Summary
Summary of The Shunned House
Key ideas
Key idea 1
A lifelong curiosity becomes an investigation
A man has been curious since boyhood about a house on a steep hillside street in Providence. People have sickened and died there for generations, and its reputation has never stopped drawing his attention. With his uncle, an elderly doctor, he decides to find out why.
Their tools are old deeds, family records, local gossip and direct observation. The investigation gives the ghost story the shape of a case file: names and dates gradually gather into evidence, while dread grows behind them.
Key idea 2
An ordinary house carries troubling signs
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Key idea 3
Whipple turns rumor into evidence
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Key idea 4
Illness follows household after household
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Key idea 5
The land holds an earlier history
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Key idea 6
The cellar gives fear a shape
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Key idea 7
The past remains alive in place
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Key idea 8
Trusted facts become sources of dread
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love atmospheric horror, old houses, and mysteries solved from records and rumor. It also makes a good first taste of Lovecraft.
What this book is
The Shunned House is a short horror story by H. P. Lovecraft. He wrote it in 1924, and it first appeared in the magazine Weird Tales in 1928. It is set in Providence, Rhode Island, the city where Lovecraft lived nearly all his life, and it uses real streets and the real feel of an old New England town.
The story is told by a man who has been curious since boyhood about one house on a steep hillside street. People have sickened and died there for generations. With his uncle, an elderly doctor, he sets out to learn why, using old deeds, family records, local gossip and plain observation. What you get is a ghost story that reads like a case file, with a cold and growing dread behind the dates and names. Let us begin where the narrator does, with the house itself and its bad name.
In this summary
- 1A house the whole street avoidsFree
- 2An old doctor gathers the evidence
- 3Tenant after tenant sickens and fades
- 4The past reaches back to a French family
- 5The cellar offers its own strange clues
- 6What the story is really about, and how it is told
Key point 1 of 6
A house the whole street avoids
The story opens with a warning that the most terrible things can hide in ordinary places. The narrator describes an old house on a slope in the Providence hill district, standing close to the street on a steep bank. Its yard is untidy, and its front is shadowed and sagging. Neighbors have long said it is unhealthy, and few people want to live near it.
The house has an odd look that the narrator cannot quite explain. Weeds grow too pale there, and strange growths cling to the ground around it. Even the trees seem stunted. Because the place is so ordinary at first glance, its bad reputation feels all the more disturbing.
As a boy, the narrator was drawn to it, and the pull never left him. He heard talk from older people and picked up half stories about illness and early death. Children dared one another to go near it. He tells us this so we understand that his interest is not a sudden whim but a lifelong habit of the mind.
He is also careful to say that he is no believer in idle superstition. He wants facts, and he wants a cause. This sets the tone for everything that follows. The horror will come not from a screaming ghost but from the slow gathering of evidence, and the first person who shares his taste for evidence is his uncle.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
How does Whipple test the stories about the house?
Right. “He checks deeds, wills, church records and the memories of old residents against each other.”Not quite. “He checks deeds, wills, church records and the memories of old residents against each other.”
Why does the investigation turn toward the Roulet family?
Right. “A family of French Protestant refugees, named Roulet, once lived on or near the site.”Not quite. “A family of French Protestant refugees, named Roulet, once lived on or near the site.”
What possibility does Whipple consider beyond an ordinary ghost?
Right. “He wonders whether some form of existence might lie outside what ordinary biology and physics can explain, something that feeds on living beings and stays fixed to a place.”Not quite. “He wonders whether some form of existence might lie outside what ordinary biology and physics can explain, something that feeds on living beings and stays fixed to a place.”
Who’s who
- The narrator
- A Providence man fascinated by the avoided building since boyhood, he joins his uncle in investigating its history.
- Dr. Elihu Whipple
- The narrator's uncle is a retired physician and local historian who has spent years studying the building's troubling past.
- The Harris family
- The family who built the dwelling suffered repeated illnesses there, leaving troubling records for Whipple and his nephew.
- The Roulet family
- These French Protestant refugees once occupied the land, and their strange reputation interests Whipple and his nephew.
- The tenants and servants
- Successive residents and workers suffer mysterious weakness, providing further evidence for the narrator and his uncle.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 11,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 45 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about The Shunned House
What is The Shunned House about?
It is about a narrator and his uncle, a doctor, who investigate an old house in Providence where people have sickened and died for generations. They use records, family history and a night watch in the cellar to find the cause.
Is The Shunned House based on a true story?
The tale is fiction, but it uses real Providence settings and local folklore. Lovecraft wrote it in 1924 after walking through the old part of the city, and it appeared in Weird Tales in 1928.
Who are the Harris and Roulet families in The Shunned House?
The Harrises built the house around 1763 and suffered many deaths there. The Roulets were French Protestant refugees whose family history is tied to the ground under it, and the investigators trace their story.
Is The Shunned House hard to read?
It is fairly easy. The plot is clear and the story is short enough to finish in one sitting.
Is The Shunned House a good place to start with Lovecraft?
Yes, many readers find it a good start. It has a haunted house, a mystery solved from records and a slow build of dread, and it shows his style without needing knowledge of his other tales.
