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    The Shunned House
    The Shunned House
    The Shunned House
    Ebook59 pages48 minutes

    The Shunned House

    By H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateSep 1, 2008
    The Shunned House

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    Reviews for The Shunned House

    3.5/5

    7 ratings9 reviews

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    • 2/5
      What I heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers. That, I was told, was why the original owners had moved out some twenty years after building the place. It was plainly unhealthy, perhaps because of the dampness and fungous growth in the cellar, the general sickish smell, the draughts of the hallways, or the quality of the well and pump water. These things were bad enough, and these were all that gained belief among the persons whom I knew. Only the notebooks of my antiquarian uncle, Dr. Elihu Whipple, revealed to me at length the darker, vaguer surmises which formed an undercurrent of folklore among old-time servants and humble folk; surmises which never travelled far, and which were largely forgotten when Providence grew to be a metropolis with a shifting modern population.-from the story This is the first time I read a book by Lovecraft. I love horror stories, but I will admit my tastes run more along the lines of Stephen King and not the classic writers. But, once again the Serial Reader app encouraged me to read a new type of book. The story was good and mildly creepy. I think there was too much other information in there for it to be intensely scary. Maybe the line was different back in the day. It didn't take as much to scare people. The scene in the basement was creepy, I will admit, but it was such a small part of the story. It was a quick read, only 4 issues compared with 23 for War of the Worlds.
    • 4/5
      Short and sinister.
    • 3/5
      My first foray into H.P. Lovecraft. I can see how in 1937 this book would have scandalized the country with its' horrific plot. I found it to be quite tame compared to today's standards. If it was a novel instead of a short story, it would probably be more interesting. This being said, I will continue pursuing Lovecraft because of his early relationship with the sci-fi/horror genre.
    • 3/5
      An interesting short story detailing the misfortunes accruing to those unlucky enough to reside in an 18th century home with a dirty little secret. In some ways, the book almost reads like non-fiction as Lovecraft details the history of the property and various inhabitants covering the 17th through 19th centuries. But for the absurd ending, I would have rated this higher.
    • 3/5
      The Shunned House is a story of centuries old curse hanging over the house at 135 Benefit Street, Providence. Something horrible happened in the late 1600s and since then no child has ever been born in the house.
      The narrator tells a story of his childhood curiosity that later became almost an obsession. He researched the history of the house and even though he wasn't a superstitious man, he came to believe that there are certain things in this world that can't be easily explained.
    • 4/5
      A classic Lovecraft tale with a little paranormal investigation. Fun stuff.
    • 4/5
      In looking to break out of a reading slump, I decided to try reading something shorter. I found this story on Serial Reader and was able to read it in one evening. The first half was a little slow, but a common pace for the era this was written in. The second half, the creepiness was turned up and I really enjoyed the story. This is a haunted house story with a great ending.
    • 3/5
      The Shunned House by H.P. Lovecraft is a novella about an actual house in Providence, Rhode Island but Lovecraft's inspiration to write the story came from another house in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The story is about a doctor and his nephew. They've been fascinated with this house because so many strange things have occurred there over the years and so many people have died or became sick after staying there. In hopes of getting to the root of the evil, they both stay overnight in the house with dire consequences...

      So this story was ok. It took me a little while to get into it and use to the old style of writing. I appreciated the scientific vibe of the haunting and story the most. It made me question for a second whether this strange house and all of its happenings really existed. The ending was also pretty good. It was a little faster paced and had the most action, so to speak. The story wasn't scary though but it did have a little creepiness to it. It was a quick read and good for getting in the Halloween spirit.

