Documentary style

I've never noticed before how Lovecraft uses his style to document his works. His tales are often told through abandoned journals or the last words of the protagonist. Its a powerful mechanic that transforms his work to a new level. Anyone who has read Lovecrafts work comes to his stories expecting a change from the mundane reality to a supernatural one hidden under our own. Vetern readers enter knowing death or insanity will occur but not how or why. Lovecraft starts by painting a picture of our world and how we explore it through science, exploration, or other means just as we would with our own world. He shows us the average scholar, the humble farmer, or the ordinary man with the ordinary job in our ordinary life. He then dabs in strange occurrences that causes us to pick up these ideas of a secret horror buried under the monotone. Circumstances that we could identify and understand and occurrences that could be passed off or ignored. And yet the protagonist dives deeper. The doubts trickle in and we start to believe in the tale being spun by Lovecraft.

Next we see the picture unfold as we get closer to the middle where reality and the strange begin to blur. Lovecraft makes us consider the possibility of something underneath our existence. As we close in on the ending, we are met with horrific revelations that shake our belief in this reality. In a sly twist, Lovecraft is able to make us question our own perceptions.  He adds realism by putting in things that stand on the edge of what we might believe before plunging in full force with the horror. The monster is almost unimportant, that we can believe that it exists is the true horror. We give the monster to enter our minds and suddenly the picture we were looking at takes a shady turn that darkens with each step. That story that teeters on unbelievable and believable is how Lovecraft gets under our skin and leaves us with doubts that haunt us after the final page. 

To put it another way: you went in for science and came out with mysticism.