An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

There are several significant literary influences on the tale. The central premise—the sexual union of a “god” or monster (in this case Yog-Sothoth, the entity first cited rather nebulously in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward) with a

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human woman—is taken from Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan”; HPL makes no secret of it, having Armitage say of the Dunwich people at one point, “Great God, what simpletons! Shew them Arthur Machen’s Great God Pan and they’ll think it a common Dunwich scandal!” The use of bizarre footsteps to indicate the presence of an otherwise undetectable entity is borrowed from Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo.” HPL knew well the celebrated tales featuring invisible monsters— Maupassant’s “The Horla” (certain features of which he had adapted for “The Call of Cthulhu”); FitzJames O’Brien’s “What Was It?”; Bierce’s “The Damned Thing”—and derived hints from each of them in his own creation. A less well-known tale, Anthony M.Rud’s “Ooze” ( WT,March 1923; rpt. The Moon Terror and Storiesby A.G.Birch et al. [1927]), also deals with an invisible monster that eventually bursts forth from the house in which it is trapped. A still more obscure work, Harper Williams’s The Thing in the Woods(1924)—read by HPL in the fall of 1924—involves a pair of twins, one of whom (a werewolf) is locked in a shed. In addition, the story may derive from an entry (#162) in HPL’s commonplace book: “Ultimate horror—grandfather returns from strange trip— mystery in house—wind & darkness—grandf. & mother engulfed—questions forbidden—somnolence —investigation—cataclysm—screams overheard—.” It was shortly after writing “The Curse of Yig” for Zealia Bishop that HPL wrote “The Dunwich Horror,” a somewhat more satisfying story of his own devising about a “god” mating with humans.

HPL acknowledged (see SL3.432–33) that Dunwich was in the Wilbraham area, and it is clear that the topography and some of the folklore (whippoorwills as psychopomps of the dead) were derived from eight days (June 29–July 7, 1928) spent with Edith Miniter in Wilbraham. But, if Wilbraham is roughly the setting for Dunwich, why does HPL declare in the story that the town is located in north central Massachusetts? Some parts of the locale are taken from that region, specifically the Bear’s Den, an actual locale near Athol to which HPL was taken by his friend H.Warner Munn on June 28. HPL describes the site vividly in a letter to his aunt: “There is a deep forest gorge there; approached dramatically from a rising path ending in a cleft boulder, & containing a magnificent terraced waterfall over the sheer bed-rock. Above the tumbling stream rise high rock precipices crusted with strange lichens & honeycombed with alluring caves. Of the latter several extend far into the hillside, though too narrowly to admit a human being beyond a few yards” (HPL to Lillian D.Clark, July 1, 1928; ms., JHL). The name Sentinel Hill is taken from a Sentinel Elm Farm in Athol.

Although very popular with readers, the story has been criticized for being an obvious good-vs.-evil tale with Armitage representing the forces of good and the Whateley family representing the forces of evil. Donald R.Burleson suggests that the tale be read as a satire or parody, pointing out that it is the Whateley twins (regarded as a single entity) who, in mythic terms, fulfill the traditional role of the “hero” much more than Armitage does (e.g., the mythic hero’s descent to the underworld is paralleled by the twin’s descent into the Bear’s Den), and pointing out also that the passage from the Necronomiconcited in the tale—“Man rules now where They [the Old Ones] ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now”—makes Armitage’s “defeat” of the Whateleys merely a temporary staving off of the inevitable. These points are well taken, but HPL

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offers no evidence that the tale was meant parodically (i.e., as a satire on immature readers of the pulp magazines) or that the figure of Armitage is meant anything but seriously. He suggests the reverse when he writes: “[I] found myself psychologically identifying with one of the characters (an aged scholar who finally combats the menace) toward the end” (HPL to August Derleth, [September 1928]; ms., SHSW). Armitage is clearly modeled upon Marinus Bicknell Willett of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward:he defeats the “villains” by incantations, and he is susceptible to the same flaws— pomposity, arrogance, self-importance—that can be seen in Willett.