Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Dunwich Cycle Where the Old Gods Wait by Robert M. Price The Dunwich Horror. " The Dunwich Horror " is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales (pp. 481–508). It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts. It is considered one of the core stories of the Cthulhu Mythos. "The Dunwich Horror" is one of the few tales Lovecraft wrote wherein the heroes successfully defeat the antagonistic entity or monster of the story. Contents. Geographical [ edit | edit source ] The action "takes place amongst the wild domed hills of the upper Miskatonic Valley, far northwest of Arkham, and is based on several old New England legends — one of which I heard only last month during my sojourn in Wilbraham," a town east of Springfield. ( HPL : letter to August Derleth, August 4, 1928, EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) One such legend is the notion that whippoorwills can capture the departing soul. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Dunwich is "a vague echo of the decadent Massachusetts countryside around Springfield — say Wilbraham, Monson and Hampden." ( HPL : Selected Letters 3.508) It is noted that "much of the physical description of the Dunwich countryside is a faithful sketch of Wilbraham:" The physical model for Dunwich's Sentinel Hill is thought to be Wilbraham Mountain near Wilbraham. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Researchers have pointed out the story's apparent connections to another Massachusetts region: the area around Athol and points south, in the north-central part of the state (which is where Lovecraft indicates that Dunwich is located). It has been suggested that the name "Dunwich" was inspired by the town of Greenwich, which was deliberately flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir, [1] although Greenwich and the nearby towns of Dana, Enfield and Prescott actually weren't submerged until 1938. Donald R. Burleson points out that several names included in the story— including Bishop, Frye, Sawyer, Rice and Morgan—are either prominent Athol names or have a connection to the town's history. [2] Athol's Sentinel Elm Farm seems to be the source for the name Sentinel Hill. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) The Bear's Den mentioned in the story resembles an actual cave of the same name visited by Lovecraft in North New Salem, southwest of Athol. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) (New Salem, like Dunwich, was founded by settlers from Salem—though in 1737, not 1692. [3] ) The book Myths and Legends of Our Own Land , [4] by Charles Montgomery Skinner, mentions a "Devil's Hop Yard" near Haddam, Connecticut as a gathering place for witches. The book, which Lovecraft seems to have read, also describes noises emanating from the earth near Moodus, Connecticut, which are similar to the Dunwich sounds decried by Rev. Abijah Hoadley. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Literary [ edit | edit source ] Lovecraft's main literary sources for "The Dunwich Horror" are the stories of Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen, particularly "The Great God Pan" (which is mentioned in the text of "The Dunwich Horror") and "The Novel of the Black Seal". Both Machen stories concern individuals whose death throes reveal them to be only half-human in their parentage. According to Robert M. Price, "'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's story that does not come directly out of Machen's fiction." [5] Another source that has been suggested is "The Thing in the Woods", by Margery Williams, which is also about two brothers living in the woods, neither of them quite human and one of them less human than the other. The name Dunwich itself may come from Machen's The Terror , where the name refers to an English town where the titular entity is seen hovering as "a black cloud with sparks of fire in it". [6] Lovecraft also takes Wilbur Whateley's occult terms "Aklo" and "Voorish" from Machen's "The White People". [7] Lovecraft also seems to have found inspiration in Anthony M. Rud's story "Ooze" (published in Weird Tales , March 1923), which also involved a monster being secretly kept and fed in a house that it subsequently bursts out of and destroys. (EXP: The Dunwich Horror and Others ) The tracks of Wilbur's brother recall those seen in Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo", one of Lovecraft's favorite horror stories. ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) Ambrose Bierce's story "The Damned Thing" also involves a monster invisible to human eyes. Plot summary [ edit | edit source ] In the isolated, desolate, decrepit village of Dunwich, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino mother, and an unknown father (alluded to in passing by mad Old Whateley, as "Yog-Sothoth"). Strange events surround his birth and precocious development. Wilbur matures at an abnormal rate, reaching manhood within a decade. Locals shun him and his family, and animals fear and despise him (due to his odor). All the while, his sorcerer grandfather indoctrinates him into certain dark rituals and the study of witchcraft. Various locals grow suspicious after Old Whateley buys more and more cattle, yet the number of his herd never increases, and the cattle in his field become mysteriously afflicted with severe open wounds. Wilbur and his grandfather have sequestered an unseen presence at their farmhouse; this being is connected somehow to Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, this unseen entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring the two men to make frequent modifications to their residence. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Wilbur's grandfather dies. His mother disappears soon afterwards. The colossal entity eventually occupies the whole interior of the farmhouse. Wilbur ventures to Miskatonic University in Arkham to procure their copy of the Necronomicon – Miskatonic's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock an original. The Necronomicon has spells that Wilbur can use to summon the Old Ones, but his family's copy is damaged and lacks the page he needs to open the "door". When the librarian, Dr. Henry Armitage, refuses to release the university's copy to him (and has, by sending warnings to other libraries, thwarted Wilbur's efforts to consult their copies), Wilbur breaks into the library at night to steal it. A guard dog, maddened by Wilbur's alien body odor, attacks Wilbur with unusual ferocity, killing him. When Dr. Armitage and two other professors arrive on the scene, they see Wilbur Whateley's semi-human corpse before it melts completely, leaving no evidence. With Wilbur Whateley dead, no one attends to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the Whateley farmhouse explodes and the thing, an invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, cutting a path through fields, trees, and ravines, leaving huge "prints" the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas. The invisible creature terrorizes the town for several days, killing two families and several policemen, until Dr. Armitage, Professor Warren Rice, and Dr. Francis Morgan arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. The use of a magic powder renders it visible just long enough to send one of the crew into shock. The barn-sized monster screams for help - in English - just before the spell destroys it, leaving a huge burned area. In the end, its nature is revealed: it is Wilbur's twin brother, though it "looked more like the father than Wilbur did." Reaction [ edit | edit source ] Lovecraft took pride in "The Dunwich Horror", calling it "so fiendish that [ Weird Tales editor] Farnsworth Wright may not dare to print it." Wright, however, snapped it up, sending Lovecraft a check for $240, equal to $2800 in modern dollars, the largest single payment for his fiction he had received up to that point. ( HPL : Selected Letters 2.329) Kingsley Amis praised "The Dunwich Horror" in New Maps of Hell , listing it as one of Lovecraft's tales that "achieve a memorable nastiness". [8] Lovecraft biographer Lin Carter calls the story "an excellent tale. A mood of tension and gathering horror permeates the story, which culminates in a shattering climax". [9] In his list of "The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories", T. E. D. Klein placed "The Dunwich Horror" at number four. [10] Robert M. Price declares that "among the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Dunwich Horror' remains my favorite." [11] S.T. Joshi, on the other hand, regards "Dunwich" as "simply an aesthetic mistake on Lovecraft's part", citing its "stock good-versus-evil scenario". ( EXP : The Dunwich Horror and Others ) However, he has also noted that it is "richly atmospheric." Characters [ edit | edit source ] Old Whateley [ edit | edit source ] Lavinia Whateley's "aged and half-insane father, about whom the most frightful tales of magic had been whispered in his youth". [12] He has a large collection of "rotting ancient books and parts of books" which he uses to "instruct[s] and catechise" his grandson Wilbur. He dies of natural causes on August 2, 1924. He is given no certain first name by Lovecraft, although Fungi from Yuggoth mentions a John Whateley; he is referred to as "Noah Whateley" in the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. According to S. T. Joshi, "It is not certain where Lovecraft got the name Whateley," though there is a small town called Whately in northwestern Massachusetts near the Mohawk Trail, which Lovecraft hiked several times, including in the summer of 1928.