"The Very Old Folk" is the name given by publishers to a story found in the letter sent to Donald Wandrei by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft on 3 November 1927.

It is a recording of a dream, where the protagonist is a Roman military official in the Vascon country near Pompelo.

The countryside is, every year, ravaged by terrible hill people who kidnap citizens and perform cruel rituals at a Sabbath.

These hill folk came to trade, yet some of these are killed and later, no disappearances occur before the time of the Sabbath.

As the Romans approach the seat of the Sabbath rituals, something terrible attacks them and in an instant, horrible things come to pass: The story ends with the narrator waking up and claiming that "it was the most vivid dream in years, drawing upon wells of the subconscious long untouched and forgotten."