The Shadow Out of Time is a novella by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written between November 1934 and February 1935, it was first published in the June 1936 issue of Astounding Stories. The Shadow Out of Time indirectly tells of the Great Race of Yith, an extraterrestrial species with the ability to travel through space and time. The Yithians accomplish this by switching bodies with hosts from the intended spatial or temporal destination. The story implies that the effect when seen from the outside is similar to spiritual possession. It is never revealed what the Yithians originally looked like. The cone-shaped bodies they used on Earth belonged to a species from a parallel line of life that had evolved alongside with other forms on the planet, the minds of which the Yithians had replaced with their own in a massive exodus. The Yithians' original purpose is to study the history of various times and places, and they have amassed a "library city" that is filled with th...