| The People of the Pit | |
| Author: | A. Merritt |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Genre: | Fantastic horror |
| Published In: | All-Story Weekly |
| Publisher: | Frank Munsey |
| Media Type: | |
| English Pub Date: | January 5, 1918 |
| Wikisource: | Amazing Stories/Volume 01/Number 12/The People of the Pit |
| Orig Lang Code: | en |
The People of the Pit (1918) is a short story by American writer A. Merritt.
Two gold prospectors are in Alaska to investigate a mountain range known as The Hand, which is supposed to have gold running down the middle. One night, when it is in sight, a beam of light shoots into the sky, and an injured man crawls into their camp. He was also a prospector, and tells them a fantastic tale of his experience with the People of the Pit.
The story is set "three hundred miles above the first great bend of the Kuskokwim toward the Yukon", in the Kuskokwim Mountains.
A travel book titled In the Alaskan wilderness had been published the previous year by George Byron Gordon, with maps and photographs of the region.[1]
The story has been cited as a possible inspiration of Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness. [2]