My First Lovecraft
What I heard in my youth about the shunned house was merely that people died there in alarmingly great numbers. That, I was told, was why the original owners had moved out some twenty years after building the place. It was plainly unhealthy, perhaps because of the dampness and fungous growth in the cellar, the general sickish smell, the draughts of the hallways, or the quality of the well and pump water. These things were bad enough, and these were all that gained belief among the persons whom I knew. Only the notebooks of my antiquarian uncle, Dr. Elihu Whipple, revealed to me at length the darker, vaguer surmises which formed an undercurrent of folklore among old-time servants and humble folk; surmises which never travelled far, and which were largely forgotten when Providence grew to be a metropolis with a shifting modern population.
-from the story
This is the first time I read a book by Lovecraft. I love horror stories, but I will admit my tastes run more along the lines of Stephen King and not the classic writers. But, once again the Serial Reader app encouraged me to read a new type of book.
The story was good and mildly creepy. I think there was too much other information in there for it to be intensely scary. Maybe the line was different back in the day. It didn't take as much to scare people.
The scene in the basement was creepy, I will admit, but it was such a small part of the story. It was a quick read, only 4 issues compared with 23 for War of the Worlds.
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