The novella begins with a quotation by Charles Lamb, taken from his essay “Witches and Other Night Fears.” Lamb explains that fictional monsters are expressions of older, less understood terrors that exist beyond the realms of human comprehension.

Dunwich is an isolated village in rural Massachusetts. Anyone passing through Dunwich has the impression of “massed mold and decay of centuries” (675). In previous eras, people’s strange dislike of Dunwich was blamed on witches. Since 1928’s titular horror, however, there is another explanation for people’s reticence, though the authorities have hushed it up. The people who remain are marked by physical and mental difficulties. For centuries, Dunwich has been home to dark magic practitioners. These days, there are strange noises and foul odors in the area around the village that science cannot explain. Dunwich is much older than surrounding communities, and ancient burial pits have been discovered in the area, though some ethnologists believe that the remains are ethnically European.

The novella begins with Wilbur Whateley’s birth in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Dunwich on February 2, 1913. He was born on Candlemas, a traditional Christian holiday, though Dunwich does not refer to the holiday as such. His mother is a “somewhat deformed, unattractive albino woman” named Lavinia Whateley (678), and they live with her father,