"The Transition of Juan Romero" is a short story by American

American literature

American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...

 horror fiction

Horror fiction

Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

 writer H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

, written on September 16, 1919, and first published in the 1944 Arkham House

Arkham House

Arkham House is a publishing house specializing in weird fiction founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to preserve in hardcover the best fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham. Arkham House...

 volume Marginalia.

Plot summary

The story involves a mine that uncovers a very deep chasm, too deep for any sounding lines to hit bottom. The night after the discovery of the abyss the narrator and one of the mine's workers, Juan Romero, venture inside the mine, drawn against their will by a mysterious rhythmical throbbing in the ground. Romero reaches the abyss first and is swallowed by it. The narrator peers over the edge, sees something - "but God, I dare not tell you what I saw!" and loses consciousness. That morning he and Romero are both found in their bunks, Romero dead. Other miners swear that neither of them left their cabin that night.

Other details

Lovecraft seems to have disavowed the story early in his writing career. He did not allow it to be published in the small press during his lifetime, and it does not appear on most lists of his stories. He seems not to have shown the story to anyone until Robert H. Barlow badgered him into sending him the manuscript so that Barlow could prepare a typescript of it.

Huitzilopochtli

Huitzilopochtli

In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli , was a god of war, a sun god, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the national god of the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan.- Genealogy :...

, a Mexican deity associated with human sacrifice, is mentioned, indicating that Juan Romero's transition may have been related to a sacrifice ritual.