A reference, perhaps, to Robert W. Chambers' "The King in Yellow", a collection of short stories published in 1895, and one of the classics of early weird fiction. The King in Yellow is a mysterious and hostile supernatural entity, whose eponymous play is known to drive certain readers insane. The stories (sometimes only tangentially interconnected) draw upon earlier pioneering work in weird fiction by Ambrose Bierce (including the deity Hastur and the lost, alien city of Carcosa), as well as inspiring the weird fiction of later authors like H.P. Lovecraft.