Description
Lovecraft locates Dunwich in "north central Massachusetts", found by travellers "tak the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners." Aylesbury and Dean's Corners are both Lovecraft creations, neither of which appears in any other of his stories, though Aylesbury is mentioned in his poem sequence Fungi From Yuggoth and the Aylesbury Turnpike is mentioned in The Lurker at the Threshold.
"The Dunwich Horror" describes the region around Dunwich as "a lonely and curious country," broken up with "ravines of problematical depth" and "stretches of marshland that one instinctively dislikes". There is dense natural growth and abundant wildlife such as whippoorwills, fireflies and bullfrogs, though "the planted fields appear singularly few and barren." The "sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation," while the "gnarled, solitary" inhabitants are "silent and furtive".
Lovecraft describes the village of Dunwich itself:
- Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region. It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.
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