The Dunnich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft

Gorgans and Hydras and Chimeras. Dyeres, dire stories of Salino and the Harpies,

may reproduce themselves in the brain of superstition, but they were there before.

They are transcripts, types, the archetypes are in us,

and eternal. How else should the recital of that which we know in a waking sense to be false come to affect us at all? Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such objects, considered in their capacity of

being able to inflict upon us bodily injury? Oh, least of all, these terrors are of older standing.

They date beyond body, or without the body, they would have been the same.

That the kind of fear here treated is purely spiritual, that it is strong in proportion as its object less on earth,

that it predominates in the period of our sinless infancy,

our difficulties, the solution of which might afford some probable insight into our antimundane condition,

and a peep at least into the shadow land of pre-existence.

Charles Lamb, witches and other night fears.

Chapter 1 Charles Lamb, witches and other night fears.

Chapter 1 When a traveler in north-central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Islesbury Pike

just beyond Dean's corners, he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher,

and the briar-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty,

curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses

attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions.

At the same time, the planted fields appear singularly few and barren, while the sparsely scattered

houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age,

squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled,

solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps, or on the sloping rock-strowed meadows.

...