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The Shunned House
The Shunned House
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_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_
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."
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.
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.
fiction--a tale of a revolting horror in the cellar of an old
house in New England_
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."
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.
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.