The Shunned House

A little about the story

In Providence, a narrator becomes fascinated by an old Benefit Street house and the accounts of ill health and death associated with it. He draws on family history and on stories handed down in the neighborhood, yet the different pieces of evidence keep resisting an easy explanation. His investigation eventually requires a closer look at the part of the building people have been most reluctant to enter.

Lovecraft gives the house a history that is more unnerving for having been told in scraps. The geography of Providence helps the opening feel documentary, and the slow accumulation of details gives the supernatural questions unusual weight. The tale is brief, but it asks readers to inhabit the narrator’s growing uncertainty about whether knowledge will make the place safer.

Things You May Not Know About The Shunned House

• Providence gives the story an address. Benefit Street and its nearby landmarks anchor the fiction in a place Lovecraft knew well.
• Poe appears in the opening. An account of Poe’s visits to Providence connects the street to an older literary history before the narrator turns to the house.
• The cellar matters. The darkness under the building becomes increasingly important as the investigation moves from old reports to direct observation.
• A posthumous magazine presentation. The source includes period editorial material that introduces the story and discusses Lovecraft after his death.
• A note on the edition. The transcriber identifies the magazine source and explains the treatment of minor spelling and punctuation errors.