      *I read this for my 2016 Halloween Bingo: ~Set in New England~ square

    • 4/5
      I’ve never read Lovecraft; I always had good intentions though. Time got away from me and I kept saying I would get to it. I never did, until recently that is. I found a story, this one in fact, while browsing the Gutenberg Project website. It was the only Lovecraft story they had listed and I thought why not, I always meant to read one of his stories. An abandoned house sits on Benefit Street in the New England town of Providence, Rhode Island. The house, empty for years, is the source of many rumors, and many of these rumors have easily been explained away by most of the town’s people. Then one man and his uncle decide to finally put an end to the rumors. Both have a very strong interest in the house and have been actively researching it for years. They plan to spend the night in the basement of the house and discover the source of the supernatural rumors. For a short story, about 35 pages, The Shunned House packs in so much. I loved the rumors, all neatly explained away by stoic New Englanders, the research done on the house and all its inhabitants, and the guesses as to the source of the possible supernatural on-goings at the place. It had a great creepy feeling, yet, having read it at lunch, it didn’t scare me much but I’m not sure if I’d go in for reading this while cozy in bed. At least not without all the lights on...but that would be a great way to read Lovecraft, if you aren’t attached to sleeping at all.

    Book preview

    The Shunned House - H. P. (Howard Phillips) Lovecraft

    Project Gutenberg's The Shunned House, by Howard Phillips Lovecraft

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Shunned House

    Author: Howard Phillips Lovecraft

    Release Date: March 2, 2010 [EBook #31469]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHUNNED HOUSE ***

    Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    The

    Shunned House

    By H. P. LOVECRAFT

    A posthumous story of immense power, written by a master of weird fiction—a tale of a revolting horror in the cellar of an old house in New England

    From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent. Sometimes it enters directly into the composition of the events, while sometimes it relates only to their fortuitous position among persons and places. The latter sort is splendidly exemplified by a case in the ancient city of Providence, where in the late forties Edgar Allan Poe used to sojourn often during his unsuccessful wooing of the gifted poetess, Mrs. Whitman. Poe generally stopped at the Mansion House in Benefit Street—the renamed Golden Ball Inn whose roof has sheltered Washington, Jefferson, and Lafayette—and his favorite walk led northward along the same street to Mrs. Whitman's home and the neighboring hillside churchyard of St. John's, whose hidden expanse of Eighteenth Century gravestones had for him a peculiar fascination.

    Howard Phillips Lovecraft died last March, at the height of his career. Though only forty-six years of age, he had built up an international reputation by the artistry and impeccable literary craftsmanship of his weird tales; and he was regarded on both sides of the Atlantic as probably the greatest contemporary master of weird fiction. His ability to create and sustain a mood of brooding dread and unnamable horror is nowhere better shown than in the posthumous tale presented here: The Shunned House.

    Now the irony is this. In this walk, so many times repeated, the world's greatest master of the terrible and the bizarre was obliged to pass a particular house on the eastern side of the street; a dingy, antiquated structure perched on the abruptly rising side hill, with a great unkempt yard dating from a time when the region was partly open country. It does not appear that he ever wrote or spoke of it, nor is there any evidence that he even noticed it. And yet that house, to the two persons in possession of certain information, equals or outranks in horror the wildest fantasy of the genius who so often passed it unknowingly, and stands starkly leering as a symbol of all that is unutterably hideous.

    The house was—and for that matter still is—of a kind to attract the attention of the curious. Originally a farm or semi-farm building, it followed the average New England colonial lines of the middle Eighteenth Century—the prosperous peaked-roof sort, with two stories and dormerless attic, and with the Georgian doorway and interior panelling dictated by the progress of taste at that time. It faced south, with one gable end buried to the lower windows in the eastward rising hill, and the other exposed to the foundations toward the street. Its construction, over a century and a half ago, had followed the grading and straightening of the road in that especial vicinity; for Benefit Street—at first called Back Street—was laid out as a lane winding amongst the graveyards of the first settlers, and straightened only when the removal of the bodies to the North Burial Ground made it decently possible to cut through the old family plots.

    At the start, the western wall had lain some twenty feet up a precipitous lawn from the roadway; but a widening of the street at about the time of the Revolution sheared off most of the intervening space, exposing the foundations so that a brick basement wall had to be made, giving the deep cellar a street frontage with door and one window above ground, close to the new line of public travel.

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