Stop the presses, I've finally found a Lovecraft story I like! It's not overladen with purple prose, and its protagonists aren't hysterical ninnies who I desperately want to slap, so that's something. Instead, there's actual restraint going on here - especially regarding what happens to the wife in the attic - and it makes the whole thing all the more effective. Honestly, the more the focus shifts from the alien stuff to what's happening to the local ecosystem, the creepier the whole thing is. The light show at the end doesn't make me turn a hair, but the slow seeping strangeness of the vegetation, the fear of the animals, and the slow descent of a family into madness is genuinely compelling. Slow being the operative word here. There's none of this rapid onset of insanity that we got in "Rats in the Walls," a turn of events that just made me roll my eyes. It's a gradual degeneration, made worse by the fact that the family really tries to get help and is constantly dismissed as credulous yokels. It was just very well done.

I'm ignoring the dodgy bits about the strange colour and unusual spectrographic lines because Lovecraft was likely doing his best to understand the science he knew at the time. He can't honestly be judged for that. I judge him for plenty else already.