Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire (born William Harry Pugmire; May 3, 1951 – March 26, 2019), was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W. H. Pugmire (his adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe) and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have" and as one of the genre's leading Lovecraftian authors. Pugmire's stories have been published in numerous fanzines, book collections, anthologies and magazines including The Year's Best Horror Stories, The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Weird Tales, Year's Best Weird Fiction, and many more. In addition, two major retrospectives of his work, The Tangled Muse and An Ecstasy of Fear, were published in 2010 and 2019. Life Pugmire was born on May 3, 1951, to a father active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a Jewish mother. Pugmire grew up in Seattle. Pugmire attended Franklin High School, where he said he was "a wimpy wee fag" who got beaten up a lot. To escape what he called a rough childhood, Pugmire embraced "weird, creepy sci-fi stories" like The Twilight Zone TV show. During this time he also began playing the role of the vampire 'Count Pugsly' at Jones' Fantastic Museum in Seattle. The character was based on the look of Lon Chaney's vampire in London After Midnight and Pugmire played the role into the 1970s. Issue #69 of Forrest J Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland featured a dedication to Pugmire in his 'Count Pugsly' guise. In the documentary film The AckerMonster Chronicles!, Pugmire described how he was influenced by Ackerman's magazine and showed the audience the issue in which his photo appeared. Following one year in college, he served as a Mormon missionary in Omagh, Northern Ireland for eighteen months, where he corresponded with horror writer Robert Bloch and first began writing fiction. It was also in Northern Ireland that Pugmire discovered a paperback of Lovecraft's stories and was immediately captivated. After returning from his Mormon mission in 1973, Pugmire came out as gay to the church, was given psychiatric treatment, and requested excommunication, which lasted for about 25 years. In the early 2000s, he reconnected with the church and