An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia

In “The Dunwich Horror,” one of the party that exterminates Wilbur Whateley’s monstrous twin brother.

Feldon, Arthur.

In “The Electric Executioner,” the “furtive” assistant superintendent with the Tlaxcala Mining Company, who absconds with important company papers. He is pursued by the narrator of the story and is accidentally killed by the hoodlike execution device he has invented.

Fenham.

Fictitious town in Maine invented either by HPL or by C.M.Eddy and cited in “The Loved Dead” (1923) and “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind” (1924).

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Fenner, Matthew.

In “In the Vault,” a man for whom George Birch builds a new coffin, when he recognizes that his first effort was somewhat shoddy for the person intended. Birch uses the rejected casket for someone he did not like very well, with disastrous results.

Fenton, Dr.

In “Beyond the Wall of Sleep,” a physician at a psychopathic institution in upstate New York and the boss of the narrator, an intern there.

“Festival.”

Poem (20 lines in 4 stanzas); written around Christmas 1925. First published in WT(December 1926) (as “Yule Horror”).

A poem to Farnsworth Wright, editor of WT,speaking of Wright as an “abbot and priest” at a “devilwrought feast.” Wright, taken with the work, published it but dropped its last stanza, which alluded directly to him.

“Festival, The.”

Short story (3,700 words); probably written in October 1923. First published in WT(January 1925); rpt. WT(October 1933): first collected in O;corrected text in D;annotated version in CC. The first-person narrator finds himself in Kingsport, Mass., on the Yuletide “that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind.” He follows a course along the old town that can be traversed to this day. He passes by the old cemetery on the hill, where “black gravestones stuck ghoulishly through the snow like the decayed fingernails of a gigantic corpse,” and makes his way to a house with an overhanging second story and full of antique furnishings. Eventually he is led from the house by its occupants, including a man whose face seems to be a cunningly made waxen mask. He and the other townspeople make their way to a church in the center of town; entering it, they all descend robotically down a “trapdoor of the vaults which yawned loathsomely open just before the pulpit,” where the celebrants worship a sickly green flame next to an oily river and then ride off on the backs of hybrid winged creatures. The narrator resists ascending the creature reserved for him, and in doing so he jostles his companion’s waxen mask; horrified at some nameless sight, he plunges into the river and eventually finds himself in St. Mary’s hospital in Arkham. He asks for a copy of the Necronomiconof Abdul Alhazred, and therein reads a passage that appears to confirm the events he has experienced, specifically in relation to entities that “have learned to walk that ought to crawl.”

The story is based upon HPL’s several trips to Marblehead, Mass., beginning in December 1922. Of his first trip there HPL later wrote that it was “the most powerful single emotional climax experienced during my nearly forty years of existence. In a flash all the past of New England—all the past of Old England—all the past of Anglo-Saxondom and the Western World—swept over me and identified me with the stupendous totality of all things in such a way as it never did before and never will again. That was the high tide of my life” ( SL3.126–27). The course of the narrator’s journey through the town corresponds to an actual route that leads to the center of Marblehead; the house with the overhanging second story is probably to be identified with an actual house at 1 Mugford Street. The church where the climactic incidents occur has long been thought to be St.

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Michael’s Episcopal Church in Frog Lane, but this identification appears to be incorrect: St. Michael’s has no steeple, and allusions to it in this story and later tales make it clear that it is on a hill and that it is a Congregational church. In all likelihood, HPL was probably referring to one of two nowdestroyed Congregational churches in the city. The old cemetery on the hill is clearly Old Burial Hill, where many ancient graves are to be found.