Dreams in the Witch House: Lore, Familiars, and the Devil's Book

This week I've been reading "The Dreams in the Witch House," H.P. Lovecraft's classic 1932 tale of witches, creepy little monsters, and non-Euclidean calculus. This is one of those Lovecraft stories I come back to repeatedly, and re-reading it this time I was struck by how Lovecraft incorporates real New England folklore and history into it. Much of the story is focused on how one becomes a witch, something that was central to the 17th century Puritan witch trials. There is also a particularly creepy familiar spirit in it. 

Here's a basic plot summary, but you can also read the story yourself here. Walter Gilman is a college student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, where he is studying mathematics and folklore. Gilman is convinced there is a connection between advanced mathematics and the old New England witch stories, and his research leads him to rent a room in a squalid boarding house that was built in 1600s known as the Witch House.

Gilman's room was once the abode of Keziah Mason, who was arrested for witchcraft during the Salem witch trials. Under questioning, Mason told Judge John Hathorne that certain lines and angles could be used to move "through the walls of space to other spaces beyond," and then later disappeared from her locked jail cell. Strange geometric curves and angles were found drawn on the cell's walls with "some red, sticky fluid." Centuries later, Keziah Mason is said to haunt the Witch House where she once lived, appearing there at night with Brown Jenkin, a human-faced rat that serves as her familiar spirit. 

Muzski - muzski.deviantart.com, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Gilman thinks Mason knew the secret of traveling through other dimensions. Soon in his sleep he dreams that he can too, inspired by his study of mathematics and the strange angles of the walls and ceiling in his room. In his dreams, he flies through "limitless abysses of inexplicably coloured twilight and bafflingly disordered sound; abysses whose material and gravitational properties, and whose relation to his own entity, he could not even begin to explain." He dreams that he visits other planets, including a world whose heavy gravity almost crushes him, and one where he sees a vast city and strange non-humanoid beings. In his journeys he also sees Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin, who seem to be following him around the universe in his dreams. 

Spoiler alert: Walter Gilman is not dreaming. He really is traveling through the universe and other dimensions, and Mason and Brown Jenkin really are following him. Since he has intuitively and unconsciously mastered the art of extra-dimensional travel, they recognize him as a fellow witch, and want him to be fully initiated into the dark mysteries of witchcraft: 

He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos. That was what she said. He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going with her and Brown Jenkin and the other to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name “Azathoth” in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

Oh, and they want him to sacrifice a human infant as well. I won't give away the ending, but it's one of the gorier and gruesome endings to a Lovecraft story. 

H.P. Lovecraft loved New England and its history, and incorporates lots of local references into "The Dreams in the Witch House." John Hathorne (mentioned above) was a real Salem witch trials judge and an ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne; the infamous Cotton Mather is mentioned as well. Walter Gilman's hometown is Haverhill, Massachusetts, the same as me! One of his mathematics instructors at Miskatonic University is Professor Upham, a name possibly inspired by Charles Upham, the historian who wrote Salem Witchcraft (1867), one of the first important studies of the Salem trials. And there actually are several buildings in Massachusetts called the Witch House, including the most famous one in Salem. 

Original 1933 illustration from Weird Tales

The crux of the story is whether Gilman will become fully initiated into witchcraft. Will he sign his name into the Black Man's book using his own blood? Lovecraft pulled this concept directly from records of the New England witchcraft trials. The Black Man was a Puritan term for the Devil, and he and his book were mentioned in many witchcraft trials. The book was a Satanic parody of the Bible and of the covenants that Puritans signed when they joined churches. According to the Puritans, signing your name in the Black Man's book made you a witch. Lovecraft made up the part about sacrificing an infant, though. That does not appear in any New England witch trials, although certainly witches were accused of harming babies and children. The Puritans also believed that the Devil would baptize his witches after they signed the book, which doesn't appear in Lovecraft's story. It's probably just too tame for a horror story. 

