User:WizWheatly/The People of the Pit

The People of the Pit is a short story by American writer A. Merritt.

Plot
Two gold prospectors are in Alaska to investigate a mountain range known as The Hand, which is supposed to have gold running down the middle. One night, when it is in sight, a beam of light shoots into the sky, and an injured man crawls into their camp. He was also a prospector, and tells them a fantastic tale of his experience with the People of the Pit.

Setting
The story is set "three hundred miles above the first great bend of the Kuskokwim toward the Yukon", in the Kuskokwim Mountains.

A travel book titled In the Alaskan wilderness had been published the previous year by George Byron Gordon, with maps and photographs of the region.

Influence
The story has been cited as a possible inspiration of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.

Publishing history

 * All-Story Weekly, January 5, 1918
 * Amazing Stories, March 1927
 * The Third Omnibus of Crime, 1935
 * The Fox Woman and Other Stories, 1949
 * Masterpieces of Science Fiction, 1966
 * The Fantastic Pulps, 1975
 * Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown, 1993