At the Mountains of Madness: The story details the events of a disastrous expedition to the Antarctic continent in September 1930, and what was found there … led by the narrator, (English Edition)

The story is told in a first-person perspective, by the geologist William Dyer, a professor at Miskatonic University, in the hope to prevent an important and much publicized scientific-expedition to Antarctica. Throughout the course of his explanation, Dyer relates on how he led a group of scholars, from Arkham's Miskatonic University, on a previous expedition to Antarctica, during which they discovered ancient ruins and a dangerous secret, beyond a range of mountains higher than the Himalayas. A smaller advance group, led by Professor Lake, soon discovered the remains of fourteen prehistoric life-forms, previously unknown to science, and also unidentifiable as either plants or animals. Six of the specimens were badly damaged, while the eight surviving specimens are pristine; whereas their stratum places them on the geologic time scale, much too early for their features to evolve. When the main expedition loses contact with Lake's party, Dyer and his colleagues investigate. Lake's camp is devastated, with the majority of men and dogs slaughtered, while a man named Gedney and one of the dogs are absent. Near the expedition's campsite, they find six star-shaped snow mounds, and one specimen under each. They also discover that the better preserved life-forms have vanished, and that some form of dissection experiment has been done on both an unnamed man and a dog.