"The Shadow Out of Time" is a Cthulhu Mythos story by H. P. Lovecraft, first published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories.
The story follows Professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee, who suffers a sudden mental collapse in 1908, losing his memory for five years. During this period, his body is controlled by an unknown intelligence while his own consciousness experiences life in a vast prehistoric era, housed within the body of a member of the Great Race of Yith—an ancient, time-traveling alien species that exchanges minds with beings across time to gather knowledge.
"The Shadow Out of Time" is one of Lovecraft’s most ambitious Cthulhu Mythos works, blending cosmic horror with science fiction, and exploring themes of non-linear time, forbidden knowledge, and mankind’s small place in an immense, alien universe.
