This week, it’s The Shunned House!
- Special thanks to reader Michael Holmes.
- See some photos of the real Shunned House on our Facebook page.
- Looks like Rhode Island’s dealing with yet another Great Gale right now!
- Wanna catch up on that French werewolf panic? More info here on Jacques Roulet, Jean Grenier and Gilles Garnier
- Also – GOULET!
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I never read the Shunned House until recently.
Back in the 80ies I used to GM for my mates the Call of Cthulhu role playing game.
To my annoyance John always played the soldier or gangster. Armed to the teeth with Tommy gun, dynamite and an Elephant gun for good measure. Spending the evening blowing the crap out of the plot I spent ages putting together.
I kept telling him this is not in the spirit Lovecraft’s stories , you should play a Professor, Doctor or Librarian, run away or faint when the monster appears.
How wrong I was, John you can have a flamethrower and all the dynamite you want, hang the plot
[...] that French werewolf panic? More info here on Jacques Roulet, Jean Grenier and Gilles Garnier [...] HPPodcraft.com – The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast Comments [...]
A little background on the Exeter vampire:
http://www.projo.com/news/content/mercy_brown_10-31-08_PPC48QU_v45.3e2e1ec.html
Lovecraft also took the name of the “elder maiden sister”, Mercy, from this -
One of my favorite haunted house stories – and giving a very creepy twist on vampires and were wolfs! I think this shows H.P. Lovecraft’s unique genius and out standing talent for finding new chills in well known tales.
…. the irony isnt that the protagonist investigates a horrible family – guess what im part of the family – its im appalled and horrified by my discoveries about said family – wow guess what im part of the family – hmmm actually that crazy stuff they’re doing is actually pretty cool, im going to join them.. thats the irony
I was a little disappointed to hear that you guys didn’t like this story, as I have to admit its one of my favorites. Perhaps its because I’m a history student, so the long-winded genealogical data doesn’t bother me – rather, it sounds like really interesting work! I’d love to research and investigate a property like this.
Also, the narrator’s ‘pseudo-scientific theory’ about the nature of the monster is, its true, not based on any solid evidence within the story. I’d argue, though, that the story never does actually confirm that this theory is correct – its just the narrator’s chosen interpretation. If anything, it seems more likely that his thinking at that point in the story is proven incorrect when the ether-radiation gun thing doesn’t work on the monster.
Besides, the theory itself is a very open-ended one, and is actually pretty non-committal. It basically is just saying “well, it’s probably not scientifically impossible for a ghost-like entity to exist in a state that we simply can’t or haven’t yet classified.” Him being correct on that idea – if he truly is – really isn’t terribly impressive.