An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

Dunwich was created for “The Dunwich Horror” (1928) and is cited only in that tale and in the poem “The Ancient Track” (1929). It was based roughly upon the area in south-central Massachusetts around the towns of Wilbraham, Monson, and Hampden (see SL3.432–33), which HPL had seen in the two weeks he had spent with Edith Miniter in Wilbraham just prior to writing the story in the summer of 1928. Some parts of the locale were, however, imported from north-central Massachusetts, specifically the area around Athol (Sentinel Hill in the story seems derived, at least in name, from a Sentinel Elm Farm in Athol), including the Bear’s Den, a wooded ravine that HPL’s friend H.Warner Munn showed him.

HPL presumably derived the name Dunwich from the decaying town on the southeast coast of England. The town is the basis of a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, “By the North Sea” (although Dunwich is not mentioned in the poem); Dunwich is also mentioned in Arthur Machen’s short novel The Terror(1917), which HPL is known to have read (see SL1.304, 310). Oddly enough, the English Dunwich seems more similar in character to HPL’s Innsmouth. For the English town see Rowland Parker, Men of Dunwich(1978).

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Page 79

“Dunwich Horror, The.”

Novelette (17,590 words); written in August 1928. First published in WT(April 1929); first collected in O;corrected text in DH;annotated version in An1and TD.

In the seedy area of Dunwich in “north central Massachusetts” live a number of backwoods farmers. One family, the Whateleys, has been the source of particular suspicion ever since the birth, on Candlemas 1913, of Wilbur Whateley, the offspring of an albino woman and an unknown father. Lavinia’s father, Old Whateley, shortly after the birth makes an ominous prediction: “some day yew folks‘ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!”Wilbur grows anomalously fast, and by age thirteen is nearly seven feet tall. He is intellectually precocious, having been educated by the books in Old Whateley’s shabby library. In 1924 Old Whateley dies, but manages to instruct his grandson to consult “page 751 of the complete edition” of some book so that he can “open up the gates to Yog-Sothoth.” Two years later Lavinia disappears and is never seen again. In the winter of 1927 Wilbur makes his first trip out of Dunwich, to consult the Latin edition of the Necronomiconat the Miskatonic University Library; but when he asks to borrow the volume, he is denied by the old librarian Henry Armitage. He tries to do the same at Harvard but is similarly rebuffed. Then, in the late spring of 1928, Wilbur breaks into the Miskatonic library to steal the book, but is killed by the vicious guard-dog. His death is very repulsive: “…it is permissible to say that, aside from the external appearance of face and hands, the really human element in Wilbur Whateley must have been very small. When the medical examiner came, there was only a sticky whitish mass on the painted boards, and the monstrous odour had nearly disappeared. Apparently Whateley had no skull or bony skeleton; at least, in any true or stable sense. He had taken somewhat after his unknown father.”

Meanwhile bizarre things are happening elsewhere. The monstrous entity the Whateleys had evidently been raising bursts forth, having no one to feed or tend to it. It creates havoc throughout the town, crushing houses as if they were matchsticks. Worst of all, it is completely invisible, leaving only huge footprints to indicate its presence. It descends into a ravine called the Bear’s Den, then later emerges and causes hideous devastation. Armitage has in the meantime been decoding the diary in cipher that Wilbur had kept and finally learns the true state of affairs: “His [Armitage’s] wilder wanderings were very startling indeed, including…fantastic references to some plan for the extirpation of the entire human race and all animal and vegetable life from the earth by some terrible elder race of beings from another dimension.” Armitage knows how to stop it, and he and two colleagues ascend a small hill facing Sentinel Hill, where the monster appears to be heading. They are armed with an incantation to send the creature back to the dimension it came from, as well as a sprayer containing a powder that will make it visible for an instant. The incantation and powder both work as planned, and the entity is seen to be a huge, ropy, tentacled monstrosity that shouts, “HELP! HELP!… ff— ff— ff—FATHER! FATHER! YOG-SOTHOTH!” and is completely obliterated. It was Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother.