What is the proper ending for Eldritch horror?

dpaterso

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Sacrifice. Something is lost that can never be regained. A human life. Sanity-saving ignorance. Naive innocence. The ability to ever sleep peacefully again.

-Derek
 

LeeMountford

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Yeah, I don't think the protagonist can ever really gain a win in these stories. The things he has found himself (or herself) up against are just too powerful and unknowable. More knowledge only leads to more madness.
 

ironmikezero

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The Old Ones win the day; a state of resigned despair reigns . . . and readers are tempted to sleep with the lights on . . . Pleasant dreams.
 

Rhoda Nightingale

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Tentacles Fall, Everyone Dies.

More seriously: something awful that can not be undone and will change everything FOREVER. Or, in a slight twist, some noble sacrifice on the MC's part that makes only them susceptible to the awful thing, but it destroys their ability to interact with other humans ever again. That's the most positive outcome, probably. Containing the evil For Now, but it will drain all the sanity and happiness out of whoever functions as that container.
 

DamienLoveshaft

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I'm writing one of these. Basically my MC's victory is pretty partial and even subjective. He's forever changed, paranoid, and has lost something he holds dear. He's also lost much of his humanity figuratively and literally.
 

GiantGorilla

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Breakdown of all the comfortable illusions that keep a normal human from waking up screaming every morning without hope to ever regain them.
 

charliewwriter

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I have a sort of unpopular opinion on this. I agree that most eldritch horror should end with one of the following three: MC insane, dead, or ambiguous. This is when the idea of cosmic horror works best... But when you read an entire collection or anthology when this always happens, you get bored. The great cosmic mind-f**k doesn't mean as much when it happens all the time. Sometimes I think it's best when the human characters defeat the Lovecraftian monsters (temporarily) and are able to continue with some semblance of real life.
When you start a story and you know the MC is screwed no matter what, it cheapens the actual horror, but if you're not sure if the MC will make it out or not, it's more horrifying when they don't.
So I think it's best that occasionally MC doesn't go insane, die, or we're unsure exactly what happened but are pretty sure they're screwed.
 

Serddar

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There was a nice description of "Lovecraftian" ending, separated into three different categorizes:

1. Main character gets killed by the Old Ones or their servants while being involved in the events that take place himself.
2. MC goes insane and is writing out of the hospital for mentally ill, probably going to spend rest of his days there or will commit suicide.
3. MC is connecting dots while reading something someone else wrote and discovers things he shouldn't have, gets killed in the end.
 
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LadyRedRover

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I agree with the above posters. Insane, dead, or irrevocably scarred are about the only ways to go with eldritch horror. Happy, or even satisfactory, endings are few and far between.
 

fudgetusk

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The monster advances on the hero and then the story ends leaving the reader to wonder.
 

deafblindmute

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Proper endings shouldn't exist for eldritch horror. If they do, then they really can't be strange, enigmatic stories. They'd become stale and predictable. Even the narratives told by Lovecraft didn't all end the same way.