Brown Jenkin, Keziah Mason's familiar spirit, is very similar to the familiars found in New England witch trials. The Puritan's claimed that the Devil gave witches small demons, called familiar spirits, to do their bidding. In return, the witches just had to feed them with their blood. The trials of the Salem witch trials mention familiar spirits who appeared in a variety of forms, including birds, cats, and wolves. Like Brown Jenkin, some appeared as monstrous hybrids. For example, Bridget Bishop was accused of having a familiar that looked like a monkey with rooster feet and a human face, and Sarah Osborne's familiar was supposedly a small humanoid covered in hair. Lovecraft's Brown Jenkin would fit right in with these two.

One interesting thing I noticed on re-reading "The Dreams in the Witch House" is that Keziah Mason and Brown Jenkin are trying to help and protect Walter Gilman during his trips through space and time, even though he doesn't realize it. For example, when he finds himself on a planet with heavy gravity they show him how to travel back to Earth. It's only when he refuses to sign the book that they become hostile towards him. He's not acting the way a witch should!

"The Dreams in the Witch House" has been filmed at least three times, once in 2005 as part of the Masters of Horror anthology TV series, and also as a low-budget movie earlier this year, at last according to Amazon Prime. A version of "The Dreams in the Witch House" will also air later this month as an episode of Guillermo del Toro's new anthology Netflix show Cabinet of Curiosities. I hope they include all the weird New England witch references in it!

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If you want to read more about New England witches, please check out my book, Witches and Warlocks of Massachusetts. It's available wherever books are sold online and is perfect October reading!

Did H.P. Lovecraft Believe In Witches?

New England produced three of the world’s most famous horror authors: Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, and H.P. Lovecraft. They are all great in their own ways, but I find myself re-reading Lovecraft’s stories more than anything the other two wrote. Maybe it’s his overwrought prose, maybe it’s all those hideous tentacled monsters, or maybe it’s because he used a lot of authentic New England lore in his writings. Folk beliefs, legendary places and bizarre history all show up in Lovecraft’s work.

He also incorporated New England’s witchy history into several of his stories. In “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” a wealthy young Providence scholar learns that one of his ancestors was an evil alchemist who fled Salem to escape the 1692 witchcraft trials, while in “The Shunned House” a man in Colonial Providence is suspected of witchcraft:

“Etienne’s son Paul, a surly fellow whose erratic conduct had probably provoked the riot which wiped out the family, was particularly a source of speculation; and though Providence never shared the witchcraft panics of her Puritan neighbours, it was freely intimated by old wives that his prayers were neither uttered at the proper time nor directed toward the proper object.”

And of course, “Dreams in the Witch House” is full of witchcraft, as you might guess from the title. The story tells how college student Walter Gilman rents a room in an old house once inhabited by a witch named Keziah Mason. Mason escaped the Salem trials in 1692 by drawing strange diagrams on the wall of her jail cell; legends say she and her ratlike familiar spirit now haunt the house where Gilman is staying.

Still from the 2005 film Dreams In The Witch House.

 It turns out the legend is true, and soon she tries to get Gilman to become a witch:

“The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man, and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate Chaos. That was what she said. He must sign in his own blood the book of Azathoth and take a new secret name…”

Much of this is classic New England witchcraft lore (although the name Azathoth is Lovecraft’s own creation). Lovecraft incorporated other types of New England lore into his stories so it’s not really surprising.

H.P. Lovecraft

What is surprising is that Lovecraft believed that witches were real – at least to some extent. Lovecraft was a materialist and didn’t believe in magic or the supernatural, but he did think there was something real behind the legends.

“Something actual was going on under the surface, so that people really stumbled on concrete experiences from time to time which confirmed all they had ever heard of the witch species. In brief, scholars now recognize that all through history a secret cult of degenerate nature-worshipers, furtively recruited from the peasantry and sometimes from decadent characters of more select origin, has existed throughout northwestern Europe…” (H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1929 – 1931, 1971, p. 178, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei)

According to Lovecraft, this cult was once the dominant religion in Europe but was forced underground by the “more refined, evolved and poetic polytheism” practiced by groups like the Druids, the Romans and the Norse. In retaliation to attacks by these dominant groups the cult turned to malevolent magic and became identified as witches.

