The Dunwich Horror


"The Dunwich Horror" is a cosmic horror short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft. Written in 1928, it was first published in the April 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It takes place in Dunwich, a fictional town in Massachusetts. It is considered one of the core stories of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Plot

In the desolate, decrepit Massachusetts village of Dunwich, Wilbur Whateley is the hideous son of Lavinia Whateley, a deformed and unstable albino, and an unknown father. Strange events surround Wilbur's birth and precocious development; he 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 repellent appearance and an unnatural, inhuman odor emanating from his body. His grandfather, a sorcerer known only as "Old Whateley", 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 Old Whateley have sequestered an unseen entity at their farmhouse; this entity is connected somehow to a being known as Yog-Sothoth. Year by year, the entity grows to monstrous proportions, requiring the two men to make frequent modifications to the farmhouse. People begin to notice a trend of cattle mysteriously disappearing. Old Whateley eventually dies, and Wilbur's mother Lavinia disappears soon after. The colossal entity eventually occupies the entire interior of the farmhouse.
Wilbur ventures to Miskatonic University in Arkham to procure their copy of the Necronomicon, as the university's library is one of only a handful in the world to stock that book. 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, Wilbur breaks into the library under the cover of night to steal it. A guard dog, maddened by Wilbur's alien body odor, attacks with unusual ferocity and kills him. When Armitage and two other professors, Warren Rice and Francis Morgan, arrive on the scene, they see Wilbur's semi-human corpse before it melts completely, leaving no evidence.
With Wilbur dead, no one attends to the mysterious presence growing in the Whateley farmhouse. Early one morning, the farmhouse explodes, and the thing, a towering, invisible monster, rampages across Dunwich, leaving huge prints the size of tree trunks. The monster eventually makes forays into inhabited areas. The invisible creature terrorizes Dunwich for several days, killing two families and several policemen, until Armitage, Rice, and Morgan arrive with the knowledge and weapons needed to kill it. The use of a magic powder renders the monster visible just long enough to send one of the crew into shock. It babbles in an alien tongue, then screams for help from its father Yog-Sothoth in English just before the spell destroys it, leaving a massive burned area. In the end, its nature is revealed: it was Wilbur's fraternal twin brother, but it "looked more like the father than he did."

Characters

;Old Whateley
;Lavinia Whateley
;Wilbur Whateley
;Henry Armitage
;Francis Morgan
;Warren Rice

Inspiration

Geographical

In a letter to August Derleth, Lovecraft wrote that "The Dunwich Horror" "takes place amongst the wild domed hills of the upper Miskatonic Valley, far northwest of Arkham, and is based on several New England legends—one of which I heard only last month during my sojourn in Wilbraham," a town east of Springfield, Massachusetts. One such legend is the notion that whippoorwills can capture the departing soul.
In another letter, Lovecraft wrote that Dunwich is "a vague echo of the decadent Massachusetts countryside around Springfield, Massachusetts—say Wilbraham, Monson and Hampden". Robert M. Price notes that "much of the physical description of the Dunwich countryside is a faithful sketch of Wilbraham," citing a passage from a letter from Lovecraft to Zealia Bishop that "sounds like a passage from 'The Dunwich Horror' itself":
The physical model for Dunwich's Sentinel Hill is thought to be Wilbraham Mountain near Wilbraham.
Some 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. It has been suggested that the name Dunwich was inspired by the town of Greenwich, which was deliberately flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir, although Greenwich and the nearby towns of Dana, Enfield and Prescott actually were not 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, but Rice is the name of a prominent Wilbraham family as well.
Athol's Sentinel Elm Farm seems to be the source for the name Sentinel Hill. 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.
The book Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, by Charles M. 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.

Literary

Lovecraft's main literary sources for "The Dunwich Horror" are the stories of Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen, particularly "The Great God Pan" 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." As one example, both Wilbur Whateley and Helen Vaughan are the children of an invisible god and a human female, and both of them after dying quickly turned into black liquid.
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". Lovecraft also takes Wilbur Whateley's occult terms "Aklo" and "Voorish" from Machen's "The White People".
Lovecraft also seems to have found inspiration in Anthony M. Rud's story "Ooze", which also involved a monster being secretly kept and fed in a house that it subsequently bursts out of and destroys.
The tracks of Wilbur's brother recall those seen in Algernon Blackwood's "The Wendigo", one of Lovecraft's favorite horror stories. Ambrose Bierce's story "The Damned Thing" also involves a monster invisible to human eyes.

Reception

Lovecraft took pride in "The Dunwich Horror", calling it "so fiendish that Farnsworth Wright may not dare to print it". Wright, however, snapped it up, sending Lovecraft a check for $240, which at that point was the largest single payment he had received for his fiction.
Kingsley Amis praised "The Dunwich Horror" in New Maps of Hell, listing it as one of Lovecraft's tales that "achieve a memorable nastiness". 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." In his list of "The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories", T. E. D. Klein placed "The Dunwich Horror" at number four. Robert M. Price declares that "among the tales of H. P. Lovecraft, 'The Dunwich Horror' remains my favorite." S. T. Joshi, on the other hand, regarded "Dunwich" as "simply an aesthetic mistake on Lovecraft's part", citing its "stock good-versus-evil scenario". However, he has also stated that it is "richly atmospheric".

