The Picture in the House by H.P. Lovecraft
The Picture in the House
by H.P. Lovecraft
Written 12 December 1920? 
Published July 1919 in The National Amateur, Vol. 41, No. 6, p. 246-49. 
Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of 
Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the 
moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps 
beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and 
the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister 
monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true epicure in the terrible, to whom 
a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the chief end and justification of 
existence, esteems most of all the ancient, lonely farmhouses of backwoods New 
England; for there the dark elements of strength, solitude, grotesqueness and 
ignorance combine to form the perfection of the hideous. 
Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses remote from 
travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp grassy slope or leaning against 
some gigantic outcropping of rock. Two hundred years and more they have leaned 
or squatted there, while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and 
spread. They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and guardian 
shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still stare shockingly, as if 
blinking through a lethal stupor which wards off madness by dulling the memory 
of unutterable things. 
In such houses have dwelt generations of strange people, whose like the world 
has never seen. Seized with a gloomy and fanatical belief which exiled them from 
their kind, their ancestors sought the wilderness for freedom. There the scions 
of a conquering race indeed flourished free from the restrictions of their 
fellows, but cowered in an appalling slavery to the dismal phantasms of their 
own minds. Divorced from the enlightenment of civilization, the strength of 
these Puritans turned into singular channels; and in their isolation, morbid 
self-repression, and struggle for life with relentless Nature, there came to 
them dark furtive traits from the prehistoric depths of their cold Northern 
heritage. By necessity practical and by philosophy stern, these folks were not 
beautiful in their sins. Erring as all mortals must, they were forced by their 
rigid code to seek concealment above all else; so that they came to use less and 
less taste in what they concealed. Only the silent, sleepy, staring houses in 
the backwoods can tell all that has lain hidden since the early days, and they 
are not communicative, being loath to shake off the drowsiness which helps them 
forget. Sometimes one feels that it would be merciful to tear down these houses, 
for they must often dream. 
It was to a time-battered edifice of this description that I was driven one 
afternoon in November, 1896, by a rain of such chilling copiousness that any 
shelter was preferable to exposure. I had been travelling for some time amongst 
the people of the Miskatonic Valley in quest of certain genealogical data; and 
from the remote, devious, and problematical nature of my course, had deemed it 
convenient to employ a bicycle despite the lateness of the season. Now I found 
myself upon an apparently abandoned road which I had chosen as the shortest cut 
to Arkham, overtaken by the storm at a point far from any town, and confronted 
with no refuge save the antique and repellent wooden building which blinked with 
bleared windows from between two huge leafless elms near the foot of a rocky 
hill. Distant though it is from the remnant of a road, this house none the less 
impressed me unfavorably the very moment I espied it. Honest, wholesome 
structures do not stare at travellers so slyly and hauntingly, and in my 
genealogical researches I had encountered legends of a century before which 
biased me against places of this kind. Yet the force of the elements was such as 
to overcome my scruples, and I did not hesitate to wheel my machine up the weedy 
rise to the closed door which seemed at once so suggestive and secretive. 
I had somehow taken it for granted that the house was abandoned, yet as I 
approached it I was not so sure, for though the walks were indeed overgrown with 
weeds, they seemed to retain their nature a little tco well to argue complete 
desertion. Therefore instead of trying the dcor I knocked, feeling as I did so a 
trepidation I could scarcely explain. As I waited on the rough, mossy rock which 
served as a dcor-step, I glanced at the neighboring windows and the panes of the 
transom above me, and noticed that although old, rattling, and almost opaque 
with dirt, they were not broken. The building, then, must still be inhabited, 
despite its isolation and general neglect. However, my rapping evoked no 
response, so after repeating the summons I tried the rusty latch and found the 
door unfastened. Inside was a little vestibule with walls from which the plaster 
was falling, and through the doorway came a faint but peculiarly hateful odor. I 
entered, carrying my bicycle, and closed the door behind me. Ahead rose a narrow 
staircase, flanked by a small door probably leading to the cellar, while to the 
left and right were closed doors leading to rooms on the ground floor. 
