Just got to post this quote from Lovecraft, which is one of the spookiest and disconcerting remarks from any author for me.

“To achieve the essence of real externality, whether of time or space or dimension, one must forget that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind, have any existence at all. Only the human scenes and characters must have human qualities. These must be handled with unsparing realism, (not catch-penny romanticism) but when we cross the line to the boundless and hideous unknown—the shadow-haunted Outside—we must remember to leave our humanity and terrestrialism at the threshold.”

Yup hence the old testament, God will smite you, full of smiting worship by fear

I would certainly agree with that. As a system designer back when computers filled whole rooms, it was my experience that the expectation of the unknown was that it would bring change and most people I worked with when trying to move their manual systems to automation, were afraid of change because the end result of any change was unknown.