"As for New England as a seat of weirdness—a little historic reflection will show why it is more naturally redolent of the bizarre & the sinister than any other part of America. It was here that the most gloomy-minded of all the colonists settled; & here that the dark moods & cryptic hills pressed closest. An abnormal Puritan psychology led to all kinds of repression, furtiveness, & grotesque hidden crime, while the long winters & backwoods isolation fostered monstrous secrets which never came to light. To me there is nothing more fraught with mystery & terror than a remote Massachusetts farmhouse against a lonely hill. Where else could an outbreak like the Salem witchcraft have occurred? Rhode Island does not share these tenedencies—its history & settlement being different from those of other parts of New England—but just across the line in the old Bay State the macabre broods at its strongest."
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Horror authorsAbsurdistsNovelists from the United StatesCritics of religionAgnostics from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
Letter to Elizabeth Toldridge (October 9, 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 423
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft
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