Leaning my cycle against the wall I opened the door at the left, and crossed 
into a small low-ceiled chamber but dimly lighted by its two dusty windows and 
furnished in the barest and most primitive possible way. It appeared to be a 
kind of sitting-room, for it had a table and several chairs, and an immense 
fireplace above which ticked an antique clock on a mantel. Books and papers were 
very few, and in the prevailing gloom I could not readily discern the titles. 
What interested me was the uniform air of archaism as displayed in every visible 
detail. Most of the houses in this region I had found rich in relics of the 
past, but here the antiquity was curiously complete; for in all the room I could 
not discover a single article of definitely post-revolutionary date. Had the 
furnishings been less humble, the place would have been a collector's paradise. 
As I surveyed this quaint apartment, I felt an increase in that aversion first 
excited by the bleak exterior of the house. Just what it was that I feared or 
loathed, I could by no means define; but something in the whole atmosphere 
seemed redolent of unhallowed age, of unpleasant crudeness, and of secrets which 
should be forgotten. I felt disinclined to sit down, and wandered about 
examining the various articles which I had noticed. The first object of my 
curiosity was a book of medium size lying upon the table and presenting such an 
antediluvian aspect that I marvelled at beholding it outside a museum or 
library. It was bound in leather with metal fittings, and was in an excellent 
state of preservation; being altogether an unusual sort of volume to encounter 
in an abode so lowly. When I opened it to the title page my wonder grew even 
greater, for it proved to be nothing less rare than Pigafetta's account of the 
Congo region, written in Latin from the notes of the sailor Lopex and printed at 
Frankfurt in 1598. I had often heard of this work, with its curious 
illustrations by the brothers De Bry, hence for a moment forgot my uneasiness in 
my desire to turn the pages before me. The engravings were indeed interesting, 
drawn wholly from imagination and careless descriptions, and represented negroes 
with white skins and Caucasian features; nor would I soon have closed the book 
had not an exceedingly trivial circumstance upset my tired nerves and revived my 
sensation of disquiet. What annoyed me was merely the persistent way in which 
the volume tended to fall open of itself at Plate XII, which represented in 
gruesome detail a butcher's shop of the cannibal Anziques. I experienced some 
shame at my susceptibility to so slight a thing, but the drawing nevertheless 
disturbed me, especially in connection with some adjacent passages descriptive 
of Anzique gastronomy. 
I had turned to a neighboring shelf and was examining its meagre literary 
contents - an eighteenth century Bible, a "Pilgrim's Progress" of like period, 
illustrated with grotesque woodcuts and printed by the almanack-maker Isaiah 
Thomas, the rotting bulk of Cotton Mather's "Magnalia Christi Americana," and a 
few other books of evidently equal age - when my attention was aroused by the 
unmistakable sound of walking in the room overhead. At first astonished and 
startled, considering the lack of response to my recent knocking at the door, I 
immediately afterward concluded that the walker had just awakened from a sound 
sleep, and listened with less surprise as the footsteps sounded on the creaking 
stairs. The tread was heavy, yet seemed to contain a curious quality of 
cautiousness; a quality which I disliked the more because the tread was heavy. 
When I had entered the room I had shut the door behind me. Now, after a moment 
of silence during which the walker may have been inspecting my bicycle in the 
hall, I heard a fumbling at the latch and saw the paneled portal swing open 
again. 
In the doorway stood a person of such singular appearance that I should have 
exclaimed aloud but for the restraints of good breeding. Old, white-bearded, and 
ragged, my host possessed a countenance and physique which inspired equal wonder 
and respect. His height could not have been less than six feet, and despite a 
general air of age and poverty he was stout and powerful in proportion. His 
face, almost hidden by a long beard which grew high on the cheeks, seemed 
abnormally ruddy and less wrinkled than one might expect; while over a high 
forehead fell a shock of white hair little thinned by the years. His blue eyes, 
though a trifle bloodshot, seemed inexplicably keen and burning. But for his 
horrible unkemptness the man would have been as distinguished-looking as he was 
impressive. This unkemptness, however, made him offensive despite his face and 
figure. Of what his clothing consisted I could hardly tell, for it seemed to me 
no more than a mass of tatters surmounting a pair of high, heavy boots; and his 
lack of cleanliness surpassed description. 