Lovecraft didn’t think many of these real witches came to New England as settlers, but he suspected that a few of them did make their way to Salem.

“For my part – I doubt if a compact coven existed, but certainly think that people had come to Salem who had a direct personal knowledge of the cult, and who were perhaps initiated members of it. I think that some of the rites and formulae of the cult must have been talked about secretly among certain elements, and perhaps furtively practiced by the few degenerates involved… Most of the people hanged were probably innocent, yet I do think there was a concrete, sordid background not present in any other New England witch case.” (H.P. Lovecraft, Selected Letters, 1929 – 1931, 1971, p. 181, edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei)

Although this theory may seem strange now, Lovecraft wasn’t the only person who thought this way. It was widely accepted in the early 20th century. In the letter laying out his theory Lovecraft acknowledges Margaret Murray’s influential 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Murray was a prominent British Egyptologist with an interest in folklore and witchcraft. The Witch-Cult claimed that people accused of witchcraft in Europe were actually members of a pagan religion that secretly survived the Christianization of Europe.

Margaret Murray

Murray’s book received a mixed response when it was released. Critics felt she took the alleged witches’ confessions too literally and distorted the historic record to fit her theory, but the general reading public was more appreciative and Encyclopedia Brittanica even asked her to author their entry on witchcraft. Lovecraft was just reiterating an accepted theory of his day. Current historians discount Murray’s hypothesis and don’t think there was a secret witch cult in Europe or Salem. 

So even though there wasn’t really a secret witch cult in Salem, H.P. Lovecraft thought there might be. It just adds to the strange mix of folklore that makes New England such an interesting place.

Seductive New England Witches, Part One: Mrs. Paterson

Austin Osman Spare was born in London in December of 1886. From a young age he showed an aptitude for the arts, and by age thirteen he was working in a stained glass factory and taking art classes by night. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art and his father, a London policeman, secretly submitted one of young Austin's drawings to the prestigious Royal Academy. It was accepted and exhibited. Spare was on the road to art world greatness.

But things didn't work out exactly as expected. Spare briefly had a successful art career, but he's more famous for his work as an occultist and practitioner of witchcraft. Spare claimed that a witch named Mrs. Paterson set him on this unusual path.

As a child Spare had been raised Anglican, but in his early adolescence met an elderly fortune teller named Mrs. Paterson. Spare described her as a "colonial woman," and Paterson claimed she was from a venerable line of New England witches who had escaped the Puritan prosecution in the 1600s. Although quite old and not traditionally attractive Spare found himself drawn to her. Paterson seduced him, and for the rest of his life Spare was attracted to older women.

Austin Spare and Witch, 1947, by Austin Osman Spare

Although Paterson was poorly educated and had a limited vocabulary she had a powerful grasp of abstract metaphysical concepts. More impressively, she had strong occult powers. In addition to being an accurate fortune teller she was able to materialize her thoughts into physical manifestation, and often created visions of the future for her clients using this power. Spare claimed she taught him this talent but he could never use it as skillfully she could.

Mrs. Paterson possessed several other unusual talents. Using her ability to externalize her thoughts, she was able to easily transform herself from an elderly woman into a beautiful young one. Spare painted portraits of her in both forms.

Paterson could also travel to the Witches' Sabbat, and took Spare with her several times. Spare claimed the Sabbat occurred in "spaces outside of space" that were indescribable and could not be physically represented. Paterson gave Spare the witch name "Zos" after initiating him into the cult. In return, Spare called her his Witch Mother.

