The Haunted World of H.P. Lovecraft's Providence

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on August 20, 1890, and died there on March 15, 1937. He was little known outside the pulp magazines when he died. Today he is one of the most influential horror writers in English, and his city has become a place of pilgrimage. Fans visit the houses, churches and graves he wrote about. Some say Lovecraft himself still walks there.

This page sets out the real places behind his fiction and what is actually on record about the ghost stories that have grown around them.

The City of Eldritch Dreams

Lovecraft loved Providence and wrote about it often. He walked its old streets at night and studied its colonial houses. In a letter he wrote the line now carved on his memorial stone, “I am Providence”.

The city appears under its own name in several of his stories, most fully in “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”, “The Shunned House” and “The Haunter of the Dark”. His invented town of Arkham is usually linked to Salem, Massachusetts, not Providence.

The Shunned House

The house at 135 Benefit Street was built around 1763. Lovecraft knew it well because his aunt, Lillian Clark, lived there in 1919 and 1920 as a companion to its owner, Mrs. H. C. Babbit. He wrote “The Shunned House” in October 1924, while living in Brooklyn. In the story, a thing buried under the cellar slowly drains the life of the families who live above it. It was first published in Weird Tales in October 1937, months after his death.

The story mixes real Providence history with invention. The deaths of the Harris family in the story come from Lovecraft’s imagination, built on old records of the house. The story’s account of a strange fungus and a damp cellar fits the real house, which stands on a slope above the street.

Ghost tours now include the house, and its haunted reputation grows mostly from the story itself. It is a private home. We found no dated report of anything strange there before the story made it famous.

Swan Point Cemetery

Lovecraft is buried in Swan Point Cemetery, on the east side of Providence. At first his name was added only to the Phillips family monument, alongside his parents. In 1977 fans paid for a headstone of his own. It carries his name, his dates and the words “I AM PROVIDENCE”.

Fans gather at the grave, especially around the anniversary of his death on March 15. Local lore and tour guides say a tall, thin figure has been seen there, and some visitors leave notes and gifts. We could not find any such sighting in a source with a named witness and a date. Earlier versions of this page quoted a 2015 visitor. We could not trace that quote and have removed it.

Federal Hill

“The Haunter of the Dark” was written in November 1935 and published in Weird Tales in December 1936. Its hero, Robert Blake, is a writer modelled on Lovecraft’s young friend Robert Bloch. From his study on College Hill, Blake watches a deserted church on Federal Hill. Inside he finds the relics of a cult, the Starry Wisdom, and wakes a being that cannot bear the light. During a storm the city’s power fails. Blake is later found dead, staring out of his window at the church, and the death is put down to a lightning strike.

The church in the story was based on St. John’s Roman Catholic Church on Atwells Avenue in Federal Hill. That church no longer stands. Its site is now St. John’s Park. Bloch later wrote a third story in the sequence, “The Shadow from the Steeple” (1950).

Tales of lights in the church windows and a winged shape around the steeple are clearly drawn from the story. We found no record of them as reports from real witnesses.

The John Hay Library

Brown University’s John Hay Library holds the H.P. Lovecraft Collection. It includes over 2,000 original letters and manuscripts and more than 1,000 books and magazines in 20 languages. Many of the papers were placed there a few months after his death, and more have come by gift and purchase since. It is the first stop for any serious study of his life.

Earlier versions of this page described books falling from shelves and a “reading room incident” in 2007. We found no source for any of it, and it has been removed.

Prospect Terrace

Prospect Terrace is a small park on College Hill with a wide view over downtown Providence. Lovecraft liked to look out over the city from spots like this, and fans visit it for that reason. The large statue of Roger Williams there was put up after his death.

Lovecraft’s Homes

Lovecraft was born in his family home at 454 Angell Street. After his Brooklyn years he lived with his aunts at 10 Barnes Street until 1933. His last home was 66 College Street, a house that has since been moved to nearby Prospect Street. He died at Jane Brown Memorial Hospital on March 15, 1937, about a month after being told he had cancer of the small intestine. All his homes are now private.

Why the Ghost Stories Grow

It is not hard to see why Providence has a Lovecraft ghost. He wrote about his own city as a place of hidden horror. He was tall and thin, with a long face, and is easy to picture in the dusk on Benefit Street. His fans are many and devoted, and they visit his sites at night and in October looking for atmosphere. Ghost tours sell that atmosphere.

Some paranormal writers suggest that his intense focus on the city stirred up something already there, or that so many readers imagining his horrors could give them some kind of life. These are ideas, not findings. The skeptical view is simpler. People who walk dark streets expecting a ghost will sometimes feel one, and a well-loved writer is an easy figure to see in the shadows.

Visiting Lovecraft’s Providence

The main sites are all within reach of the East Side. Swan Point Cemetery is open to visitors, and the grave is a short walk from the gates. The Shunned House at 135 Benefit Street can be seen from the street only. St. John’s Park on Atwells Avenue marks the site of the Federal Hill church. Prospect Terrace is open to all. The John Hay Library admits researchers to its reading room, and its collection pages list what it holds. Lovecraft’s homes at 454 Angell Street, 10 Barnes Street and 66 College Street are private.

The Cosmic Horror Continues

Lovecraft imagined ancient things under the streets of Providence and something watching from its windows. The city he described is still there, and much of it can still be walked. Whether anything of him walks it too is a question the record cannot answer. What it can say is that the houses, the church and the grave are real, and that the stories told about them began on his own pages.

Sources

• Wikipedia, “H. P. Lovecraft” (birth, death, homes, burial and the 1977 headstone)
• Wikipedia, “The Shunned House” (writing, publication, 135 Benefit Street, Lillian Clark)
• Wikipedia, “The Haunter of the Dark” (writing, publication, plot, Robert Bloch)
• Brown University Library, H.P. Lovecraft Collection
• H. P. Lovecraft Archive, “The Deserted Church” (St. John’s Church, Atwells Avenue)