The appearance of this man, and the instinctive fear he inspired, prepared me 
for something like enmity; so that I almost shuddered through surprise and a 
sense of uncanny incongruity when he motioned me to a chair and addressed me in 
a thin, weak voice full of fawning respect and ingratiating hospitality. His 
speech was very curious, an extreme form of Yankee dialect I had thought long 
extinct; and I studied it closely as he sat down opposite me for conversation. 
"Ketched in the rain, be ye?" he greeted. "Glad ye was nigh the haouse en' hed 
the sense ta come right in. I calc'late I was alseep, else I'd a heerd ye-I 
ain't as young as I uster be, an' I need a paowerful sight o' naps naowadays. 
Trav'lin fur? I hain't seed many folks 'long this rud sence they tuk off the 
Arkham stage." 
I replied that I was going to Arkham, and apologized for my rude entry into his 
domicile, whereupon he continued. 
"Glad ta see ye, young Sir - new faces is scurce arount here, an' I hain't got 
much ta cheer me up these days. Guess yew hail from Bosting, don't ye? I never 
ben thar, but I kin tell a taown man when I see 'im - we hed one fer deestrick 
schoolmaster in 'eighty-four, but he quit suddent an' no one never heerd on 'im 
sence - " here the old man lapsed into a kind of chuckle, and made no 
explanation when I questioned him. He seemed to be in an aboundingly good humor, 
yet to possess those eccentricities which one might guess from his grooming. For 
some time he rambled on with an almost feverish geniality, when it struck me to 
ask him how he came by so rare a book as Pigafetta's "Regnum Congo." The effect 
of this volume had not left me, and I felt a certain hesitancy in speaking of 
it, but curiosity overmastered all the vague fears which had steadily 
accumulated since my first glimpse of the house. To my relief, the question did 
not seem an awkward one, for the old man answered freely and volubly. 
"Oh, that Afriky book? Cap'n Ebenezer Holt traded me thet in 'sixty-eight - him 
as was kilt in the war." Something about the name of Ebenezer Holt caused me to 
look up sharply. I had encountered it in my genealogical work, but not in any 
record since the Revolution. I wondered if my host could help me in the task at 
which I was laboring, and resolved to ask him about it later on. He continued. 
"Ebenezer was on a Salem merchantman for years, an' picked up a sight o' queer 
stuff in every port. He got this in London, I guess - he uster like ter buy 
things at the shops. I was up ta his haouse onct, on the hill, tradin' hosses, 
when I see this book. I relished the picters, so he give it in on a swap. 'Tis a 
queer book - here, leave me git on my spectacles-" The old man fumbled among his 
rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses with small 
octagonal lenses and steel bows. Donning these, he reached for the volume on the 
table and turned the pages lovingly. 
"Ebenezer cud read a leetle o' this-'tis Latin - but I can't. I had two er three 
schoolmasters read me a bit, and Passon Clark, him they say got draownded in the 
pond - kin yew make anything outen it?" I told him that I could, and translated 
for his benefit a paragraph near the beginning. If I erred, he was not scholar 
enough to correct me; for he seemed childishly pleased at my English version. 
His proximity was becoming rather obnoxious, yet I saw no way to escape without 
offending him. I was amused at the childish fondness of this ignorant old man 
for the pictures in a book he could not read, and wondered how much better he 
could read the few books in English which adorned the room. This revelation of 
simplicity removed much of the ill-defined apprehension I had felt, and I smiled 
as my host rambled on: 
"Queer haow picters kin set a body thinkin'. Take this un here near the front. 
Hey yew ever seed trees like thet, with big leaves a floppin' over an' daown? 
And them men - them can't be niggers - they dew beat all. Kinder like Injuns, I 
guess, even ef they be in Afriky. Some o' these here critters looks like 
monkeys, or half monkeys an' half men, but I never heerd o' nothin' like this 
un." Here he pointed to a fabulous creature of the artist, which one might 
describe as a sort of dragon with the head of an alligator. 
