D

Dunwich: Dunwich is a fictitious town that appears in the H.P. Lovecraft short story "The Dunwich Horror" (1929) and in his poem "The Ancient Track." It is located in the fictional Miskatonic River Valley of Massachusetts and is described as economically poor, with many decrepit and abandoned buildings, while its inhabitants are depicted as inbred, uneducated, and very superstitious.

"Across a covered bridge one sees a small village huddled between the stream and the vertical slope of Round Mountain, and wonders at the cluster of rotting gambrel roofs bespeaking an earlier architectural period than that of the neighbouring region," Lovecraft writes in "The Dunwich Horror." "It is not reassuring to see, on a closer glance, that most of the houses are deserted and falling to ruin, and that the broken-steepled church now harbours the one slovenly mercantile establishment of the hamlet. One dreads to trust the tenebrous tunnel of the bridge, yet there is no way to avoid it. Once across, it is hard to prevent the impression of a faint, malign odour about the village street, as of the massed mould and decay of centuries. It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterward one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich."