 To thank the author for his work, Houdini gave Lovecraft a signed copy of his 1924 book "A Magician Among the Spirits".Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi praised the tale, calling it "surprisingly effective and suspenseful, with a genuinely surprising ending".Science fiction and fantasy author, editor, and critic Lin Carter, in his 1972 work "", refers to the story as "one of the best things Lovecraft had written up to that time".