The Dunwich Horror

The Dunwich Horror is a 1929 novella by American author H. P. Lovecraft. In the story, members of the Whateley family try to summon the extraterrestrial Old Ones to their small village in Massachusetts. The novella is considered to be one of the foundational works of the Lovecraft mythology. This guide is written using Quarto Publishing Group’s 2019 edition of The Complete Tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

Content Warning: The source material contains insensitive and outdated language around people with disabilities and people of color. In particular, the source text contains unscientific, inaccurate depictions of mental illness and treats sanity as a discrete state of mental being. This guide will replicate those depictions for the purpose of discussion.

Plot Summary

Wilbur Whateley lives in Dunwich, a small, rundown village in Massachusetts, with his grandfather, Old Whateley, and his mother, Lavinia. He does not know his father. Whateley is suspected of being in touch with dark forces, and his mother is ostracized from the community because she has a mental illness, a physical deformity, and albinism. Wilbur’s life has been subject to many strange occurrences, including an accelerated rate of maturation—at 10 years old, he looks like an adult man, and he eventually grows to over nine feet tall.