The Shunned House
| Author | H. P. Lovecraft |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Horror |
| Publisher | Arkham House |
|
Publication date
|
1961 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 59 pp |
| Text | at |
"The Shunned House" is a horror fiction novelette by American author H. P. Lovecraft, written on October 16–19, 1924. It was first published in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales.
The Shunned House of the title is based on an actual house in Providence, Rhode Island built around 1763 and still standing at 135 Benefit Street. Lovecraft was familiar with the house because his aunt Lillian Clark lived there in 1919-20 as a companion to Mrs. H. C. Babbit.
But it was another house in Elizabeth, New Jersey that actually provoked Lovecraft to write the story. As he wrote in a letter:
On the northeast corner of Bridge Street and Elizabeth Avenue is a terrible old house—a hellish place where night-black deeds must have been done in the early seventeen-hundreds—with a blackish unpainted surface, unnaturally steep roof, and an outside flight of stairs leading to the second story, suffocatingly embowered in a tangle of ivy so dense that one cannot but imagine it accursed or corpse-fed. It reminded me of the Babbit House in Benefit Street…. Later its image came up again with renewed vividness, finally causing me to write a new horror story with its scene in Providence and with the Babbit House as its basis.
For many years, the protagonist and his uncle, Dr. Elihu Whipple, have nurtured a fascination with an old abandoned house on Benefit Street. Dr. Whipple has made extensive records tracking the mysterious, yet apparently, coincidental sickness and death of many who have lived in the house for over one hundred years. They are also puzzled by the strange weeds growing in the yard, as well as the unexplained foul smell, and whitish phosphorescent fungi growing in the cellar.
After the protagonist discovers a strange, yellowish vapour in the basement, which seems to be coupled with a moldy outline of a huddled human form on the floor, he and his uncle decide to spend the night in the house, investigating the possibility of some supernatural force. They set up both cots and chairs in the cellar, arm themselves with military flamethrowers, and outfit a modified Crookes tube in the hopes of destroying any supernatural presence they might find.
When Dr. Whipple naps, while his nephew keeps watch, he begins tossing and turning, and finally starts babbling in French, until he suddenly awakes. He tells the protagonist he had strange visions of lying in an open pit, inside a house with constantly shifting features, while faces stared down at him. Many of the faces were those of the Harris family, whose members died in the house.
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Wikipedia