The Salem horror by Henry Kuttner
The Salem horror by Henry Kuttner is a weird-fiction horror short story written in the early 20th century. It centers on the lingering curse of a Salem witch and the awakening of an eldritch force beneath an old house, blending occult lore, haunted history, and cosmic terror. A popular novelist named Carson rents a decrepit Salem house once owned by the witch Abigail Prinn and discovers a hidden “Witch Room” whose mosaic
floor acts as a psychic focus. Drawn to work there, he becomes subtly controlled, suffers lost memories and night terrors, and is likely compelled to un-stake Prinn’s grave. An occultist, Michael Leigh, warns that the room bridges thought and matter and that Prinn serves Nyogtha, a shapeless Dweller in Darkness sealed beneath an iron disk in the chamber. One night the withered witch emerges and begins to raise the black, gelatinous horror; Leigh bursts in, wielding a crux ansata, a forbidden incantation, and a rare elixir to drive the entity back and seal the pit. The aftermath leaves Carson alive but changed—his light romances abandoned for grim, rejected tales—and the final image is a withered claw protruding from the sealed disk, a chilling token that the evil is not entirely gone. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Kuttner, Henry, 1915-1958 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Brundage, Margaret, 1900-1976 |
| Illustrator | Mooney, Jim (James Noel), 1919-2008 |
| Title | The Salem horror |
| Original Publication | Indianapolis, IN: Popular Fiction Publishing Company, 1937. |
| Series Title | Produced from Weird Tales May 1937. |
| Credits | Alex White, Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at www.pgdpcanada.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 74.0 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Horror tales |
| Subject | Salem (Mass.) -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 76108 |
| Release Date | May 17, 2025 |
| Most Recently Updated | May 19, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 407 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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