The Dunwich Horror (ArcadianPress Edition)
()
About this ebook
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was an American author of science fiction and horror stories. Born in Providence, Rhode Island to a wealthy family, he suffered the loss of his father at a young age. Raised with his mother’s family, he was doted upon throughout his youth and found a paternal figure in his grandfather Whipple, who encouraged his literary interests. He began writing stories and poems inspired by the classics and by Whipple’s spirited retellings of Gothic tales of terror. In 1902, he began publishing a periodical on astronomy, a source of intellectual fascination for the young Lovecraft. Over the next several years, he would suffer from a series of illnesses that made it nearly impossible to attend school. Exacerbated by the decline of his family’s financial stability, this decade would prove formative to Lovecraft’s worldview and writing style, both of which depict humanity as cosmologically insignificant. Supported by his mother Susie in his attempts to study organic chemistry, Lovecraft eventually devoted himself to writing poems and stories for such pulp and weird-fiction magazines as Argosy, where he gained a cult following of readers. Early stories of note include “The Alchemist” (1916), “The Tomb” (1917), and “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” (1919). “The Call of Cthulu,” originally published in pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1928, is considered by many scholars and fellow writers to be his finest, most complex work of fiction. Inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and Lord Dunsany, Lovecraft became one of the century’s leading horror writers whose influence remains essential to the genre.
Read more from Howard Phillips Lovecraft
The Weiser Book of Horror and the Occult: Hidden Magic, Occult Truths, and the Stories That Started It All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 4 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Terrible Old Man Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Best of H. P. Lovecraft Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Call of Cthulhu (Serapis Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Festival Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Shadow of Innsmouth Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Weird Tales: Best of the Early Years 1926-27: Best of the Early Years 1926-27 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (The Annotated Books) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dream Cycle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Temple Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cthulhu Mythos MEGAPACK®: 40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5H. P. Lovecraft: The Collection Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hellbent Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrooklyn Noir 2: The Classics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Horror Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Horror Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to The Dunwich Horror (ArcadianPress Edition)
Related ebooks
The Randolph Carter Mythos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness, The Call of Cthulhu and The Music of Erich Zann Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSupernatural Horror in Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the Mountains of Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Issue 45: The Dark, #45 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFiction River: Christmas Ghosts Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Ghost Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUncle Silas: Gothic Mystery Thriller Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete works of Dante Alighieri Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhost Tour Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFeatherbones Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Velvet Rain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBook Thirteen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hanged Man and the Fortune Teller Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCaptured Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Carnacki: The Saiitii Manifestation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKilling Auntie Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Othello Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Book of Best Short Stories - Specials - Horror: Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeta Bots: The Womanoid Diaries, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Legend of Beacon Swamp Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Ooze: A Classic Horror from Weird Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIron Dogs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Unspeakable: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Blue Serpent & Other Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rise & Fall of the Scandamerican Domestic: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFiction River: Fantasy Adrift Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotes from Underground (Warbler Classics Annotated Edition) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Short Stories For You
Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Years of the Best American Short Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Skeleton Crew Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Explicit Content: Red Hot Stories of Hardcore Erotica Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Past Midnight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Five Tuesdays in Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lovecraft Country: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two Scorched Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sour Candy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfinished Tales Of Numenor And Middle-Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ficciones Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Short Stories Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Dunwich Horror (ArcadianPress Edition)
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Dunwich Horror (ArcadianPress Edition) - Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Table of Contents
The Dunwich Horror
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
The Dunwich Horror
Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Published: 1928
Chapter 1
Gorgons and Hydras, and Chimaeras - dire stories of Celaeno and the Harpies - may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition - but they were there before. They are transcripts, types - the archetypes are in us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? O, least of all! These terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body - or without the body, they would have been the same… That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual - that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless on earth, that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy - are difficulties the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland of pre-existence.
- Charles Lamb: Witches and Other Night-Fears
When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country.
The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.
Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do. When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer circles of tall stone pillars with which most of them are crowned.
Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen whippoorwills chatter and the fireflies come out in abnormal profusion to dance to the raucous, creepily insistent rhythms of stridently piping bull-frogs. The thin, shining line of the Miskatonic's upper reaches has an oddly serpent-like suggestion as it winds close to the feet of the domed hills among which it rises.
As the hills draw nearer, one heeds their wooded sides more than their stone-crowned tops. Those sides loom up so darkly and precipitously that one wishes they would keep their distance, but there is no road by which to escape them. Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterwards one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
Outsiders visit Dunwich as seldom as possible, and since a certain season of horror all the signboards pointing towards it have been taken down. The scenery, judged by an ordinary aesthetic canon, is more than commonly beautiful; yet there is no influx of artists or summer tourists. Two centuries ago, when talk of witch-blood, Satan-worship, and strange forest presences was not laughed at, it was the custom to give reasons for avoiding the locality. In our sensible age - since the Dunwich horror of 1928 was hushed up by those who had the town's and the world's welfare at heart - people shun it without knowing exactly why. Perhaps one reason - though it cannot apply to uninformed strangers - is that the natives are now repellently decadent, having gone far along that path