The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Part 1 of 4, by H.P. Lovecraft

B.J. Harrison (0:00)

Why do people shun the New England town of Innsmouth, like there is a shadow over it? HP. Lovecraft, today on The Classic Tales Podcast.

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During the winter of 1927 to 28, federal government officials made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting, under suitable precautions, of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses, along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor. Keener news followers, however, wondered at the prodigious number of arrests, the abnormally large force of men used in making them, and the secrecy surrounding the disposal of the prisoners. No trials or even definite charges were reported, nor were any of the captives seen thereafter in the regular jails of the nation. There were vague statements about disease and concentration camps, and later about dispersal in various naval and military prisons, but nothing positive ever developed. Complaints from many liberal organizations were met with long confidential discussions, and representatives were taken on trips to certain camps and prisons. As a result, these societies became surprisingly passive and reticent. Newspaper men were harder to manage, but seemed largely to cooperate with the government in the end. Only one paper, a tabloid, always discounted because of its wild policy, mentioned the deep-diving submarine that discharged torpedoes downward in the marine abyss just beyond Devil Reef. That item, gathered by chance in a haunt of sailors, seemed indeed rather far-fetched, since the low black reef lies a full mile and a half out from Innsmouth Harbor.

But at last, I am going to defy the ban on speech about this thing. Results, I am certain, are so thorough that no public harm save a shock of repulsion could ever accrue from a hinting of what was found by those horrified raiders at Innsmouth. For my contact with this affair has been closer than that of any other layman, and I have carried away impressions which are yet to drive me to drastic measures.

It was I who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning hours of July 16, 1927, and whose frightened appeals for government inquiry and action brought on the whole reported episode. I was willing enough to stay mute while the affair was fresh and uncertain, but now that it is an old story, with public interest and curiosity gone, I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality.

I never heard of Innsmouth till the day before I saw it for the first and so far last time. I was celebrating my coming of age by a tour of New England, sightseeing, antiquarian and genealogical, and had planned to go directly from ancient Newburyport to Arkham whence my mother's family was derived. I had no car, but was traveling by train, trolley and motor coach, always seeking the cheapest possible route. In Newburyport, they told me that the steam train was the thing to take to Arkham, and it was only at the station ticket office when I demurred at the high fare that I learned about Innsmouth. The stout, shrewd-faced agent, whose speech showed him to be no local man, seemed sympathetic toward my efforts at economy, and made a suggestion that none of my other informants had offered. You could take that old bus, I suppose, he said with a certain hesitation. But it ain't thought much of hereabouts. It goes through Innsmouth. You may have heard about that, and so the people don't like it. Run by an Innsmouth fella, Joe Sargent, but never gets any custom from here, or Arkham either, I guess. Leaves the square, front of Hammond's drugstore at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., unless they've changed lately. Looks like a terrible rattle trap. I've never been on it.