The Three Impostors is a series of convoluted horror tales about three individuals who are searching for a young man with spectacles who has inadvertently stolen something of great importance to a secret society of which they are members.
The story then goes back in time before the opening scene where the three impostors assume various personas and roles, weaving stories about their prey in an effort to attract attention to him and gain the aid of unsuspecting people.
These stories are considered by many to be Machen's best and had a profound impact on many authors including H. P. Lovecraft. One of the included stories, The Novel of the Black Seal has been cited as a model for some of H.P. Lovecraft's best-known stories: The Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror and The Whisperer in Darkness. Another, The Novel of the White Powder, which Lovecraft said approaches the absolute culmination of loathsome fright, may have been an inspiration for Lovecraft's stories of bodily disintegration, such as Cool Air and The Colour Out of Space.
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