Cthulhu Mythos

Although Lovecraft first mentioned Yog-Sothoth in the novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it was in "The Dunwich Horror" that he introduced the entity as one of his extra-dimensional Outer Gods. It is also the tale in which the Necronomicon makes the most significant appearance, and the longest direct quote from it appears in the text. Many of the other standards of the Cthulhu Mythos, such as Miskatonic University, Arkham, and Dunwich, also form integral parts of the tale.

Adaptations

The film The Dunwich Horror was released in 1970. It stars Dean Stockwell as Wilbur Whateley, Ed Begley as Henry Armitage, and Sandra Dee. Les Baxter composed the soundtrack.
Jeffrey Combs starred as Wilbur Whately in a TV film adaptation first broadcast in October 2009 on SyFy. Dean Stockwell also stars in this version, this time as Dr. Henry Armitage.
Toei Animation adapted "The Dunwich Horror" as part of three short claymation films that were released in 2007 as a DVD compilation called H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories.
Director Richard Stanley has expressed interest in adapting "The Dunwich Horror" and has prepared a script.
In 2008 a film title Beyond the Dunwich Horror, directed by Richard Griffin and starring Lynn Lowry, was released.
The radio drama Suspense adapted "The Dunwich Horror", starring Ronald Colman as Henry Armitage, which aired originally on November 1, 1945.
Comics artist Alberto Breccia adapted the story in 1974. It was published in the October 1979 issue of Heavy Metal magazine.
In 2011, IDW Publishing began publishing a four-issue limited adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror" by author Joe R. Lansdale and artist Peter Bergting.
Gou Tanabe adapted the story into a three-volume manga in 2021.

Short story collection

The Dunwich Horror and Others is the title of a collection of H. P. Lovecraft short stories published by Arkham House, containing what August Derleth considered to be the best of Lovecraft's shorter fiction. Originally published in 1963, the 6th printing in 1985 included extensive corrections by S. T. Joshi in order to produce the definitive edition of Lovecraft's works. The collection has an introduction by Robert Bloch, titled "Heritage of Horror", reprinted from the 1982 Ballantine collection, Blood Curdling Tales of Supernatural Horror: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft.
The stories included in The Dunwich Horror and Others are "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 Whisperer in Darkness", "The Terrible Old Man", "The Thing on the Doorstep", "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", and "The Shadow Out of Time".

Influence

  • The Leviathan arc of the Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows was heavily influenced by "The Dunwich Horror", as well as other Lovecraft works. The character of Jebez "Jeb" Hawkes is the essence of the Leviathan leader who matures at a rapid rate and transforms into an invisible murderous creature.
  • Neil Gaiman's short story "I, Cthulhu" features a human slave/biographer referred to only as Whateley.
  • Stoner/doom metal band Electric Wizard released a song on their 2007 album, Witchcult Today, titled "Dunwich", based around the short story. "We Hate You", from their 2000 album, Dopethrone, contains sound clips from the film.
  • Rock band The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, known for their Lovecraftian themes, released a song called "Going Down to Dunwich" which follows the plot of the story and contains audio clips from the 1970 film version.
  • Lucio Fulci's 1980 movie City of the Living Dead is set in a town named Dunwich.
  • On his third album, Medallion Animal Carpet, Bob Drake and a collaborator retell the story of "The Dunwich Horror" under the title "Dunwich Confidential".
  • The 2008 video game Fallout 3 features a location named The Dunwich Building, formerly home to a company called Dunwich Borers LLC, with a mini-story of a man searching for his father, who is in possession of an "old, bloodstained book made of weird leather". The man is found in front of an obelisk under the building, driven insane and turned into a feral ghoul. The building itself is full of various supernatural phenomena such as flashbacks to the past. A later downloadable add-on, Point Lookout, features a quest involving a book with a similar purpose as the Necronomicon and an equally strange name, the Krivbeknih, which can be destroyed in the basement of the Dunwich Building.
  • * The 2015 video game Fallout 4, sequel to Fallout 3 and set in Massachusetts, features a location with similar paranormal activity called Dunwich Borers, which was a quarry owned by Dunwich Borers LLC.
  • "Boojum", a short story by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, features a living, sentient space ship named "Lavinia Whateley" by her pirate crew.
  • Chiaki Konaka, scriptwriter of the 1995 cyberpunk series Armitage III, reported being influenced by this story when writing the series. Among other signs of influence are the character named Armitage, another character named Lavinia Whateley, and a location variously spelled as Dunwich or "Danich" Hill.
  • Doom metal band Iron Man's 2013 album South of the Earth contains the song "Half Face/Thy Brother's Keeper, which is based on the story.
  • Japanese progressive metal band Ningen Isu recorded a song "Dunwich no Kai" in their 1998 album Taihai Geijutsu-ten.
  • Harry Turtledove's book Nine Drowned Churches is set in Dunwich, England, which is similar to the town in "The Dunwich Horror", including the family names, and the protagonist is aware of the events of this story.
  • The board game Arkham Horror has an expansion known as The Dunwich Horror, in which both the grandfather named Wizard Whately and the Dunwich Horror appear.
  • In the mobile game Fate/Grand Order, a young girl with albinism named Lavinia Whateley appears in the Salem chapter, which features various motifs derived from Lovecraftian works which are played in concert with an alternative telling of the Salem witch trials. She is a close friend of another girl named Abigail Williams.