The Horror in the Burying-Ground E-Book

H. P. Lovecraft

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In the small and superstitious town of Stillwater, a local undertaker named Henry Thorndike takes excessive pride in his embalming methods. When a man named Tom Sprague dies under suspicious circumstances, unsettling events begin to unfold around his funeral. The horror escalates when whispers arise that someone might have been buried alive — and something (or someone) might be trying to dig their way out…

Leseprobe

The Horror in the Burying-Ground

H. P. Lovecraft for Hazel Heald

SYNOPSIS

In the small and superstitious town of Stillwater, a local undertaker named Henry Thorndike takes excessive pride in his embalming methods. When a man named Tom Sprague dies under suspicious circumstances, unsettling events begin to unfold around his funeral. The horror escalates when whispers arise that someone might have been buried alive — and something (or someone) might be trying to dig their way out…

Keywords

Supernatural, Suspicion, Crazy science

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

The Horror in the Burying-Ground

When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travelers are forced to take the Stillwater road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb in places, yet somehow the route has been unpopular for years. There is something depressing about it, especially near Stillwater itself. Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about the tightly shuttered farmhouse on the knoll just north of the village, and about the white-bearded half-wit who haunts the old burying-ground on the south, apparently talking to the occupants of some of the graves.

Not much is left of Stillwater, now. The soil is played out, and most of the people have drifted to the towns across the distant river or to the city beyond the distant hills. The steeple of the old white church has fallen down, and half of the twenty-odd straggling houses are empty and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Peck’s general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop now and then to ask about the shuttered house and the idiot who mutters to the dead.

Most of the questioners come away with a touch of distaste and disquiet. They find the shabby loungers oddly unpleasant and full of unnamed hints in speaking of the long-past events brought up. There is a menacing, portentous quality in the tones which they use to describe very ordinary events—a seemingly unjustified tendency to assume a furtive, suggestive, confidential air, and to fall into awesome whispers at certain points—which insidiously disturbs the listener. Old Yankees often talk like that; but in this case the melancholy aspect of the half-moldering village, and the dismal nature of the story unfolded, give these gloomy, secretive mannerisms an added significance. One feels profoundly the quintessential horror that lurks behind the isolated Puritan and his strange repressions—feels it, and longs to escape precipitately into clearer air.