"But naow I'll show ye the best un - over here nigh the middle - "The old man's 
speech grew a trifle thicker and his eyes assumed a brighter glow; but his 
fumbling hands, though seemingly clumsier than before, were entirely adequate to 
their mission. The book fell open, almost of its own accord and as if from 
frequent consultation at this place, to the repellent twelfth plate showing a 
butcher's shop amongst the Anzique cannibals. My sense of restlessness returned, 
though I did not exhibit it. The especially bizarre thing was that the artist 
had made his Africans look like white men - the limbs and quarters hanging about 
the walls of the shop were ghastly, while the butcher with his axe was hideously 
incongruous. But my host seemed to relish the view as much as I disliked it. 
"What d'ye think o' this - ain't never see the like hereabouts, eh? When I see 
this I telled Eb Holt, 'That's suthin' ta stir ye up an' make yer blood tickle.' 
When I read in Scripter about slayin' - like them Midianites was slew - I kinder 
think things, but I ain't got no picter of it. Here a body kin see all they is 
to it - I s'pose 'tis sinful, but ain't we all born an' livin' in sin? - Thet 
feller bein' chopped up gives me a tickle every time I look at 'im - I hey ta 
keep lookin' at 'im - see whar the butcher cut off his feet? Thar's his head on 
thet bench, with one arm side of it, an' t'other arm's on the other side o' the 
meat block." 
As the man mumbled on in his shocking ecstasy the expression on his hairy, 
spectacled face became indescribable, but his voice sank rather than mounted. My 
own sensations can scarcely be recorded. All the terror I had dimly felt before 
rushed upon me actively and vividly, and I knew that I loathed the ancient and 
abhorrent creature so near me with an infinite intensity. His madness, or at 
least his partial perversion, seemed beyond dispute. He was almost whispering 
now, with a huskiness more terrible than a scream, and I trembled as I listened. 

"As I says, 'tis queer haow picters sets ye thinkin'. D'ye know, young Sir, I'm 
right sot on this un here. Arter I got the book off Eb I uster look at it a lot, 
especial when I'd heerd Passon Clark rant o' Sundays in his big wig. Onct I 
tried suthin' funny - here, young Sir, don't git skeert - all I done was ter 
look at the picter afore I kilt the sheep for market - killin' sheep was kinder 
more fun arter lookin' at it - " The tone of the old man now sank very low, 
sometimes becoming so faint that his words were hardly audible. I listened to 
the rain, and to the rattling of the bleared, small-paned windows, and marked a 
rumbling of approaching thunder quite unusual for the season. Once a terrific 
flash and peal shook the frail house to its foundations, but the whisperer 
seemed not to notice it. 
"Killin' sheep was kinder more fun - but d'ye know, 'twan't quite satisfyin'. 
Queer haow a cravin' gits a holt on ye - As ye love the Almighty, young man, 
don't tell nobody, but I swar ter Gawd thet picter begun to make me hungry fer 
victuals I couldn't raise nor buy - here, set still, what's ailin' ye? - I 
didn't do nothin', only I wondered haow 'twud be ef I did - They say meat makes 
blood an' flesh, an' gives ye new life, so I wondered ef 'twudn't make a man 
live longer an' longer ef 'twas more the same - " But the whisperer never 
continued. The interruption was not produced by my fright, nor by the rapidly 
increasing storm amidst whose fury I was presently to open my eyes on a smoky 
solitude of blackened ruins. It was produced by a very simple though somewhat 
unusual happening. 
The open book lay flat between us, with the picture staring repulsively upward. 
As the old man whispered the words "more the same" a tiny splattering impact was 
heard, and something showed on the yellowed paper of the upturned volume. I 
thought of the rain and of a leaky roof, but rain is not red. On the butcher's 
shop of the Anzique cannibals a small red spattering glistened picturesquely, 
lending vividness to the horror of the engraving. The old man saw it, and 
stopped whispering even before my expression of horror made it necessary; saw it 
and glanced quickly toward the floor of the room he had left an hour before. I 
followed his glance, and beheld just above us on the loose plaster of the 
ancient ceiling a large irregular spot of wet crimson which seemed to spread 
even as I viewed it. I did not shriek or move, but merely shut my eyes. A moment 
later came the titanic thunderbolt of thunderbolts; blasting that accursed house 
of unutterable secrets and bringing the oblivion which alone saved my mind. 




© 1998-1999 William Johns
Last modified: 12/18/1999 18:44:48
