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The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales
The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales
The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales
Audiobook7 hours

The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales

Written by H. P. Lovecraft

Narrated by B. J. Harrison

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." (H.P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature")

Wilbur Whately has got to be one of the most horrifying characters in literature. Why is he eight feet tall at age 15 and can grow a full beard? Is it because of his controversial parentage? Or is his arrival merely a precedent for the arrival of an ancient evil?

In The Dunwich Horror, Lovecraft lays further ground in the Cthulu mythos. Alongside The Dunwich Horror are the stories "Dagon", "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Lurking Fear", "Imprisoned with the Pharoahs", "The Music of Erich Zann", "Randolph Carter", "In the Walls of Eryx", and "The Transition of Juan Romero".
LanguageEnglish
PublisherB.J. Harrison
Release dateSep 29, 2014
ISBN9781937091255
The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales
Author

H. P. Lovecraft

Renowned as one of the great horror-writers of all time, H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 and lived most of his life in Providence, Rhode Island. Among his many classic horror stories, many of which were published in book form only after his death in 1937, are ‘At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels of Terror’ (1964), ‘Dagon and Other Macabre Tales’ (1965), and ‘The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions’ (1970).

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Reviews for The Dunwich Horror and Other Tales

Rating: 3.697080291970803 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

137 ratings8 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a really enjoyable graphic novel to break up my work day with. A very fast read. This is actually two stories The Dunwich Horror and The Hound. The first story was the stronger of the two for me but only because the second story was practically impossible to read. The script font they selected was really small and the scratchy to imply a hand written account, which looked really cool but the reality was that I had to guess on a number of words since I couldn't truly read all of them. Overall though it is a nice addition to the lovecraftian collected works.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I don't like sequels or re-imaginings very much but Joe Lansdale does tell a good story and treats the material with the respect a fan would demand. Peter Bergting did what he could to illustrate a monster that Lovecraft meant to be indescribable. I grumbled at Menton3's turning the text into calligraphy but I came to appreciate it. His work did elevate this bloody pulp thriller into a fine piece of Gothic art.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The story of the outcast Whateley family, which suddenly gains a new member when somehow the grossest Whateley, Lavinia, has a baby boy. Wilbur grows at four times the speed of a normal baby, growing huge, learning to read and write and study the dark arts. He quickly becomes a huge, devious and threatening man who stalks the libraries of universities trying to get his hands on restricted ancient materials.Creepy, tense, weird, and with a team of hero librarians!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This anthology of seven eerie, suspenseful tales by the legendary H.P. Lovecraft includes three that involve his famous mythology of the Ancient Ones—especially the monstrous entity, Yog-Sothoth—as well as the grimoire of black magic known as the Necronomicon. “In the Vault” – After finding himself locked in a tomb, an unsavory and cantankerous undertaker successfully escapes by stacking six occupied coffins to create a platform, allowing him to reach a small opening above the door. However, just before crawling free, his leg punches through the lid of the top coffin, leaving him with wounds that were not merely inflicted by jagged wood…“Pickman’s Model” – An artist of the macabre develops a new and startlingly realistic style when he begins painting demonic figures too grotesque to be displayed in public… but where did he find this latest inspiration?“The Rats in the Walls” – After restoring the cursed, ruined estate of his ancestors, a young man begins hearing rats scurrying in the walls. An exploration of the cellar reveals an opening to a large chamber, the contents of which reveal the true and terrible history of the property.“The Music of Erich Zann” – Each night, on the top floor of an apartment building, an elderly violinist plays a haunting, otherworldly melody… and receives a response from somewhere beyond our dimension.