Author : Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Release : 2021-03-05
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The Shunned House Illustrated - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Shunned House Illustrated write by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. This book was released on 2021-03-05. The Shunned House Illustrated available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The Shunned House is a novelette by H. P. Lovecraft, originally written in October 1924. Its first wide publication was in the October 1937 issue of Weird Tales. The story begins with its anonymous narrator describing a house on Benefit Street in Providence. The house had been built over 150 years beforehand, but for more than sixty years it had been shunned by the locals as an unusually large number of deaths had befallen its inhabitants. Its most unsettling feature is a cellar infested with a strange fungus; he mentions having been there as a child, and seeing a patch of dust seemingly in the shape of a human figure.Dr. Elihu Whipple - the narrator's uncle - spends years researching the house, and shows his notes to his nephew. Whipple's research covers the history of the house from its construction in 1763, when it was inhabited by a married couple named William Harris and Rhoby Dexter. The Harris family was beset by fatal illnesses; this was the beginning of a series of deaths which lasted up until 1861, after which the house was never rented.The various notes collected by Whipple include such uncanny incidents as treeroots and mould-patches in human shape, the theory that a vampire is buried beneath the house, a report of a half-visible presence and more. One recurring phenomenon in the house's history involves people going insane and babbling in French, despite not speaking the language previously.The narrator conducts his own research into the area. He finds that the land was leased to a Frenchman named Etienne Roulet in 1697, and that he shunned house stands on what was once the Roulet family's graveyard. Investigating further, he finds that Roulet was known for "reading queer books and drawing queer diagrams". He also speculates that Etienne Roulet may have been related to a sixteenth century man named Jacques Roulet, an alleged daemoniac who had apparently transformed into a wolf.The narrator and Elihu Whipple decide to confront the mysterious entity, and on June 25 1919 they arrive at the shunned house with a range of implements. They camp out in the cellar; Whipple falls asleep, and is troubled by nightmares.The narrator sees something seeping up out of the ground: "a vaporous corpse-light, yellow and diseased, which bubbled and lapped to a gigantic height in vague outlines half human and half monstrous". This entity envelopes Whipple, causing him to undergo a "nauseous liquefaction"; during his transformations, he takes on the aspects of various deceased Harris family members before finally melting away to nothing.The next day, having recovered from the shock of this experience, the narrator digs a hole in front of the fireplace and uncovers an object made from a jelly-like substance. He realises that this is actually the elbow of a vast subterranean entity and, appalled, floods the hole with acid. The resulting roar is blamed by the locals on a burst water main.