Drawing by Austin Osman Spare

Spare eventually turned his back on the mainstream art world to devote himself to his occult and magical studies, briefly associating with Aleister Crowley before striking out on his own. (An interesting note: Adolf Hitler asked Spare to paint his portrait, but Spare turned him down, rightly thinking he was evil.) He lived in squalid conditions in London's slums where he wrote books with titles like The Book of Pleasure, The Focus of Life, and The Anathema of Zos, and sketched and painted his poverty-stricken neighbors and spirits that he summoned. He died in relative obscurity in 1956, but his work on magical sigils (a way of encoding desires in visual form) was rediscovered by occultists in the 1980s. Today his art work is quite expensive; the largest collection of his work is held by Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page.

And what of Mrs. Paterson, the New England witch who set him on this path? It's unclear what happened to her, if she really existed at all. Perhaps she is now residing in a space beyond space, but some writers think Spare simply made her up. People who start magical cults or new religions often claim they were taught by divine beings like angels, secret Ascended Masters, or extraterrestrials. After all, the magic has to come from somewhere. Mrs. Paterson fits into this pattern. Then again, if Spare really did have the ability to manifest his desires in the material world, perhaps the elderly witch emerged from his subconscious mind to teach him.

Witches, undated, by Austin Osman Spare

Whatever she really was, I find it interesting that Paterson allegedly came from New England. Britain has plenty of witches in its own history, so why would Spare need one of ours? There is a trend in the occult world to think that more 'primitive' people have the most powerful magic. Although 'primitive' is an ethnocentric and meaningless word when applied to cultures, occultists and New Agers have often thought that groups like American Indian medicine men, swamp-dwelling Voodoo practitioners, or rural Appalachian conjure folk have the secrets to the universe. Primitive people are allegedly closer to nature, and therefore closer to the source of magic. An elderly, uneducated fortune-teller from that wilderness called New England would probably have seemed primitive - and therefore powerful - to a Londoner like Austin Osman Spare.

Mrs. Paterson doesn't fit the mold of most traditional New England witches, who were not usually seductive. Accounts of the Witches' Sabbat from early New England witch trials were quite chaste and lack the descriptions of orgies that are found in European trial documents. There is some underlying sexual tension in tales of New England witchcraft - particularly those where the witch 'rides' her male victim all night long like a horse - but it is usually not explicit. If anything, Mrs. Paterson reminds me of the shape-shifting fairies and enchantresses from Medieval romances like Gawain and the Loathly Lady, where one of King Arthur's knights marries a hideous crone who later transforms into a lovely maiden.

"Dreams in the Witch House" from the Masters of Horror TV series, 2005

Paterson also reminds me of Keziah Mason, the ancient witch in H.P. Lovecraft's short story "Dreams in the Witch House." Like Paterson, Keziah Mason takes that story's male protagonist to the Witches' Sabbat, which lies beyond the boundaries of normal space. Unlike the highly libidinous Spare, Lovecraft was much more repressed, and Keziah Mason is not seductive in his story. (However, Keziah is both seductive and able to transform into an attractive young lady in the 2005 TV version directed by Stuart Gordon.)

Lovecraft and Spare were contemporaries, but I don't think they were aware of each other's work. Perhaps Mrs. Paterson was working behind the scenes? Lovecraft did once receive a letter from a female fan who claimed to be descended from the Salem witches. She offered to share her magical knowledge with him, but he declined her offer. Who knows what might have happened if he had taken her up on it.

Celebrate H.P. Lovecraft's 125th Birthday This August

Cancel that clambake and skip the trip to the beach. This August you need to celebrate the 125th birthday of Howard Phillips Lovecraft!

H.P. Lovecraft, for those who don't know, was one of America's most influential fantasy and horror writers. Born into a wealthy Providence family on August 20, 1890, Lovecraft should have led a life of privilege and ease. Things didn't quite work out that way. His life is almost was almost as strange as his fiction.

After his father died in an insane asylum, little Howard and his mother went to live with her father in his Providence mansion. As a boy he was spoiled by his aunts and grandfather, but his mother told him he was too ugly to be seen in public and let him believe until he was three that he was a girl. Unsurprisingly, his mother also later died in an insane asylum and Lovecraft himself suffered from unspecified nervous and mental disorders throughout his early years.

