Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Shunned House

Welcome back to another Blind Read!  This time we’re delving into a wonderfully classic haunted house story, with a Lovecraftian twist.

This is the story of the Shunned House, and Lovecraft finds yet another way to tell a story in a unique way.  We know of the narrator’s experience there.  Lovecraft tells that up front.  A young man who is scared terribly by something that he cannot explain.

Then we delve into the history of the house, to try to garner a better explanation of what actually happened there.  The reasoning jumps around from spirits, to demons, to vampires, to werewolves.  Each person who had some kind of supernatural experience in the Shunned House have experienced something different.

The story gives some wonderfully Gothic imagery.  I had a vivid image of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” in both visceral description, as well as tonality.  We find a house with a history and delve into something altogether different than we possibly expected.  Poe’s story is a Gothic tragedy, but Lovecraft’s is wonderfully cosmic.

Then the story evolves.  It becomes much more like Richard Matheson’s “Hell House”, where we have a scientific study, instead of a supernatural study (Hell House is one of the singularly most terrifying stories I’ve ever read, just so you know).

“We were not, as I have said, in any sense childishly superstitious, but scientific study and reflection had taught us that the known universe of three dimensions embraces the merest fraction of the whole cosmos of substance and energy.” pp 128 “At The Mountains of Madness” Dey Rey 1982.

There is so much going on in this sentence.  First, we know that the narrator and his uncle are not walking into anything with a superstitious bend.  They intend on using facts to find the truth of the mystery of the Shunned House.  However, they recognize that science has it’s limitations and the answer that they are looking for could potentially be beyond the walls of our known dimensional world.

Then we get down into the house and discover that the story has evolved again.  Now we come to the realization that we are in a Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  The narrator talks about the “fungus ridden earth” and how there is a green and yellow phosphorescent glow.  Thus far in my blind reads I have found that this is the most consistently mentioned precursor to a cosmic horror.  This green and yellow light shows that a cosmic creature is around.  Immediately it becomes less about a ghost story, and into a completely different area.

Then we come upon the most horrible section (or should I say beautifully horrible?) of any Lovecraft story I have read thus far.  The phosphorescent pile is actually part of a creature that is sucking the life force out of the humans it comes into contact with.  This is the reasoning for the vampire and werewolf descriptions.  The creature is taking on horrible visages of other creatures to both feed and to incapacitate its victims.  It was suddenly at this point that I realized this could very well be Stephen King’s inspiration for “IT”.  A cosmic alien who shows people what they fear and eats their life force.

This is without a doubt one of my favorite stories I’ve read thus far.  I think only “In the Walls of Eryx” comes close to this one.  It’s a bit longer than most of the stories, but it’s succinct, and it changes what you think it’ll be multiple times throughout the exposition.  I think if I were to recommend any one story to someone looking to get into Lovecraft I would tell them to start on this story.

What do you think?