The Dunwich Horror

By Howard Phillips Lovecraft

In the degenerate, unliked backwater of Dunwich, Wilbur Whately, a most unusual child, is born. Of unnatural parentage, he grows at an uncanny pace to an unsettling height, but the boy's arrival simply precedes that of a true horror: one of the Old Ones, that forces the people of the town to hole up by night. (Goodreads)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Otbebookpublishing
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9783962721626

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.

Book preview

Lovecraft

Chapter 1

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 of retrogression so common in many New England backwaters. They have come to form a race by themselves, with the well-defined mental and physical stigmata of degeneracy and inbreeding. The average of their intelligence is woefully low, whilst their annals reek of overt viciousness and of half-hidden murders, incests, and deeds of almost unnameable violence and perversity. The old gentry, representing the two or three armigerous families which came from Salem in 1692, have kept somewhat above the general level of decay; though many branches are sunk into the sordid populace so deeply that only their names remain as a key to the origin they disgrace. Some of the Whateleys and Bishops still send their eldest sons to Harvard and Miskatonic, though those sons seldom return to the mouldering gambrel roofs under which they and their ancestors were born.

No one, even those who have the facts concerning the recent horror, can say just what is the matter with Dunwich; though old legends speak of unhallowed rites and conclaves of the Indians, amidst which they called forbidden shapes of shadow out of the great rounded hills, and made wild orgiastic prayers that were answered by loud crackings and rumblings from the ground below. In 1747 the Reverend Abijah Hoadley, newly come to the Congregational Church at Dunwich Village,

Reviews for The Dunwich Horror

[arkrayder · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I never tire of reading H.P. Lovecraft. His descriptions are fantastic and his influence can be seen in King and Gaiman novels. Hellboy owes a lot to the Lovecraft Cthulhu mythos. Can’t praise Lovecraft enough!

[mritchie56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some of Lovecraft's best stories including "Call of Cthulhu," "The Colour Out of Space," "The Dunwich Horror" (all three of which have been made into movies) "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," "The Whisperer in Darkness," and some non-Mythos tales like "Cool Air" and "Pickman's Model" (both of which, I believe, were adapted for Rod Serling's Night Gallery TV show in the 70's). Most of the stories are just a bit too long and could have used some judicious editing, but they are atmospheric and often achieve a real power by the end. There should be a Lovecraft drinking game in which one imbibes whenever one reads the word "blasphemous," but then I'd probably never get to the end of a story.

[branduno-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An excellent overview of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos stories, as well as some general horror tales, often about terrible old men with ghastly secrets. My edition contains August Derleth's introduction that tries to fit Lovecraft's Yog-Sothothery into a good-versus-evil frame, which is... not so successful, but oh well. Other features of this edition include Derleth's editorial decision to italicize the final line in almost every story, and a very nice cover drawing of Wilbur Whateley playing with a balloon or something.

[isaac_thorne-717031 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the audiobook edition of this and I can finally say that I enjoy Lovecraft stories much more if they're read to me. These stories are classic Lovecraft in every way. He builds worlds with creeping, undulating atmospheres that do not let up. There's a reason so many horror authors of the modern era were influenced by the work of Lovecraft. If you've never read any of his work, this volume is a great place to start.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't like sequels or re-imaginings very much but Joe Lansdale does tell a good story and treats the material with the respect a fan would demand. Peter Bergting did what he could to illustrate a monster that Lovecraft meant to be indescribable. I grumbled at Menton3's turning the text into calligraphy but I came to appreciate it. His work did elevate this bloody pulp thriller into a fine piece of Gothic art.

[wordsampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fantastic. I realize a lot of people view Lovecraft as a hack, but I don't buy that for a second. And I especially don't buy it after reading this collection, which packs many of his best stories together. He had his quirks, for sure, but man...some of the stuff here is just incredible.

[maowangvater · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Contents: H. P. Lovecraft and his work / by August Derleth --In the vault -- Pickman’s model -- The rats in the walls -- The outsider -- The colour out of space -- The music of Erich Zann -- The haunter of the dark --The picture in the house --The call of Cthulhu -- The Dunwich horror -- Cool air -- The whispering in darkness -- The terible old man -- The thing on the doorstep -- The shadow over Innsmouth -- The shadow out of time.