The Horror at Red Hook


"The Horror at Red Hook" is a short story by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, written on August 1–2, 1925,. "Red Hook" is a transitional tale, situated between the author's earlier work and the later Cthulhu Mythos. Although the story depicts a sinister cult, this cult offers a conventionally occult devil-worshipping threat, rather than the cosmic threat depicted in his later work. Living in poverty in the slum of Red Hook at the time of writing, Lovecraft was at this time urgently attempting to widen his markets in the pulp magazines. By having an unusually proactive Irish New York police detective as his protagonist, he hoped for a swift sale to a detective pulp, which would have opened up a new market other than his usual Weird Tales magazine. He did not get such a sale, and had to fall back on Weird Tales. "Red Hook" was thus first published in the January 1927 issue of Weird Tales.

Plot summary

The story begins with Detective Malone describing an on-duty incident in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that gave him a phobia of large buildings. Back-tracking to where it all began, the Brooklyn waterfront slum Red Hook is described in detail, with its gangs and crime, and hinting at an occult underbelly.
The "case of Robert Suydam" is then told to be the driving force behind Malone's federally ordered involvement at Red Hook. Suydam's demeanor changes suddenly. Known as a shabby recluse, he is seen around town looking younger and more radiant. News arrives of his engagement to a well-to-do woman, while, at the same time, there is an increase in local kidnappings. A police raid, involving Malone, uncovers nothing useful from Suydam's Red Hook flat save a few strange inscriptions.
After Suydam's wedding, he and his bride leave on a ship. Aboard, a scream is heard and, when the crew enter Suydam's stateroom, they find him and his wife dead, with claw-marks on his wife's body. Later, some strange men from another ship come on board and lay claim to Suydam's body.
Malone enters Suydam's flat to see what he can find. In the basement, he comes across a door that breaks open and sucks him inside, revealing a hellish landscape. He witnesses human sacrifices and a ritual that reanimates Suydam's corpse. Malone is found in the basement of Suydam's flat, which has caved in inexplicably above him, killing everyone else inside. The tunnels and chambers uncovered in the raids are filled in and cemented, though, as Malone recounts, the threat in Red Hook subtly re-emerges.

Characters

;Thomas Malone
;Robert Suydam

Connections to other Cthulhu Mythos tales

"The Horror at Red Hook" is not generally considered to be part of the Cthulhu Mythos, lacking many of the elements that characterize it, such as totally alien cults with cosmic purposes, forbidden tomes, unknown gods and a sense of true "outsideness", as the cult and occult magic in the story have decidedly real world origins and purposes.
Robert Suydam lives in a "lonely house, set back from Martense Street". The Martense Family were the subterranean cannibals in Lovecraft's earlier story "The Lurking Fear", who live in a location from which the river flows south to eventually emerge at Red Hook.

Inspiration

Lovecraft referred to the area's immigrant population by referring to Red Hook as "a maze of hybrid squalor". He spelled out his inspiration for "The Horror at Red Hook" in a letter written to fellow writer Clark Ashton Smith:
Lovecraft had moved to New York to marry Sonia Greene a year earlier, in 1924; his initial infatuation with New York soon soured, in large part due to Lovecraft's xenophobic attitudes. "Whenever we found ourselves in the racially mixed crowds which characterize New York, Howard would become livid with rage," Greene later wrote. "He seemed almost to lose his mind."
In his story Lovecraft very nearly accurately describes the mix of demographics of Red Hook circa 1925, but - since his protagonist is Irish - he changed a reference to the then-Irish population of Red Hook to "Spanish". At that time there was no Spanish population in Red Hook, although there was one later.
Much of the occult chanting in the story was lifted from the articles on "Magic" and "Demonology" in the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, written by anthropologist E. B. Tylor. Daniel Harms and John Wisdom Gonce note the spell Lovecraft quotes and describes as a "demon evocation", was actually an incantation allegedly used for treasure hunting.
The use of the Yezidi as a devil-worshipping cult, twice implied to be behind the events of the story, seems to have been inspired by E. Hoffmann Price's "The Stranger from Kurdistan". At that time Lovecraft was not aware of their similar use in an occult adventure novel of 1920 by Robert W. Chambers.
Martense Street is not a fictional locale; it is one block North of Church Avenue. The Dutch Reformed Church in which Suydam was married is on the corner of Church and Flatbush Avenues.

Reception

Lovecraft himself, always modest about his work and at that time rather depressed, said of "The Horror at Red Hook" that the tale was "rather long and rambling, and I don't think it is very good". Nevertheless, it was one of the few stories that saw book publication during his lifetime, chosen for the prestigious British anthology series Not at Night.
Critics have tended to disparage the story, largely due to its overt racism. Lin Carter called the story "a piece of literary vitriol". Peter Cannon noted that "racism makes a poor premise for a horror story." ST Joshi, in , called the story "horrendously bad" for its racist language.

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