“The Haunter of the Dark” – Robert Blake takes an unhealthy interest in the ruins of a long-abandoned Gothic church whose distant spires are visible from his apartment window. After venturing across town, Blake learns that local residents fear the church and do not speak of it. Undaunted, Blake presses on and finds a way inside. While exploring the ruins, he encounters an artifact that offers him frightening visions of the Ancient Ones—one of which is soon unleashed.“The Dunwich Horror” – In the isolated, backwoods village of Dunwich, Massachusetts, the primitive Whateley family welcomes a grandson named Wilbur, born of Lavinia and an unnamed father who is believed to be the entity known as Yog-Sototh. Other villagers become fearful of Wilbur’s rapid physical development and inhuman countenance—not to mention the strange growling and rumbling from the surrounding hills that began after his birth. Following Lavinia's unexplained death, Wilbur and his grandfather begin boarding up the windows of their home as if to imprison something inside. After the deaths of Old Man Whateley, then of Wilbur, the invisible creature bursts from its confinement to wreak havoc on the village. Three professors from nearby Miskatonic University undertake a mission to destroy the creature using the Necronomicon, the grimoire of black magic that initially spawned the beast.“The Thing on the Doorstep” – Edward Derby, an intelligent, but weak-willed young man with an interest in the macabre, marries a homely, eccentric woman named Asenath who is reputed to have a beguiling affect on others. It is claimed by some that once captured by her stare, they found themselves gazing upon their own bodies through Asenath’s eyes. It isn’t long before Derby undergoes a bizarre and dangerous change of demeanor…
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really was perfectly content with the idea that I would never get around to reading any Lovecraft. Of course he's a legend, but the book descriptions never really did anything for me, and then there is that he was known to be pretty racist -- both in his opinions privately and sometimes in his books.But then I was browsing Eighth Day Books on a recent trip to Kansas, and this book was displayed face out. And I just fell in love with the cover. I was still resisting until I turned it over and saw that it was published by Melville House. FINE. I bought it.There was something almost familiar about this story, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising given how massively influential Lovecraft was. There was something also of a charming old-fashioned feel to the story -- particularly in its characterizations of the setting. And in the end, really, how can you argue with a book in which the entire known world is saved by librarians?Enjoyable, but I probably won't be reading any more Lovecraft any time soon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Read on Serial ReaderI enjoyed this more than other Lovecraft stories I have read recently. Though "the horror" itself was not that well done, I found the horrors of the townspeople desperately locking themselves and their livestock in at night to be very real. Also, the mocking they endured from the local town when they reported problems--after being looked down on for years/decades because something was "off".Though I don't much enjoy Lovecraft (I really prefer Poe), I do think his work would be great for middle schoolers. The reading level is fine, and I think they are young enough to find his ideas extra creepy. Kind of how Poe gave me nightmares at that age.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I haven't read a lot of Lovecraft, but I've read some that was pretty good -- Rats in the Walls, Colour out of Space and some others -- so I was surpised to find that The Dunwich Horror, which is by repute one of his most canonical titles, is such a mess.The exposition is diffuse and clumsy. Then the 'horror' part is glacially paced, with many incidents telegraphed; is simply SODDEN with bizarrely spelt New England hillbilly dialect; and although it has its moments (e.g. the description of Wilbur's corpse) it actually gets worse as it goes along so that as the end approaches it's painful to read. I hear he was paid by the word, so I guess he needed to pay the phone bill or something.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    this may be the best collection of lovecraft's short stories ever put together. a lazy undertaker locks himself in his crypt he uses as a storage house to keep the bodies and caskets for buriel. He figures out he can get through the window high over the door, but how to get there. Ah! He stacks the coffins on top of each other in a pyramid-step structure, then climbs it and works his way out. Just as he is ready to go out, the top coffin crashes and he feels great pain in his ankles. "In the Crypt") -- title piece "The Dunwich Horror" bears little resemblance to the movie made of it. Rather, this story is much more frightening.. Lovecraft simply is the master of the hoirror short story. Neither Poe, King, or Koontz can come close as consistently as lovecraft does in spiking the adrenalin into the blood stream and making you sleep with the lights on at night. Poe's the closest with the "Fall of the House of Usher," but that's tame compared to Lovecraft.