking, though probably for the last time. As I looked more closely, I 
saw that in the sallow cheeks shone spots of color which had never before been 
present. The lips, too, seemed unusual, being tightly compressed, as if by the 
force of a stronger character than had been Slater's. The whole face finally 
began to grow tense, and the head turned restlessly with closed eyes. 
I did not rouse the sleeping nurse, but readjusted the slightly disarranged 
headband of my telepathic "radio," intent to catch any parting message the 
dreamer might have to deliver. All at once the head turned sharply in my 
direction and the eyes fell open, causing me to stare in blank amazement at what 
I beheld. The man who had been Joe Slater, the Catskill decadent, was gazing at 
me with a pair of luminous, expanding eyes whose blue seemed subtly to have 
deepened. Neither mania nor degeneracy was `visible in that gaze, and I felt 
beyond a doubt that I was viewing a face behind which lay an active mind of high 
order. 
At this juncture my brain became aware of a steady external influence operating 
upon it. I closed my eyes to concentrate my thoughts more profoundly and was 
rewarded by the positive knowledge that my long-sought mental message had come 
at last. Each transmitted idea formed rapidly in my mind, and though no actual 
language was employed, my habitual association of conception and expression was 
so great that I seemed to be receiving the message in ordinary English. 
"Joe Slater is dead," came the soul-petrifying voice of an agency from beyond 
the wall of sleep. My opened eyes sought the couch of pain in curious horror, 
but the blue eyes were still calmly gazing, and the countenance was still 
intelligently animated. "He is better dead, for he was unfit to bear the active 
intellect of cosmic entity. His gross body could not undergo the needed 
adjustments between ethereal life and planet life. He was too much an animal, 
too little a man; yet it is through his deficiency that you have come to 
discover me, for the cosmic and planet souls rightly should never meet. He has 
been in my torment and diurnal prison for forty-two of your terrestrial years. 
"I am an entity like that which you yourself become in the freedom of dreamless 
sleep. I am your brother of light, and have floated with you in the effulgent 
valleys. It is not permitted me to tell your waking earth-self of your real 
self, but we are all roamers of vast spaces and travelers in many ages. Next 
year I may be dwelling in the Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel 
empire of Tsan Chan which is to come three thousand years hence. You and I have 
drifted to the worlds that reel about the red Arcturus, and dwelt in the bodies 
of the insect-philosophers that crawl proudly over the fourth moon of Jupiter. 
How little does the earth self know life and its extent! How little, indeed, 
ought it to know for its own tranquility! 
"Of the oppressor I cannot speak. You on earth have unwittingly felt its distant 
presence - you who without knowing idly gave the blinking beacon the name of 
Algol, the Demon-Star It is to meet and conquer the oppressor that I have vainly 
striven for eons, held back by bodily encumbrances. Tonight I go as a Nemesis 
bearing just and blazingly cataclysmic vengeance. Watch me in the sky close by 
the Demon-Star. 
"I cannot speak longer, for the body of Joe Slater grows cold and rigid, and the 
coarse brains are ceasing to vibrate as I wish. You have been my only friend on 
this planet - the only soul to sense and seek for me within the repellent form 
which lies on this couch. We shall meet again - perhaps in the shining mists of 
Orion's Sword, perhaps on a bleak plateau in prehistoric Asia, perhaps in 
unremembered dreams tonight, perhaps in some other form an eon hence, when the 
solar system shall have been swept away." 
At this point the thought-waves abruptly ceased, the pale eyes of the dreamer - 
or can I say dead man? - commenced to glaze fishily. In a half-stupor I crossed 
over to the couch and felt of his wrist, but found it cold, stiff, and 
pulseless. The sallow cheeks paled again, and the thick lips fell open, 
disclosing the repulsively rotten fangs of the degenerate Joe Slater. I 
shivered, pulled a blanket over the hideous face, and awakened the nurse. Then I 
left the cell and went silently to my room. I had an instant and unaccountable 
craving for a sleep whose dreams I should not remember. 
The climax? What plain tale of science can boast of such a rhetorical effect? I 
have merely set down certain things appealing to me as facts, allowing you to 
construe them as you will. As I have already admitted, my superior, old Doctor 
Fenton, denies the reality of everything I have related. He vows that I was 
broken down with nervous strain, and badly in need of a long vacation on full 
pay which he so generously gave me. He assures me on his professional honor that 
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must have come 
from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even the most decadent 
of communities. All this he tells me - yet I cannot forget what I saw in the sky 
on the night after Slater died. Lest you think me a biased witness, another pen 
must add this final testimony, which may perhaps supply the climax you expect. I 
will quote the following account of the star Nova Persei verbatim from the pages 
of that eminent astronomical authority, Professor Garrett P. Serviss: 
"On February 22, 1901, a marvelous new star was discovered by Doctor Anderson of 
Edinburgh, not very far from Algol. No star had been visible at that point 
before. Within twenty-four hours the stranger had become so bright that it 
outshone Capella. In a week or two it had visibly faded, and in the course of a 
few months it was hardly discernible with the naked eye." 




© 1998-1999 William Johns
Last modified: 12/18/1999 18:45:30
