“The Rats in the Walls,” by American horror author H. P. Lovecraft, was first published in 1924 in Weird Tales. The American pulp magazine published tales of fantasy, horror, and weird fiction. Many of Lovecraft’s most well-known stories debuted in Weird Tales, including the iconic “The Call of Cthulhu“ (1928). Lovecraft has written over 100 short stories, novellas, poems, and works of science and philosophy. His fiction typically explores dark themes, such as “madness,” the danger of knowledge, religion and occultism, fear of the unknown, and race and civilization.

Content Warning: The source text includes racist language and ideology, and graphic descriptions of violence. The protagonist has a cat; in the original story, the cat’s name is a racial slur. In a 1950s reprint in Zest magazine, the cat’s name was changed to “Black Tom,” which still has racist connotations.

This guide cites the 2020 Dreamscape Media edition of the story.

“The Rats in the Walls” begins in England in 1923. The protagonist, a man named Delapore who never reveals his first name, has recently purchased and restored a family estate called Exham Priory. The home is located near the fictional village of Anchester. Delapore explains that his family, the de la Poers, first took ownership of the priory in 1261. They lived there until the early 1600s, when a terrible event forced the only surviving member of the family, Walter de la Poer, to flee to Virginia. The spelling of the family name changed within a generation.

Delapore grew up in Virginia, and his father was a Confederate soldier during the US Civil War. His own son, Alfred Delapore, fought in World War I. During his service, Alfred met a man named Captain Edward Norrys. By chance, Norrys belongs to the family that took over the Exham Priory estate after the departure of the de la Poers to America. Edward Norrys regaled Alfred with stories about the de la Poer family’s sordid past, telling him that the Anchester villagers have always regarded Exham Priory with fear and suspicion.

Delapore purchased Exham Priory in 1918; following Alfred’s death in 1921, Delapore decided to travel to England to restore the property. During the two-year restoration process, he heard outlandish tales of the history of Exham Priory. For instance, after Walter de la Poer left, villagers claim that a massive horde of rats burst out of the priory, consuming animals and even people before finally dispersing. Delapore learns that Walter killed his entire family before leaving Exham Priory. Rather than treating Walter as a criminal, the villagers considered his actions justified because the family regularly committed unspecified atrocities.

Although he often hears stories of how evil his ancestors were, Delapore is unperturbed, suspecting that much of what he hears is myth. He chooses to live in Exham Priory permanently, hoping to prove to the people of Anchester that he and his family pose no threat. Almost immediately after he moves in, Delapore notices strange things happening in his new home. His cats, especially his favored cat called Black Tom, grow restless and scratch at the walls as though they can hear mice or rats.

One night, Delapore awakens when Black Tom gets agitated again. This time, Delapore himself can hear rats inside the walls. Curiously, nobody else in his household seems to hear them. Delapore realizes that the rats sound as though they are running toward the sub-cellar. He calls Edward Norrys to help him explore. Around the same time, Delapore starts to have nightmares set in an underground grotto. In the dreams, he sees a “daemon swineherd” and “a flock of fungous, flabby beasts” that frighten and disgust him (Paragraph 23).

The sub-cellar turns out to be a Roman temple. Norrys and Delapore decide to spend the night there to learn more about what is happening. They bring Black Tom with them. In the night, Delapore awakens again from the nightmare about the swineherd. Black Tom starts running along the walls, and Delapore hears rats again. The stampede is louder than ever, but Norrys cannot hear the rats. The men realize one of the temple’s altars covers an entrance to a passageway that leads even deeper underground. They retreat to make a plan before going any farther.

Norrys and Delapore leave Exham Priory and find several archaeologists and psychic investigators who agree to explore the underground area with them. One psychic, a man named Thornton, takes Delapore’s dreams seriously. He believes that Delapore is being shown important information. In total, seven men return to Exham Priory to undertake a more thorough investigation. When they push aside the altar, they are horrified to discover piles of human and rat bones. Some of the bones, according to Delapore, look only partially human; he compares them to earlier stages of hominid evolution.

The men proceed down the underground passageway, noting with some trepidation that the passage appears to have been carved from the bottom up. The passageway opens onto the same grotto that Delapore saw in his dreams. Inside the grotto are buildings from many different periods of history; the architectures reflect English, Saxon, Roman, and even prehistoric influence. Among the buildings are hundreds of human and semi-human skeletons. Thornton faints at the sight.

The men surmise that this underground city has existed for thousands of years. It was tended by people, including the de la Poer family, who kidnapped and enslaved other people, keeping them in cages. Over time, the imprisoned population became quadrupedal. The de la Poers farmed and ate these people, throwing their remains into huge, rat-infested pits. It was the cessation of this cannibalistic enterprise, and therefore the loss of a once-reliable food source, that sent the rats pouring out of Exham Priory all those years ago.

Delapore gets separated from the rest of the group as they explore the underground city. He sees Black Tom run off into a darker area of the grotto and decides to follow him. Delapore hears the sound of the rats once again. He starts behaving strangely and speaking fragments of older languages like Old English and Latin. When his friends find him three hours later, they discover that he has killed Edward Norrys and is eating him.

Delapore finishes the story by informing readers that he was sent to a psychiatric hospital following the incident. Thornton is also a patient at the hospital, but the two are not permitted to speak to each other. Delapore says he was not responsible for what happened; it was the rats in the walls. It is unclear whether he means that the rats ate Norrys or that the rats pushed him to enact the violence. He says he can still hear the rats behind the padded walls of his cell.