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Synopsis of The Shadow Out of Time
This story begins with Nathaniel Peaslee, an academic in New England. He has found something terrible and is writing this to his son, a Professor of Psychology at Miskatonic University. We begin to head back and look at Peaslee’s past.
For five years from 1908-1913, Peaslee was stuck with a powerful psychological change. He gained amnesia about the details of his life, but also gained many skills such as multiple languages and odd knowledge about the past. It appeared that Peaslee has developed a second personality. He tells us about this time from newspaper articles and research he did, because he can’t recall it. He pursued occult research and explored many areas.
Once Peaslee came out of it in 1913, he could not remember that five year period. Soon, he began to have dreams. He dreamed he was in a faraway place in some distant room. He was in a room with odd furniture, tools, and more. Eventually, his dreams became more detailed, and he dreamed he was moving about and interacting with people and learning the language. He dreamed he was in the form of a Conical Alien.
He began doing research into what he had been investigating during his blank five years. He realizes that he had been looking at some secret tomes ,such as the Necronomicon and Pnakotic Manuscript. He looks up the same places he did previously, and finds legends of an ancient race on Earth that travelled b switching minds into their new host and their old body. The details of this ancient race are found in many places
Peaslee studies psychology and believes that his powerful dreams are as a result of sub-conscious memories from the research he did back in 1908-1913. He discovers a small number of cases in the histories where people have had identical symptoms ,and publishes in psychology journals. He believes that these legends of an ancient race have created dreams in a small number of people over the centuries.
A few years later he gets a letter from a foreman in Australia. They have found these giant bricks that appear to be older than any known construction in the desert. He had a psychologist friend who remembered Peaslee’s articles and these bricks and their markings appear identical to what he wrote about and dreamed.
Peaslee gets Miskatonic U to fund an expedition to Australia. They arrive and explore the ruins. They begin charting them, and Peaslee encounters some bricks at night that aren’t of this race, but represent another race they were fighting against. Eventually, he discovers a hill and moves into a tunnel.
The tunnel follows along an ancient corridor in the old city,it exactly matches the dreams he has. He heads towards the library and moves around a lot of obstacles and keeps exploring. Eventually he finds the old library. As he moves in, he notices that the old guard doors which kept out this race’s enemies are open and unguarded. He wonders if what slew the race is still here.
He moves to a place and finds an unusual book, which proves that his dreams were not dreams, and that everything was real. He begins to move back, but he makes too much noise falling, and suddenly something begin to emerge from behind him.
He rushes back out of the tunnels/city/ruins but more of the creatures are chasing him. He barely manages t make it out, but the book is lost. The tunnels have moved back to a hill formation and the sands swallow it up. He remembers that the book had English writing ,and that he had written the language for them when he was back in time.
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