The Strange High House in the Mist

"The Strange High House in the Mist"
Author	H.P. Lovecraft
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Published in	Weird Tales
Publication date	October 1931

"The Strange High House in the Mist" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written on November 9, 1926, it was first published in the October 1931 issue of Weird Tales.

Inspiration

An H. P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia suggests that the story may have been inspired by Lord Dunsany's Chronicles of Rodriguez, in which strange sights can be seen from a wizard's house on a crag.^[1]

One model for the setting was Mother Ann, a headland near Gloucester, Massachusetts.^[2]

Plot summary

Thomas Olney, a "philosopher" visiting the town of Kingsport, Massachusetts with his family, is intrigued by a strange house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It is unaccountably high and old and the locals have a generations-long dread of the place which no one is known to have visited. With great difficulty, Olney climbs the crag, approaches the house, and meets the mysterious man who lives there. The only door opens directly onto a sheer cliff, giving access only to mist and "the abyss". The transmittal of archaic lore and a life-altering encounter with the supernatural ensue, as Olney is not the only visitor that day. He returns to Kingsport the next day, but seems to have left his spirit behind in the strange, remote dwelling.

Connections

Kingsport, which is mentioned in several Lovecraft stories, first appeared in "The Terrible Old Man" (1920). The title character of that story makes an appearance in "The Strange High House in the Mist" as well, as the Old Man mentions that the House had been on the cliff even when his grandfather was a boy, which the main character comments "must be immeasurable ages ago".

The story makes reference to the Celtic god Nodens, who also appears in The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. This entity was later incorporated into the Cthulhu Mythos by August Derleth as the leader of the Elder Gods. In the same passage in "The Strange High House", Lovecraft also mentions the arrival of the god Neptune, but that Roman deity has not similarly been adopted by Lovecraftian writers.

Critical reaction

The story was originally rejected by Weird Tales when submitted in July 1927. In 1929, Lovecraft agreed to let W. Paul Cook publish it in the second issue of The Recluse, but when it became clear that that issue would never appear, he resubmitted it to Weird Tales, which accepted it, paying him $55.^[1] Joanna Russ described "The Strange High House in the Mist" as "pleasing", ^[3] and Robert A. W. Lowndes called "The Strange High House in the Mist" one of Lovecraft's "best short stories". ^[4]

References

1 2 Joshi and Schultz, p. 253.
↑ H. P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters Vol. 3, p. 433; cited in Joshi and Schultz, p. 253.
↑ Joanna Russ, "Lovecraft, H(oward) P(hilips), in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers by Curtis C. Smith. St. James Press, 1986, ISBN 0-912289-27-9 (p.461-3).
↑ Robert A. W. Lowndes, Letter, "The Eyrie", Weird Tales, Summer 1991. (p.9)

External links

Works related to The Strange High House in the Mist at Wikisource
Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley public domain audiobook at LibriVox

Works by H. P. Lovecraft

Cthulhu Mythos Dream Cycle

Novellas	The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath The Case of Charles Dexter Ward The Whisperer in Darkness At the Mountains of Madness The Shadow over Innsmouth The Shadow Out of Time

Short stories	"The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"

Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" "The Curse of Yig" "The Mound" "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A’the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx" "The Thing in the Moonlight"

Juvenilia	"The Mystery of the Grave-Yard" "The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist"

Poetry	Fungi from Yuggoth

Essays	"Supernatural Horror in Literature" To Quebec and the Stars The Cancer of Superstition Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

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