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Content Warning: The source material contains insensitive and outdated language around people with disabilities and people of color.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. Additionally, he emits an inexplicable and foul odor. The entire Whateley family is pushed to the fringes of the community, and animals are scared or aggressive toward the prematurely aged and hideous Wilbur.

Suspicion from the people of Dunwich surrounds Old Whateley, Wilbur’s grandfather. He is obsessed with dark magic, studying witchcraft and rituals and teaching spells to Wilbur. The distrust of the townspeople only grows as Old Whateley purchases a large number of cattle but never increases the size of the herd, and several of the cows fall victim to strange, brutal injuries.

The townspeople do not know that Wilbur and his grandfather are harboring a secret. They have hidden a being in their home, something known to be associated with Yog-Sothoth, an old and mysterious extraterrestrial power and Wilbur’s actual father. The being grows in size each year until it becomes monstrous and nearly uncontrollable. Wilbur and his grandfather must constantly renovate their home to make space for the being. At the same time, the townspeople worry about a spate of disappearing cattle. When Old Whateley dies, Lavinia vanishes a short time later. At this point, the being is so large that it takes up the entire inside of the Whateley home.

Wilbur continues his grandfather’s study of magic. He goes to the town of Arkham to visit Miskatonic University, hoping to find a copy of The Necronomicon, or The Book of the Dead, and use it to summon an assortment of extraterrestrial beings known as the Old Ones. Old Whateley possessed a copy of The Necronomicon, but his copy is missing important pages. Wilbur has tried to summon the Old Ones but cannot open the door to their world.

Dr. Henry Armitage is the librarian at the Miskatonic University library. He refuses to give Wilbur a copy of The Necronomicon and warns other libraries that Wilbur may be trying to perform nefarious spells. Foiled by Armitage, Wilbur decides to break into the library. A guard dog is driven into a murderous rage by Wilbur’s terrible odor and kills him. Wilbur’s body is found by Armitage and his colleagues, Francis Morgan and Warren Rice, and it dissolves before their eyes.

Back in Dunwich, the being in the Whateley farmhouse continues to grow, becoming so large that it can no longer be contained. The farmhouse bursts apart, unleashing the giant, invisible being. The being goes on a rampage through the village, leaving behind giant footprints. For days, the people of Dunwich are terrorized. Two families and a number of policemen are killed.

The being is only stopped when Armitage, Morgan, and Rice come to Dunwich. They have studied the requisite texts and know to use a magic powder to make the being visible. When they throw this powder over the being, they briefly see its true horrific form. This glimpse is enough to mentally destroy one of the men. The being speaks in a strange language and then unleashes a guttural scream. In English, it calls to its father, Yog-Sothoth, for help. Then Armitage and his colleagues use magic spells to destroy the being. The being disappears, leaving behind a giant patch of scorched earth. In the middle of this scorched earth is Wilbur Whateley’s twin brother, though this twin much more closely resembles his father.