"The Night Ocean" by H. P. Lovecraft, with R.H. Barlow

This story is largely Barlow's work, which seems pretty evident from the content of the story, with Lovecraft contributing some edits here and there. Unlike some of Lovecraft's other "edits", where Lovecraft basically rewrote the entire story, this one he left largely intact.

This is a fairly rare example of a purely atmospheric weird tale, there's very little in the way of action or plot. I do very much love the atmosphere and the mood of the story, but I could have done with a little bit more action.

I can't figure out where Ellston Beach is supposed to be. Apparently this was first published in "The Californian", which would tend to suggest a California setting. But there is no Ellston in California. Indeed, the only Ellston I can identify is in Iowa. Which means you can imagine Ellston being pretty much on any ocean coast anywhere. Well, anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, since August is still summer in the story. The fact that the ocean doesn't get too cold for swimming until September could probably narrow it down some, but I'm not familiar enough with ocean temperature variations by locale to say.

The follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/no.aspx

Now tell me the following sentence, copied exactly from the text, is valid syntax: "The shadows were draining from the beach, and I felt that they took with were all which might have been a harbour for my thoughts when the hinted thing should come."

I checked it against several sources, and they all have the same wording. It seems obviously an error, where the word 'were' should be 'them': "...took with them all which might...". But, that's not what is actually in the text. I couldn't really figure out how to say the sentence as written, but obviously I stumbled through it somehow. After about a dozen takes and much head-scratching. Ugh.