The Necronomicon Isn't Ancient. HP Lovecraft Invented It
Quick Answer
Is the Necronomicon a real ancient text? No. HP Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon in a 1922 short story called "The Hound." He also invented its fictional author, Abdul Alhazred — a name he gave himself as a five-year-old pretending to be an Arabian sorcerer. Lovecraft wrote letters explaining the book was fictional until he died in 1937. In 1977, a grimoire calling itself the Necronomicon was published anyway, assembled from real Sumerian and Babylonian texts and repackaged with Lovecraftian framing. It has sold over 800,000 copies.
HP Lovecraft invented the name Abdul Alhazred at age five. He had just read a children's edition of the Arabian Nights and wanted to pretend to be an Arabian sorcerer. His parents played along. Thirty years later, Abdul Alhazred — "the Mad Arab" — became the fictional 8th-century author of the most feared book in occult history.
The book that didn't exist
The Necronomicon first appeared in Lovecraft's 1922 story "The Hound" — a short horror piece about two grave robbers who steal an amulet and get hunted down by something they can't explain. The book is mentioned once, in passing, as a source of forbidden lore. Lovecraft hadn't planned any of it. The name came to him in a dream. He woke up with it and used it.
He worked backward from there. In 1927 he wrote a standalone document called "History of the Necronomicon" — a complete fictional provenance for the text, including its composition in Damascus around 730 AD, its translation into Greek in the 11th century, its translation into Latin in the 13th, and the locations of surviving copies. He made all of it up. He was building scaffolding for a story prop and he couldn't stop.
His friends and contemporaries joined in. Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth — the writers in Lovecraft's circle all started referencing the Necronomicon and other fictional tomes in their own stories, cross-pollinating until the mythology felt like it had a history. This became known as the Cthulhu Mythos. Lovecraft had invented the most convincing fake book in literary history by accident.
For the rest of his life he answered letters from readers asking where they could find a copy. He was patient about it. He wrote back every time: I made it up. There is no Abdul Alhazred. There is no Necronomicon. I invented both of them. The letters kept coming.
Lovecraft was not an obscure figure in horror fiction circles, but he was never commercially successful. He wrote for pulp magazines and was paid almost nothing. He died of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island in March 1937. He was 46. He left behind nearly no money. His fiction wasn't widely read outside the pulp community until the 1960s, two decades after his death.
What Simon did with it
In 1977, a grimoire appeared in New York occult circles under the title "Necronomicon," attributed to an author called Simon. The book was published first in a limited hardback edition by Schlangekraft, Inc., then picked up by Avon Books and later Bantam. It has sold over 800,000 copies. Some estimates run higher.
Simon has never been definitively identified. The prime suspect for decades has been a writer and researcher named Peter Levenda, who circulated in the same New York occult scene in the 1970s and denied authorship for years.
What's actually inside the Simon Necronomicon is real ancient text. The Sumerian and Babylonian content was lifted primarily from legitimate scholarly translations, including R.C. Thompson's 1903 work "Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia." That material is genuinely ancient. The framing — the invocations to Cthulhu, Azathoth, and other Lovecraftian entities — is fiction stitched onto the real Mesopotamian content. The Sumerian texts predate Lovecraft by four thousand years and have no relationship to the Cthulhu Mythos whatsoever. They were concerned with their own entirely different cosmology.
This has not prevented the Simon Necronomicon from being used seriously in ritual practice. It circulates in occult communities as a genuine magical text. People cite it. People build systems around it. The fake framing and the real ancient content are treated as a single coherent whole.
The library problem
Libraries that stock the Simon Necronomicon generally keep it in special collections rather than open shelving. The reason isn't the content. The reason is that it disappears from open shelves. It gets stolen at a rate that makes normal cataloging impractical.
The Evil Dead (1981) features its own version, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, the Book of the Dead — Sam Raimi's invention, directly inspired by Lovecraft's story prop. The sequels and the Ash vs. Evil Dead television series turned the concept into a pop culture icon. At this point the Necronomicon, as an idea, is more famous than any specific version of the text. There are multiple competing editions on the market. The Lovecraft estate has no legal claim over any of them because Lovecraft never had a real book to copyright.
Lovecraft was also not someone who would have been comfortable with what his invention became. He was a virulent racist. His cosmic horror — the terror of the vast, unknowable, inhuman other — was partly an externalization of his documented fear of immigrants, of non-white people, of anything outside his narrow Anglo-Saxon world. His writing is full of it. His cat, which he named in a published story, had a name that is a racial slur.
He died believing civilization was decaying. His fiction was barely in print.
The book he invented as a childhood nickname has sold over 800,000 copies and is used in ritual practice by people across every background imaginable. His fictional mythology is one of the most adapted and beloved in modern horror. The Necronomicon doesn't exist. It has multiple editions, a dedicated scholarly literature, and a theft problem at public libraries.
If your taste in horror runs toward the actual history underneath the mythology, the Let's Watch Horror Movies shirt is yours. The full horror collection is here. The post on Aleister Crowley covers the occult figure whose magical system was directly incorporated into the Simon Necronomicon. And for the same "this thing isn't what people think it is" energy applied to a different target, the post on the Satanic Temple is worth reading.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Necronomicon a real book?
The Necronomicon as Lovecraft described it — an 8th-century Arab grimoire containing forbidden knowledge — does not exist. HP Lovecraft invented it in a 1922 short story. However, the Simon Necronomicon (1977) is a real published book that calls itself the Necronomicon. It is assembled from genuine Sumerian and Babylonian scholarly translations, repackaged with Lovecraftian entity names and framing. It has sold over 800,000 copies and is used in occult practice.
Who invented the Necronomicon?
HP Lovecraft invented the Necronomicon. It first appeared by name in his 1922 short story "The Hound." He also invented the book's fictional author, Abdul Alhazred — a name he gave himself as a five-year-old pretending to be an Arabian sorcerer after reading the Arabian Nights. Lovecraft spent the rest of his life explaining to readers that both the book and its author were fictional. He died in 1937.
What is the Simon Necronomicon?
The Simon Necronomicon is a 1977 grimoire published under the name "Simon" (identity disputed, but widely suspected to be writer Peter Levenda). It was released by Schlangekraft, Inc. and later republished by Avon and Bantam Books. The book draws on real Mesopotamian and Babylonian texts from legitimate scholarly sources and reframes them with references to Lovecraft's fictional deities. Despite having no actual connection to Lovecraft's invented mythology or to any genuine ancient tradition, it has become one of the bestselling occult texts of the 20th century.
Why do libraries keep the Necronomicon in special collections?
Because it gets stolen. Libraries that shelve the Simon Necronomicon in open stacks find it disappears regularly enough to make normal circulation impractical. The book has a reputation in occult communities as a dangerous and powerful text, which has the practical effect of making it a target for theft.
Did HP Lovecraft know people thought the Necronomicon was real?
Yes. Lovecraft received letters throughout his life from readers asking where they could obtain a copy of the Necronomicon. He replied patiently that the book was entirely fictional, that Abdul Alhazred was a character he invented, and that no such text existed. His friends and fellow writers complicated matters by referencing the book in their own fiction, building out a collective mythology that made the fictional history of the Necronomicon feel increasingly elaborate and real.
Is the Necronomicon in Evil Dead the same as Lovecraft's version?
No. The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead (1981) is Raimi's own invention, inspired by but distinct from Lovecraft's fictional text. Raimi's version — the Book of the Dead, bound in human flesh — is a separate fictional creation. The two share a name and a general concept but are not the same book.
