The North Burial Ground as a Setting
in Lovecraft's Work
The North Burial Ground holds a place of prominence in two of Lovecraft’s best-known works, “The Shunned House” and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
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In “The Shunned House,” a short story written in 1924, the inception of the North Burial Ground creates the premise for the entire story. The story postulates that the house at 135 Benefit Street (known to Lovecraft as The Babbitt House, as the Harris House in the story, as the Mawney house according to the Providence Preservation Society plaque it bears, or as “the Shunned House” to 21st century locals) was built over the graves of Huguenots with possible “demoniac” ancestry. The house is the oldest extant house on Benefit Street, and would have been well-known to Lovecraft since his aunt, Lillian Phillips, had lived there as a companion to Sophia Babbitt from 1919-1920.
The "Shunned House"
In the opening pages of the story, Lovecraft describes how the house came to be:
Its construction, over a century and a half ago [about 1764], had followed the grading and straightening of the road in that especial vicinity; for Benefit Street—at first called Back Street—was laid out as a lane winding amongst the graveyards of the first settlers, and straightened only when the removal of the bodies to the North Burial Ground made it decently possible to cut through the old family plots.
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According to the story, there was no record of the transfer of the Huguenot graves to the North Burial Ground, thus leaving this ancient evil in the ground to infect the house and its inhabitants through the generations.
The North Burial Ground also features prominently in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a novel written in 1927 but not published until after Lovecraft’s death. It is the location of numerous grave visits by various personages, both real and fictional, in both the 18th and the 20th centuries. Early in the story, recounting occurrences in 1771, Lovecraft writes
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a party of ten visited the old North Burying Ground opposite Herrenden’s Lane [now Rochambeau Avenue] and opened a grave. They found it vacant, precisely as they had expected.
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Rochambeau Avenue gate at the North Burial Ground
Later entries deal with incursions into the Burial Ground in the 20th century, with the fictional Robert Hart, night watchman, discovering the culprits. Dr. Marinus Willett, the physician who is treating Charles Dexter Ward for his unexplained psychological and physical changes, finds the story in the Providence Journal, where he reads that Hart found
a party of several men with a motor truck in the oldest part of the cemetery, but apparently frightened them off before they had accomplished whatever their object might have been... The diggers must have been at work for a long while before detection, for Hart found an enormous hole dug at a considerable distance back from the roadway... The hole, a place as large and deep as a grave, was empty. . . . In reply to questions Hart said he thought the escaping truck had headed up Rochambeau Avenue [thus marking it as roughly the same location as the 1771 visit described above].
It is important to note that near the current pedestrian entrance to the North Burial Ground at the intersection of North Main St. and Rochambeau Ave. was formerly a main entrance to the cemetery, near the section that contained the oldest graves.
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A bit later in the story, Hart again discovers that the “ghouls” who had been at work in the cemetery had apparently dug up and robbed the grave of the fictional Ezra Weeden.
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Finally, Dr. Willett himself visits the cemetery, leading to an article in the Evening Bulletin that describes his visit:
Hart observed the glow of a lantern or pocket torch not far to the northwest, and upon opening the door detected the figure of a man with a trowel very plainly silhouetted against a nearby electric light. . . . He saw the figure dart hurriedly towards the main entrance, gaining the street and losing himself among the shadows. . . . A vacant part of the Ward lot shewed signs of a little superficial digging.
Willett describes the results of his visit to the NBG to Charles Ward’s father near the end of the novel:
You can put up a stone in your lot at the North Burial Ground exactly ten feet west of your father’s and facing the same way, and that will mark the true resting place of your son.
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Catherine Beyer Hurst, MBA, Writer and Community Historian
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Further Reading
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Lovecraft, Howard P. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. In Tales, edited by Peter Straub. New York: The Library of America, 2005.
Lovecraft, Howard P. “The Shunned House”. Project Gutenberg eBook #31469, 2 Mar 1910.
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Addendum:
As the North Burial Ground remained a public cemetery, town and state bodies continued to pass legislation protecting it. One of the more alarming provisions was enacted to prevent grave-robbing of corpses needed by medical students to study anatomy. In 1817 a state law was passed:
That if any person or persons shall secretly dig up a human body, or carry away the same from any vault, or other place in which the same may be deposited; or knowingly conceal any such human body after it shall have been so dug up, or carried away, as aforesaid, every such person or persons, his or their aides or abettors, shall, on conviction thereof by the Superior Judicial Court, or Court of General Sessions of the Peace for the county in which offence shall have been committed be fined a sum not exceeding five thousand dollars, nor less than one thousand dollars and be imprisoned not exceeding six years nor less than one year.
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(John E. Sterling, North Burial Ground, 2000; xix.)