H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was quite intelligent. He never finished high school due to those nervous disorders but did read widely in his grandfather's extensive library. (It even included an original copy of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, which makes me jealous!) When his grandfather lost his money and died Lovecraft and his two aunts fell into poverty. Due to his many neuroses and his belief that he was of a superior social class Lovecraft never found full-time work. Instead, he dabbled in amateur journalism and wrote an estimated 100,000 letters. That's right - one hundred thousand letters. And they were long! At one point he sent one aunt a forty page letter every week.

Because he wrote so many letters, we know that he was quite racist. In his letters he railed against blacks, Jews, Mexicans, the Irish, French-Canadians, Asians, Italians, and even people from Finland. In short, he said didn't like anyone except white people of Anglo-Saxon descent. He also expressed strong homophobic opinions in some letters. On the other hand, he briefly married an Eastern European Jewish woman, and was good friends with several gay writers, including the poet Samuel Loveman, who served as his muse for several years. These actions seem to contradict all vitriol he included in his letters, and even the racism in those decreased as he grew older. He died in 1937 at the age of 47.

Lovecraft was a big tangle of neurotic contradictions, but in spite of this - or maybe because of this - he posthumously became the 20th century's most influential horror writer. He moved horror fiction away from the standard Gothic tropes of witches, ghosts and old castles into a new direction featuring extra-dimensional alien gods, hidden lost races, and secret tomes of blasphemous horror. He also liberally sprinkled New England history and folklore into his stories. If you've never read any of his fiction, "The Dunwich Horror," "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," and "Dreams In the Witch House" are good places to start and have a strong New England flavor.

The Call of Cthulhu (2005)

There are two big celebrations happening this August to mark Lovecraft's 125th birthday. For you cineastes, the Brattle Theater in Cambridge is holding an H.P. Lovecraft film festival from August 20 to August 24. They are showing a nice assortment of movies. Some are based closely on Lovecraft's writings, like the recently filmed but retro-spooky black and white films Call of Cthulhu (2005) and The Whisperer in Darkness (2011), which try to capture what a Lovecraft movie would look like if it were filmed during his lifetime.

The Crimson Cult (1968)

Other films update his stories and put them in a more contemporary setting. The Dunwich Horror (1970) takes Lovecraft into the Age of Aquarius, with Dean Stockwell as a dreamboat wizard aiming to destroy the world and Sandra Dee under attack by psychedelic hippies, while The Crimson Cult (1968) sets "Dreams In the Witch House" in swinging England, with Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele as a body-painted witch, and a brawny guy in a leather jockstrap. The New England flavor is gone, but these movies are so groovy it doesn't matter!

From Beyond (1986)

From Beyond (1986) gives Lovecraft the 1980s schlock treatment. When a group of scientists stimulate their pineal glands, they suddenly see the invisible extra-dimensional monsters that constantly surround us. Uh-oh! The monsters can see them as well. Rubbery special effects, leopard print lingerie, and lots of slime ensue.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Other films are inspired by Lovecraft but aren't based on a specific story. Hellboy (2004) makes Lovecraftian monsters and sorcery into an action blockbuster. John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1994) features a book so terrifying it drives its readers insane - and maybe worse. Lovecraft's work is quite popular overseas; in the Japanese film Marebito (2004), a lonely man exploring tunnels below the Tokyo subway system encounters a mysterious woman with strange appetites.

I'm sure that diehard fans will be flocking to Providence for NecronomiCon, a convention about all things Lovecraftian happening August 20 - 23. The convention features a wide variety of activities. If you're feeling brainy, you can listen to panelists discuss topics like "The Undying Leaders’: Ultraterrestrial Demonologies, Cthulhoid Conspiracies and the Rise of Lovecraftian Parapolitics." And when your brain tires out, there are games, an art show, the Eldritch Ball, and readings from horror authors. A good spooky time for everyone!