Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire (born May 3, 1951) is a writer of horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically are published as W. H. Pugmire. His adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe.
Strongly influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, many of Pugmire's stories directly reference "Lovecraftian" elements (such as Yog-Sothoth of the Cthulhu Mythos). Pugmire's major original contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos is the Sesqua Valley, a fictional location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States that serves as the primary locale for much of his fiction. According to his official biography, his "goal as an author is to dwell forevermore within Lovecraft's titan shadow."
Pugmire is a self-proclaimed eccentric recluse as well as "the Queen of Eldritch Horror."
His stories have appeared in major horror anthologies, and collections of his fiction and poetry have appeared under small press imprints such as Necropolitan Press, Mythos Books, Delirium Books, and Hippocampus Press. His most recent stories were "The House of Idiot Children" (with Maryanne Snyder) in the January/February 2008 issue of Weird Tales magazine and "The Pornography of Puppets" (with Chad Hensley) in Allen Koszowski's Inhuman #4. In October 2010 a major retrospective of his work was published by Centipede Press.