"The Novel of the Black Seal" was a model for some of Lovecraft's best-known stories: "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Dunwich Horror", and "The Whisperer in Darkness". The story also bears strong resemblance to Lovecraft's story "The Lurking Fear", which tells of a deformed humanoid race living in a rural region of the Catskill Mountains. "The Novel of the White Powder", which Lovecraft said "approaches the absolute culmination of loathsome fright", is pointed to as an inspiration for Lovecraft's stories of bodily disintegration, such as "Cool Air" and "The Colour Out of Space".